Now the scenes of my childhood and dear to my heart, All pensive I visit, and sigh to depart; Their flowers seem to languish, their beauty to cease, For a stranger inhabits the mansion of peace. But hushed be the sigh that untimely complains, While Friendship and all its enchantment remains, While it blooms like the flower of a winterless clime, Untainted by chance, unabated by time. T summer eve, when Heaven's ethereal bow A spans with bright arch the glittering hills below Why to yon mountain turns the musing eye, The promised joys of life's unmeasured way; More pleasing seems than all the past hath been ; What potent spirit guides the raptured eye Can Wisdom lend, with all her heavenly power, Ah, no! she darkly sees the fate of man- Or, if she hold an image to the view, With thee, sweet HOPE ! resides the heavenly light, Primeval HOPE, the Aönian Muses say, When Peace and Mercy, banished from the plain, Thus, while Elijah's burning wheels prepare From Carmel's heights to sweep the fields of air, The prophet's mantle, ere his flight began, Dropt on the world—a sacred gift to man. Auspicious HOPE! in thy sweet garden grow Wreaths for each toil, a charm for every woe; Won by their sweets, in Nature's languid hour, The way-worn pilgrim seeks thy summer bower; There as the wild bee murmurs on the wing, Angel of life! thy glittering wings explore With meteor-standard to the winds unfurled, Looks from his throne of clouds o'er half the world! Now far he sweeps, where scarce a summer smiles, Poor child of danger, nursling of the storm, But HOPE can here her moonlight vigils keep, Rush on his thought; he sweeps before the wind, Friend of the brave! in peril's darkest hour, Intrepid Virtue looks to thee for power; To thee the heart its trembling homage yields, On stormy floods, and carnage-covered fields, When front to front the banuered hosts combine, Halt ere they close, and form the dreadful line. When all is still on Death's devoted soil, The march-worn soldier mingles for the toil; As rings his glittering tube, he lifts on high The dauntless brow, and spirit-speaking eye, Hails in his heart the triumph yet to come, And hears thy stormy music in the drum ! And such thy strength-inspiring aid that bore The hardy Byron to his native shore-In horrid climes, where Chiloe's tempests sweep Tumultuous murmurs o'er the troubled deep, "Twas his to mourn Misfortune's rudest shock, Scourged by the winds, and eradled on the rock, To wake each joyless morn, and search again The famished haunts of solitary men; Whose race, unyielding as their native storm, Know not a trace of Nature but the form; |