III. 1. Mona, thy Druid-rites awake the dead! Rites that have chained old Ocean on his bed. Pointless falls the hero's lance. Thy magic bids the imperial eagle fly,* Hark, the bard's soul inspires the vocal string! III. 2. Lo, steel-clad War his gorgeous standard rears! And mow thro' infancy and age; Veiling from the eye of day, Penance dreams her life away; In cloistered solitude she sits and sighs, While from each shrine still, small responses rise. * See Tacitus, 1. xiv. c. 29. This remarkable event happened at the siege and sack of Jerusalem in the last year of the eleventh century. Matth. Paris, IV. 2. Hear, with what heart-felt beat, the midnight bell Beyond this nether sphere, on Rapture's wing of fire. III. 3. Lord of each pang the nerves can feel, Each fine feeling as it flows; Pure as the mountain-snows: She smiles! and where is now the cloud Grim darkness furls his leaden shroud, Shrinking from her glance in vain. Her touch unlocks the day-spring from above, And lo! it visits man with beams of light and love. WRITTEN IN A SICK CHAMBER. 1793. THERE, in that bed so closely curtained round, He stirs yet still he sleeps. May heavenly dreams Long o'er his smooth and settled pillow rise; Nor fly, till morning thro' the shutter streams, And on the hearth the glimmering rush-light dies. * K K THE Sailor sighs as sinks his native shore, Ah! now, each dear, domestic scene he knew, Recalled and cherished in a foreign clime, Charms with the magic of a moonlight-view; Its colours mellowed, not impaired, by time. |