But erring man must blush to think,
Like thee, again the soul may sink!
O Virtue! when thy clime I seek,
Let not my spirit's flight be weak :
Let me not, like this feeble thing,
With brine still dropping from its wing,
Just sparkle in the solar glow,
And plunge again to depths below;
But when I leave the grosser throng,
With whom my soul hath dwelt so long,
Let me, in that aspiring day,
Cast every lingering stain away,
And, panting for thy purer air,
Fly up at once and fix me there!
FROM NORFOLK, IN VIRGINIA, NOVEMBER 1803.
IN days, my Kate, when life was new,
When lull'd with innocence and you,
I heard, in home's beloved shade,
The din the world at distance made;
When every night my weary head
Sunk on its own unthorned bed,
And, mild as evening's matron hour
Looks on the faintly-shutting flower,
A mother saw our eyelids close,
And bless'd them into pure repose !
Then, haply if a week, a day,
I linger'd from my home away,
How long the little absence seem'd!
How bright the look of welcome beam'd,
As mute you heard, with eager smile,
My tales of all that pass'd the while!
Yet now, my Kate, a gloomy sea
Rolls wide between that home and me;
The moon may thrice be born and die,
Ere even your seal can reach mine eye;
And oh! even then, that darling seal
(Upon whose print, I used to feel
The breath of home, the cordial air
Of loved lips, still freshly there!)
Must come, alas! through every fate
Of time and distance, cold and late,
When the dear hand, whose touches fill'd
The leaf with sweetness, may be chill'd!
But hence that gloomy thought! at last,
Beloved Kate! the waves are past:
I tread on earth securely now,
And the green cedar's living bough
Breathes more refreshment to my eyes
Than could a Claude's divinest dies!
At length I touch the happy sphere
To liberty and virtue dear,
Where man looks up, and proud to claim
His rank within the social frame,
Sees a grand system round him roll,
Himself its centre, sun and soul!
Far from the shocks of Europe; far
From every wild, elliptic star
That, shooting with a devious fire,
Kindled by Heaven's avenging ire,
So oft hath into chaos hurl'd
The systems of the ancient world!
The warrior here, in arms no more,
Thinks of the toil, the conflict o'er,
And glorying in the rights they won
For hearth and altar, sire and son,
Smiles on the dusky webs that hide
His sleeping sword's remember'd pride!
While peace, with sunny cheeks of toil,
Walks o'er the free, unlorded soil,
Effacing with her splendid share
The drops that war had sprinkled there!
Thrice happy land! where he who flies
From the dark ills of other skies,
From scorn, or want's unnerving woes,
May shelter him in proud repose!
Hope sings along the yellow sand
His welcome to a patriot land;
The mighty wood, with pomp, receives
The stranger, in its world of leaves,
Which soon their barren glory yield
To the warm shed and cultured field;
And he, who came, of all bereft,
To whom malignant fate had left
Nor home nor friends nor country dear,
Finds home and friends and country here!
Such is the picture, warmly such, That long the spell of fancy's touch
Hath painted to my sanguine eye
Of man's new world of liberty!
Oh! ask me not if truth will seal
The reveries of fancy's zeal,
If yet my charmed eyes behold
These features of an age of gold-
No-yet, alas! no gleaming trace!
Never did youth, who loved a face
From portrait's rosy, flattering art,
Recoil with more regret of heart,
To find an owlet eye of gray,
Where painting pour'd the sapphire's ray,
Than I have felt, indignant felt,
To think the glorious dreams should melt,
Which oft in boyhood's witching time
Have rapt me to this wondrous clime!
But, courage yet, my wavering heart!
Blame not the temple's meanest part
Till you have traced the fabric o'er.
As yet we have beheld no more
Than just the porch to freedom's fane,
And though a sable drop may stain
The vestibule, 'tis impious sin
To doubt there's holiness within!
So here I pause-and now, my Kate,
To you (whose simplest ringlet's fate
Can claim more interest in my soul
Than all the powers from pole to pole)
One word at parting; in the tone
Most sweet to you, and most my own.
The simple notes I send you here, *
Though rude and wild, would still be dear,
If you but knew the trance of thought,
In which my mind the murmurs caught.
'Twas one of those enchanting dreams
That lull me oft, when music seems
To pour the soul in sound along,
And turn its every sigh to song!
I thought of home, the according lays
Respired the breath of happier days;
Warmly in every rising note
I felt some dear remembrance float,
Till, led by music's fairy chain,
I wander'd back to home again!
Oh! love the song, and let it oft
Live on your lip, in warble soft!
* A trifling attempt at musical composition accompanied this epistle.
Say that it tells you, simply well,
All I have bid its murmurs tell,
Of memory's glow, of dreams that shed
The tinge of joy when joy is fled,
And all the heart's illusive hoard
Of love renew'd and friends restored!
Now, sweet, adieu !-this artless air,
And a few rhymes in transcript fair
Are all the gifts I yet can boast
To send you from Columbia's coast;
But when the sun, with warmer smile,
Shall light me to my destined isle,
You shall have many a cowslip bell
Where Ariel slept, and many a shell
In which the gentle spirit drew
From honey flowers the morning dew!
THE LAKE OF THE DISMAL SWAMP.
WRITTEN AT NORFOLK, IN VIRGINIA.
"They tell of a young man who lost his mind upon the death of a girl he loved, and who, suddenly disappearing from his friends, was never afterwards heard of. As he had frequently said in his ravings, that the girl was not dead, but gone to the Dismal Swamp, it is supposed he had wandered into that dreary wilderness, and had died of hunger, or been lost in some of its dreadful morasses."-Anon.
"La poesie a ses monstres comme la nature."-D'Alembert.
"THEY made her a grave too cold and damp
For a soul so warm and true;
And she's gone to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp,+
Where, all night long, by a fire-fly lamp,
She paddles her white canoe.
"And her fire-fly lamp I soon shall see,
And her paddle I soon shall hear;
Long and loving our life shall be,
And I'll hide the maid in a cypress-tree,
When the footstep of death is near!"
Away to the Dismal Swamp he speeds-
His path was rugged and sore,
The Great Dismal Swamp is ten or twelve miles distant from Norfolk and the lake in the middle of it (about seven miles long) is called Drum mond's Pond.
Through tangled juniper, beds of reeds,
Through many a fen where the serpent feeds,
And man never trod before!
And when on the earth he sunk to sleep,
If slumber his eyelids knew,
He lay where the deadly vine doth weep
Its venomous tear and nightly steep
The flesh with blistering dew!
And near him the she-wolf stirr'd the brake,
And the copper-snake breathed in his ear,
Till he starting cried, from his dream awake,
"Oh! when shall I see the dusky Lake,
And the white canoe of my dear?"
He saw the Lake, and a meteor bright
Quick over its surface play'd-
"Welcome," he said, "my dear one's light!"
And the dim shore echoed for many a night
The name of the death-cold maid!
Till he hollow'd a boat of the birchen bark,
Which carried him off from shore;
Far he follow'd the meteor spark,
The wind was high and the clouds were dark,
And the boat return'd no more.
But oft, from the Indian hunter's camp,
This lover and maid so true
Are seen at the hour of midnight damp,
To cross the Lake by a fire-fly lamp,
And paddle their white canoe!
TO THE MARCHIONESS DOWAGER OF DONEGALL.
FROM BERMUDA, JANUARY 1804.
LADY! where'er you roam, whatever beam
Of bright creation warms your mimic dream;
Whether you trace the valley's golden meads,
Where mazy Linth his lingering current leads;
Enamour'd catch the mellow hues that sleep
At eve on Meillerie's immortal steep;
Or musing o'er the Lake, at day's decline,
Mark the last shadow on the holy shrine,+
*Lady D., I supposed, was at this time still in Switzerland.
†The chapel of William Tell, on the Lake of Lucerne.
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