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Where’er I roam in this fair English land,
The vision of a Temple meets my eyes:
Modest without; within, all-glorious rise
Its love-encluster’d columns, and expand
Their slender arms. Like olive-plants they stand,
Each answ’ring each, in home’s soft sympathies,
Sisters and brothers. At the altar sighs
Parental fondness, and with anxious hand
Tenders its offering of young vows and prayers.
The same, and not the same, go where I will,
The vision beams! ten thousand shrines, all one.
Dear fertile soil! what foreign culture bears
Such fruit? And I through distant climes may run
My weary round, yet miss thy likeness still.
Oxford. November 16, 1832.