Rocks, waves, and winds the shattered bark delay:
Thy heart is sad, thy home is far away.
But Hope can here her moonlight vigils keep,
And sing to charm the spirit of the deep.
Swift as yon streamer lights the starry pole,
Her visions warm the watchman's pensive soul:
His native hills that rise in happier climes,
The grot that heard his song of other times,
His cottage-home, his bark of slender sail,
His glassy lake, and broomwood-blossomed vale,
Rush on his thought: he sweeps before the wind;
Treads the loved shore he sighed to leave behind;
Meets at each step a friend's familiar face,
And flies at last to Helen's long embrace;
Wipes from her cheek the rapture-speaking tear,
And clasps with many a sigh his children dear:
While, long neglected, but at length caressed,
His faithful dog salutes the smiling guest,
Points to the master's eyes (where'er they roam)
His wistful face, and whines a welcome home.
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 bannered 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 cradled on the rock;
To wake each joyless morn, and search again
The famished haunts of solitary men,
Whose race, unyielding as their native storm,
Knows not a trace of Nature but the form:
Yet, at thy call, the hardy tar pursued,
Pale, but intrepid, sad, but unsubdued;
Pierced the deep woods, and, hailing from afar
The moon's pale planet and the northern star,
Paused at each dreary cry, unheard before,
(Hyænas in the wild, and mermaids on the shore;)
Till, led by thee o'er many a cliff sublime,
He found a warmer world, a milder clime,
A home to rest, a shelter to defend,
Peace and repose, a Briton and a friend.
Congenial Hope! thy passion-kindling power
How bright, how strong, in youth's untroubled hour!
On yon proud hight, with Genius hand in hand,
I see thee light, and wave thy golden wand.
"Go, child of Heaven!" (thy winged words proclaim ;)
""Tis thine to search the boundless fields of fame.
Lo! Newton, priest of Nature, shines afar,
Scans the wide world, and numbers every star:
Wilt thou with him mysterious rites apply,
And watch the shrine with wonder-beaming eye?
Yes: thou shalt mark with magic art profound
The speed of light, the circling march of sound;
With Franklin grasp the lightning's fiery wing,
Or yield the lyre of heaven another string.
The Swedish sage admires in yonder bowers
His winged insects and his rosy flowers;
Calls from their woodland haunts the savage train
With sounding horn, and counts them on the plain:
So once, at Heaven's command, the wanderers came
To Eden's shade, and heard their various name.
Far from the world, in yon sequestered clime,
Slow pass the sons of Wisdom, more sublime:
Calm as the fields of heaven, his sapient eye
The loved Athenian lifts to realms on high, -
Admiring Plato; on his spotless page
Stamps the bright dictates of the father sage :
Shall Nature bound to earth's diurnal span
The fire of God, the immortal soul of man?'
Turn, child of Heaven, thy rapture-lightened eye
To Wisdom's walks, - the sacred Nine are nigh:
Hark! from bright spires that gild the Delphian hight,
From streams that wander in eternal light,
Ranged on their hill, Harmonia's daughters swell
The mingling tones of horn and harp and shell;
Deep from his vaults the Loxian murmurs flow,
And Pythia's awful organ peals below.
Beloved of Heaven! the smiling Muse shall shed
Her moonlight halo on thy beauteous head;
Shall swell thy heart to rapture unconfined,
And breathe a holy madness o'er thy mind.
I see thee roam her guardian power beneath,
And talk with spirits on the midnight heath;
Inquire of guilty wanderers whence they came,
And ask each blood-stained form his earthly name;
Then weave in rapid verse the deeds they tell,
And read the trembling world the tales of hell.
When Venus, throned in clouds of rosy hue,
Flings from her golden urn the vesper-dew,
And bids fond man her glimmering noon employ,
Sacred to love, and walks of tender joy,
A milder mood the goddess shall recall,
And soft as dew thy tones of music fall;
While Beauty's deeply-pictured smiles impart
A pang more dear than pleasure to the heart,
Warm as thy sighs shall flow the Lesbian strain,
And plead in Beauty's ear, nor plead in vain.
Or wilt thou Orphean hymns more sacred deem,
And steep thy song in Mercy's mellow stream;
To pensive drops the radiant eye beguile,
(For Beauty's tears are lovelier than her smile;)
On Nature's throbbing anguish pour relief,
And teach impassioned souls the joy of grief?
Yes, to thy tongue shall seraph-words be given,
And power on earth to plead the cause of heaven:
The proud, the cold, untroubled heart of stone,
That never mused on sorrow but its own,
Unlocks a generous store at thy command,
Like Horeb's rocks beneath the prophet's hand.
The living lumber of his kindred earth,
Charmed into soul, receives a second birth;
Feels thy dread power another heart afford,
Whose passion-touched harmonious strings accord,
True as the circling spheres, to Nature's plan;
And man, the brother, lives the friend of man!
Bright as the pillar rose at Heaven's command
When Israel marched along the desert land,
Blazed through the night on lonely wilds afar,
And told the path, — a never-setting star:
So, heavenly Genius, in thy course divine,
Hope is thy star; her light is ever thine."
Propitious Power! when rankling cares annoy
The sacred home of hymenean joy;
When, doomed to Poverty's sequestered dell,
The wedded pair of love and virtue dwell,
Unpitied by the world, unknown to fame,
Their woes, their wishes, and their hearts the same,
Oh, there, prophetic Hope! thy smile bestow,
And chase the pangs that worth should never know;
There, as the parent deals his scanty store
To friendless babes, and weeps to give no more,
Tell, that his manly race shall yet assuage
Their father's wrongs, and shield his later age.
What though for him no Hybla sweets distill,
Nor bloomy vines wave purple on the hill :
Tell, that when silent years have passed away,
That when his eyes grow dim, his tresses gray,
These busy hands a lovelier cot shall build,
And deck with fairer flowers his little field,
And call from heaven propitious dews to breathe
Arcadian beauty on the barren heath;
Tell, that while Love's spontaneous smile endears
The days of peace, the sabbath of his years,
Health shall prolong to many a festive hour
The social pleasures of his humble bower.
Lo! at the couch where infant beauty sleeps,
Her silent watch the mournful mother keeps;
She, while the lovely babe unconscious lies,
Smiles on her slumbering child with pensive eyes,
And weaves a song of melancholy joy :
Sleep, image of thy father, sleep, my boy!
No lingering hour of sorrow shall be thine;
No sigh that rends thy father's heart and mine:
Bright as his manly sire, the son shall be
In form and soul; but, ah! more blest than he,
Thy fame, thy worth, thy filial love, at last,
Shall soothe this aching heart for all the past;
With many a smile my solitude repay,
And chase the world's ungenerous scorn away.
And say, when, summoned from the world and thee,
I lay my head beneath the willow-tree,
Wilt thou, sweet mourner, at my stone appear,
And soothe my parted spirit lingering near?
Oh! wilt thou come at evening-hour to shed
The tears of memory o'er my narrow bed;
With aching temples on thy hand reclined,
Muse on the last farewell I leave behind;
Breathe a deep sigh to winds that murmur low,
And think on all my love and all my woe?”
So speaks affection ere the infant eye
Can look regard, or brighten in reply ;
But when the cherub lip hath learnt to claim
A mother's ear by that endearing name,
Soon as the playful innocent can prove
A tear of pity or a smile of love,
Or cons his murmuring task beneath her care,
Or lisps with holy look his evening prayer,
Or gazing, mutely pensive, sits to hear
The mournful ballad warbled in his ear,
How fondly looks admiring Hope the while
At every artless tear and every smile!
How glows the joyous parent to descry
A guileless bosom true to sympathy!
Where is the troubled heart, consigned to share
Tumultuous toils or solitary care,
Unblest by visionary thoughts that stray
To count the joys of Fortune's better day?
Lo! nature, life, and liberty relume
The dim-eyed tenant of the dungeon gloom;
A long-lost friend, or hapless child restored,
Smiles at his blazing hearth and social board;
Warm from his heart the tears of rapture flow;
And virtue triumphs o'er remembered woe.
Chide not his peace, proud Reason, nor destroy
The shadowy forms of uncreated joy,
That urge the lingering tide of life, and pour
Spontaneous slumber on his midnight-hour.
Hark! the wild maniac sings, to chide the gale
That wafts so slow her lover's distant sail;
She, sad spectatress, on the wintry shore
Watched the rude surge his shroudless corse that bore,
Knew the pale form, and, shrieking in amaze,
Clasped her cold hands, and fixed her maddening gaze:
Poor widowed wretch! 'twas there she wept in vain
Till memory fled her agonizing brain;
But Mercy gave, to charm the sense of woe,
Ideal peace that Truth could ne'er bestow:
Warm on her heart the joys of Fancy beam,
And aimless Hope delights her darkest dream.
Oft when yon moon has climbed the midnight sky,
And the lone sea-bird wakes its wildest cry,
Piled on the steep, her blazing fagots burn
To hail the bark that never can return;
And still she waits, but scarce forbears to weep
That constant love can linger on the deep.
And mark the wretch, whose wanderings never knew
The world's regard, that soothes, though half untrue;
Whose erring heart the lash of sorrow bore,
But found not pity when it erred no more.
Yon friendless man, at whose dejected eye
The unfeeling proud one looks, and passes by;
Condemned on Penury's barren path to roam,
Scorned by the world, and left without a home,
Even he, at evening, should he chance to stray
Down by the hamlet's hawthorn-scented way,
Where round the cot's romantic glade are seen
The blossomed bean-field and the sloping green,
Leans o'er its humble gate, and thinks the while, -
"Oh that for me some home like this would smile;
Some hamlet shade, to yield my sickly form
Health in the breeze, and shelter in the storm!
There should my hand no stinted boon assign
To wretched hearts with sorrows such as mine."
That generous wish can soothe unpitied care;
And Hope half mingles with the poor man's prayer.
Hope! when I mourn with sympathizing mind
The wrongs of fate, the woes of human kind,
Thy blissful omens bid my spirit see
The boundless fields of rapture yet to be;
I watch the wheels of Nature's mazy plan,
And learn the future by the past of man.
Come, bright Improvement, on the car of Time!
And rule the spacious world from clime to clime;
Thy handmaid arts shall every wild explore,
Trace every wave, and culture every shore.
On Erie's banks, where tigers steal along,
And the dread Indian chants a dismal song;
Where human fiends on midnight errands walk,
And bathe in brains the murderous tomahawk,
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