And look, how soft in yonder radiant wave,
The dying sun prepares his golden grave!-
O great Potowmac! O you banks of shade!
You mighty scenes, in Nature's morning made,
While still, in rich magnificence of prime,
She pour'd her wonders, lavishly sublime,
Nor yet had learn'd to stoop, with humbler care,
From grand to soft, from wonderful to fair!
Say, where your towering hills, your boundless floods,
Your rich savannas and majestic woods,
Where bards should meditate and heroes rove,
And woman charm, and man deserve her love?
Oh! was a world so bright but born to grace
Its own half-organized, half-minded race
Of weak barbarians, swarming o'er its breast,
Like vermin, gender'd on the lion's crest?
Were none but brutes to call that soil their home,
Where none but demi-gods should dare to roam?
Or worse, thou mighty world! oh! doubly worse,
Did Heaven design thy lordly land to nurse
The motley dregs of every distant clime,
Each blast of anarchy and taint of crime,
Which Europe shakes from her perturbed sphere,
In full malignity to rankle here?
But hush!-observe that little mount of pines,
Where the breeze murmurs and the fire-fly shines,
There let thy fancy raise, in bold relief,
The sculptured image of that veteran chief,
Who lost the rebel's in the hero's name,
And stept o'er prostrate loyalty to fame;
Beneath whose sword Columbia's patriot train
Cast off their monarch, that their mob might reign!
How shall we rank thee upon glory's page?
Thou more than soldier and just less than sage!
Too form'd for peace to act a conqueror's part,
Too train'd in camps to learn a statesman's art,
Nature design'd thee for a hero's mould,
But, ere she cast thee, let the stuff grow cold!
While warmer souls command, nay, make their fate, Thy fate made thee and forced thee to be great. Yet Fortune, who so oft, so blindly sheds Her brightest halo round the weakest heads, Found thee undazzled, tranquil as before, Proud to be useful, scorning to be more;
Less prompt at glory's than at duty's claim,
Renown the meed, but self-applause the aim;
All thou hast been reflects less fame on thee,
Far less than all thou hast forborne to be!
Now turn thine eye where faint the moonlight falls
On yonder dome-and in those princely halls,
If thou canst hate, as, oh! that soul must hate,
Which loves the virtuous and reveres the great,
If thou canst loathe and execrate with me
That Gallic garbage of philosophy,
That nauseous slaver of these frantic times,
With which false liberty dilutes her crimes!
If thou hast got, within thy free-born breast,
One pulse, that beats more proudly than the rest,
With honest scorn for that inglorious soul,
Which creeps and winds beneath a mob's control,
Which courts the rabble's smile, the rabble's nod,
And makes, like Egypt, every beast its god!
There, in those walls-but, burning tongue, forbear!
Rank must be reverenced, e'en the rank that's there:
So here I pause-and now, my Hume! we part;
But oh! full oft, in magic dreams of heart,
Thus let us meet, and mingle converse dear
By Thames at home, or by Potowmac here!
O'er lake and marsh, through fevers and through fogs,
Midst bears and yankees, democrats and frogs,
Thy foot shall follow me, thy heart and eyes
With me shall wonder, and with me despise!
While I, as oft, in witching thought shall rove
To thee, to friendship, and that land I love,
Where, like the air that fans her fields of green,
Her freedom spreads, unfever'd and serene;
Where sovereign man can condescend to see
The throne and laws more sovereign still than he !
My love and I, the other day,
Within a myrtle arbour lay,
When near us, from a rosy bed,
A little Snake put forth its head.
"See," said the maid, with laughing eyes-
"Yonder the fatal emblem lies!
Who could expect such hidden harm
Beneath the rose's velvet charm?"
Never did moral thought occur
In more unlucky hour than this;
For oh! I just was leading her
To talk of love and think of bliss.
I rose to kill the snake, but she
In pity pray'd it might not be.
"No," said the girl-and many a spark
Flash'd from her eyelid as she said it—
"Under the rose, or in the dark,
One might, perhaps, have cause to dread it;
But when its wicked eyes appear,
And when we know for what they wink so,
One must be very simple, dear,
To let it sting one-don't
LINES WRITTEN ON LEAVING
PHILADELPHIA.
τηνδε την πολιν φίλως
Sophocl. Edip. Colon. v. 758.
ALONE by the Schuylkill a wanderer roved,
And bright were its flowery banks to his eye;
But far, very far were the friends that he loved,
And he gazed on its flowery banks with a sigh!
O Nature! though blessed and bright are thy rays,
O'er the brow of creation enchantingly thrown,
Yet faint are they all to the lustre that plays
In a smile from the heart that is dearly our own!
Nor long did the soul of the stranger remain
Unblest by the smile he had languish'd to meet; Though scarce did he hope it would soothe him again, Till the threshold of home had been kiss'd by his feet! But the lays of his boyhood had stolen to their ear, And they loved what they knew of so humble a name, And they told him, with flattery welcome and dear, That they found in his heart something sweeter than fame!
Nor did woman- -O woman! whose form and whose soul
Are the spell and the light of each path we pursue,
Whether sunn'd in the tropics, or chill'd at the pole,
If woman be there, there is happiness too!-
Nor did she her enamouring magic deny,
That magic his heart had relinquish'd so long,
Like eyes he had loved was her eloquent eye,
Like them did it soften, and weep at his song!
Oh! blest be the tear, and in memory oft
May its sparkle be shed o'er his wandering dream!
Oh! blest be that eye, and may passion as soft,
As free from a pang ever mellow its beam!
The stranger is gone-but he will not forget,
When at home he shall talk of the toil he has known, To tell, with a sigh, what endearments he met, As he stray'd by the wave of the Schuylkill alone!
THE FALL OF HEBE.
A DITHYRAMBIC ODE.
"TWAS on a day
When the immortals at their banquet lay;
The bowl
Sparkled with starry dew,
The weeping of those myriad urns of light,
Within whose orbs, the almighty Power,
At Nature's dawning hour,
Stored the rich fluid of ethereal soul!
Soft odorous clouds, that upward wing their flight
From eastern isles
(Where they have bathed them in the orient ray,
And with fine fragrance all their bosoms fill'd),
In circles flew, and, melting as they flew,
A liquid daybreak o'er the board distill'd!
All, all was luxury!
All must be luxury, where Lyæus smiles!
His locks divine
With a bright meteor-braid,
Which, like an ever-springing wreath of vine,
Shot into brilliant leafy shapes,
And o'er his brow in lambent tendrils play'd!
While 'mid the foliage hung,
Like lucid grapes,
A thousand clustering blooms of light,
Cull'd from the gardens of the galaxy!
Upon his bosom, Cytherea's head
Lay lovely, as when first the Syrens sung
Her beauty's dawn,
And all the curtains of the deep, undrawn,
Reveal'd her sleeping in its azure bed.
The captive deity
Languish'd upon her eyes and lip,
In chains of ecstacy!
Now in his arm,
In blushes she reposed,
And, while her zone resign'd its every charm, To shade his burning eyes her hand in dalliance stole. And now she raised her rosy mouth to sip The nectar'd wave
And from her eyelids, gently closed,
Shed a dissolving gleam,
Which fell, like sun-dew, in the bowl,
While her bright hair, in mazy flow
Of gold descending
Along her cheek's luxurious glow,
Waved o'er the goblet's side,
And was reflected by its crystal tide,
Like a sweet crocus flower,
Whose sunny leaves, at evening hour,
With roses of Cyrene blending,
Hang o'er the mirror of a silver stream!
The Olympian cup
Burn'd in the hands
Of dimpled Hebe, as she wing'd her feet
To drain the soul-drops at their stellar fount;
As the resplendent rill
Flamed o'er the goblet with a mantling heat,
Her graceful care
Would cool its heavenly fire
In gelid waves of snowy-feather'd air,
Such as the children of the pole respire,
In those enchanted lands,
Where life is all a spring, and north winds never blow!
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