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To what pure beings, in a nobler sphere,10
She yields delight but faintly imaged here:
All that till now their rapt researches knew,
Not called in slow succession to review;
But, as a landscape meets the eye of day,
At once presented to their glad survey!

Each scene of bliss revealed, since chaos fled,
And dawning light its dazzling glories spread;
Each chain of wonders that sublimely glowed,
Since first Creation's choral anthem flowed;
Each ready flight, at Mercy's call divine,
To distant worlds that undiscovered shine;
Full on her tablet flings its living rays,
And all, combined, with blest effulgence blaze.
There thy bright train, immortal Friendship, soar;

No more to part, to mingle tears no more!
And, as the softening hand of Time endears
The joys and sorrows of our infant-years,
So there the soul, released from human strife,
Smiles at the little cares and ills of life;

Its lights and shades, its sunshine and its showers;
As at a dream that charmed her vacant hours!
Oft may the spirits of the dead descend

To watch the silent slumbers of a friend;
To hover round his evening walk unseen,
And hold sweet converse on the dusky green;
To hail the spot where first their friendship grew,
And heaven and nature opened to their view!
Oft when he trims his cheerful hearth, and sees
A smiling circle emulous to please;

There may these gentle guests delight to dwell,
And bless the scene they loved in life so well!

O thou! with whom my heart was wont to share
From Reason's dawn each pleasure and each care;
With whom, alas! I fondly hoped to know
The humble walks of happiness below;
If thy blest nature now unites above
An angel's pity with a brother's love,
Still o'er my life preserve thy mild control,
Correct my views, and elevate my soul;
Grant me thy peace and purity of mind,
Devout yet cheerful, active yet resigned;
Grant me, like thee, whose heart knew no disguise,
Whose blameless wishes never aimed to rise,
To meet the changes Time and Chance present
With modest dignity and calm content.
When thy last breath, ere Nature sunk to rest,
Thy meek submission to thy God expressed;
When thy last look, ere thought and feeling fled,
A mingled gleam of hope and triumph shed;
What to thy soul its glad assurance gave,
Its hope in death, its triumph o'er the grave?
The sweet Remembrance of unblemished youth,
The still inspiring voice of Innocence and Truth!

Hail, MEMORY, hail! in thy exhaustless mine
From age to age unnumbered treasures shine!
Thought and her shadowy brood thy call obey,
And Place and Time are subject to thy sway!
Thy pleasures most we feel when most alone;
The only pleasures we can call our own.
Lighter than air, Hope's summer-visions die,
If but a fleeting cloud obscure the sky;
If but a beam of sober Reason play,
Lo! Fancy's fairy frost-work melts away!

But can the wiles of Art, the grasp of Power, Snatch the rich relics of a well-spent hour? These, when the trembling spirit wings her flight, Pour round her path a stream of living light; And gild those pure and perfect realms of rest, Where Virtue triumphs, and her sons are blest!

NOTES.

PART I.

(1) THESE were imagined to be the departed souls of virtuous men, who, as a reward of their good deeds in the present life, were appointed after death to the pleasing office of superintending the concerns of their immediate descendants. -Melmoth.

(2) Virgil, in one of his Eclogues, describes a romantic attachment as conceived in such circumstances; and the description is so true to nature, that we must surely be indebted for it to some early recollection. "You were little when I first saw you. You were with your mother gathering fruit in our orchard, and I was your guide. I was just entering my thirteenth year, and just able to reach the boughs from the ground."

So also Zappi, an Italian poet of the last century. -"When I used to measure myself with my goat and my goat was the tallest, even then I loved Clori."

(3) I came to the place of my birth, and cried, "The friends of my youth, where are they?" And an echo answered, "Where are they?"- From an Arabic MS.

(4) When a traveller, who was surveying the ruins of Rome, expressed a desire to possess some relic of its ancient grandeur, Poussin, who attended him, stooped down, and gathering up a handful of earth shining with small grains of porphyry, "Take this home," said he, “for your cabinet; and say, boldly, Questa è Roma Antica.”

(5) Every man, like Gulliver in Lilliput, is fastened to some spot of earth, by the thousand small threads which habit and association are continually stealing over him. Of these, perhaps, one of the strongest is here alluded to.

When the Canadian Indians were once solicited to emigrate, "What!" they replied, "shall we say to the bones of our fathers, Arise, and go with us into a foreign land?"

(6) He wept; but the effort that he made to conceal his tears concurred with them to do him honor: he went to the mast-head, &c. - See Cook's First Voyage, book i. chap. 16.

Another very affecting instance of local attachment is related of his fellow-countryman Potaveri, who came to Europe with M. de Bougainville. — See Les Jardins, chant. ii.

Elle se leve sur son lict et se met à contempler la France encore, et tant qu'elle peut. -Brantôme.

(To an accidental association may be ascribed some of the noblest efforts of human genius. The historian of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire first conceived his design among the ruins of the Capitol ;* and to the tones of a Welsh harp are we indebted for the Bard of Gray.

• "It was on the 15th of October, 1764, as I sat musing there, while the bare-footed friars were singing verses in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea first started to my mind."- Memoirs of my Life.

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