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, Shot from malignant stars to earth below; When Murder bar'd his arm, and rampant War Yok'd 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; 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, Dropp'd 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 waves' tumultuous roar, 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: Swift as yon streamer lights the starry pole, His glassy lake, and broomwood blossom'd vale, Rush on his thought; he sweeps before the wind, Treads the lov'd 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; Wipes from her cheek the rapture-speaking tear, 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, |