"Through the dim hues of Time my vision sees / Thy lofty ______, and owns thy passion's flame"

The dedicatory "Address to Spencer" to John Walker Ord's England: A Historical Poem (published 1833-34, when the author was 22-23) is somewhat unfortunate, running into trouble before completing the second line:

Great Spirit, let me worship on my knees,
With reverent adoration, thy great —

At this point, the brain leaps ahead and supplies several possible nouns all more interesting, or at least more risque, than what the eyes actually see.* It does not help that it takes just a couple other replacements to make the entire stanza quite smutty indeed.

Or maybe this is just me.

(Not that the rest is any more fortunate: 1400-odd Spencerian stanzas of 19th-century English smugness masquerading as supra-Byronic histrionics masquerading as a history of Britain up to Shakespeare. Gods help us all, and blessed be the BACK button.)

I am, btw, startled by the spelling of the subtitle -- I had thought "an historical" standard for the time. Maybe being printed in Edinburgh** makes a difference?


* "name"

** Ord wrote this while in medical school -- or more precisely, while failing out of it because he spent too much time writing poetry.

---L.