With thee, sweet HOPE! resides the heav'nly light, That pours remotest rapture on the sight: Thine is the charm of life's bewilder'd way, Primeval Hope, the Aonian Muses say, When Man and Nature mourn'd their first decay: When every form of death, and every woe, Shot from malignant stars to earth below, When Murder bared her arm, and rampant War Yoked the red dragons of her iron car, When Peace and Mercy, banish'd from the plain, Sprung on the viewless winds to Heav'n again; All, all forsook the friendless guilty mind, Thus, while Elijah's burning wheels prepare From Carmel's height 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, What peaceful dreams thy handmaid spirits bring! What viewless forms th' Æolian organ play, And sweep the furrow'd lines of anxious thought away! Angel of life! thy glittering wings explore Earth's loneliest bounds, and Ocean's wildest shore. Lo! to the wintry winds the pilot yields His bark careering o'er unfathom'd fields; Now on Atlantic waves he rides afar, Where Andes, giant of the western star, With meteor-standard to the winds unfurl'd, Looks from his throne of clouds o'er half the world. Now far he sweeps, where scarce a summer smiles, On Behring's rocks, or Greenland's naked isles: Cold on his midnight watch the breezes blow, From wastes that slumber in eternal snow: And waft, across the wave's tumultuous roar, The wolf's long howl from Oonalaska's shore. Poor child of danger, nursling of the storm, Sad are the woes that wreck thy manly form! Rocks, waves, and winds, the shatter'd 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 : His glassy lake, and broomwood blossom'd vale, Rush on his thought; he sweeps before the wind, Treads the loved shore he sigh'd to leave behind; Meets at each step a friend's familiar face, And flies at last to Helen's long embrace; His faithful dog salutes the smiling guest, 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-cover'd fields, 10 |