(For love pursues an ever devious race,

True to the winding lineaments of grace);

Yet still may HOPE her talisman employ
To snatch from Heaven anticipated joy,
And all her kindred energies impart

That burn the brightest in the purest heart.

When first the Rhodian's mimic art array'd The queen of Beauty in her Cyprian shade,

The happy master mingled on his piece

Each look that charm'd him in the fair of Greece;

To faultless Nature true, he stole a grace

From

every finer form and sweeter face;

And, as he sojourn'd on the Ægean isles,

Woo'd all their love, and treasured all their smiles

Then glow'd the tints, pure, precious, and refined, And mortal charms seem'd heavenly when combined! Love on the picture smiled! Expression pour'd Hér mingling spirit there-and Greece adored!

So thy fair hand, enamour'd Fancy! gleans

The treasured pictures of a thousand scenes;
Thy pencil traces on the lover's thought

Some cottage-home, from towns and toil remote,
Where love and lore may claim alternate hours,

With Peace embosom'd in Idalian bowers!

Remote from busy Life's bewilder'd way,

O'er all his heart shall Taste and Beauty sway!
Free on the sunny slope, or winding shore,

With hermit steps to wander and adoré !

There shall he love, when genial morn appears,

Like pensive beauty smiling in her tears,

To watch the brightening roses of the sky,

And muse on Nature with a poet's eye!—

And when the sun's last splendour lights the deep, The woods, and waves, and murmuring winds asleep;

When fairy harps th' Hesperian planet hail,

And the lone cuckoo sighs along the vale,

His path shall be where streamy mountains swell
Their shadowy grandeur o'er the narrow dell,

Where mouldering piles and forests intervene,
Mingling with darker tints the living green;

No circling hills his ravish'd eye to bound,
Heaven, Earth, and Ocean, blazing all around..

The moon is up-the watch-tower dimly burns

And down the vale his sober step returns ;

But pauses oft, as winding rocks convey

The still sweet fall of music far away;

And oft he lingers from his home a while

To watch the dying notes!—and start, and smile!

Let winter come! let polar spirits sweep

The darkening world, and tempest-troubled deep! Though boundless snows the wither'd heath deform, And the dim sun scarce wanders through the storm; Yet shall the smile of social love repay,

With mental light, the melancholy day!

And, when its short and sullen noon is o'er,

The ice-chain'd waters slumbering on the shore

How bright the faggots in his little hall

Blaze on the hearth, and warm the pictured wall!

How blest he names, in Love's familiar tone,

The kind fair friend, by Nature mark'd his own; And, in the waveless mirror of his mind,

Views the fleet years of pleasure left behind,

Since Anna's empire o'er his heart began!

Since first he call'd her his before the holy man!

Trim the gay taper in his rustic dome,

And light the wintry paradise of home;
And let the half-uncurtain'd window hail
Some way-worn man benighted in the vale!
Now, while the moaning night-wind rages high,

As sweep the shot-stars down the troubled sky, 6