Whatever England's Fields Display

Whatever England's fields display,
The fairest scenes are thine, Torbay!
Not even Liguria's sunny shore
With palm and aloe pleas'd me more.
Sorrento softer tale may tell,
Parthenope sound louder shell,
Amalfi, Ocean's proudest boast,
Show loftier hills and livelier coast,
Where Nereids hear the nightly flute,
And gather fresh such morning fruit
As hangs within their highth, and shows
Its golden gleam thro' glossy boughs.
But, with thy dark oak-woods behind,
Here stretcht against the western wind
The sails that from the Zuyderzee
Brought him who left our fathers free.
Yet (shame upon me!) I sometimes
Have sighed awhile for other climes,
Where, tho' no mariner, I too
Whistled aloft my little crew:
'Twas now to spar, 'twas now to fence,
'Twas now to fathom Shakspeare's sense,
And now to trace the hand divine
That guided Raffael's faultless line.
And then we wonder who could raise
The massy walls at which we gaze,
Where amid songs and village glee
Soars immemorial Fiesole.
At last we all in turn declare
We know not who the Cyclops were.
" But the Pelasgians! those are true? "
" I know as much of them as you."
"Pooh! nonsense! you may tell us so;
Impossible you should not know! "
Then plans, to find me out, they lay,
Which will not fail another day.
England, in all thy scenes so fair,
Thou canst not show what charm'd me there!