Remote from busy Life's bewildered 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 adore!
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 splendor lights the deep,
The woods and waves, and murmuring winds asleep,
When fairy harps the 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 ravished 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 withered 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-chained waters slumbering on the shore,

How bright the fagots 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 marked his own;
And, in the waveless mirror of his mind,
Views the fleet years of pleasure left behind,
Since when her empire o'er his heart began,
Since first he called 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-uncurtained 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,
While fiery hosts in Heaven's wide circle play,
And bathe in lurid light the milky-way,
Safe from the storm, the meteor, and the shower,
Some pleasing page shall charm the solemn hour,-
With pathos shall command, with wit beguile,
A generous tear of anguish, or a smile,-

Thy woes, Arion, and thy simple tale,
O'er all the heart shall triumph and prevail !
Charmed as they read the verse too sadly true,
How gallant Albert, and his weary crew,
Heaved all their guns, their foundering bark to save,
And toiled, and shrieked, and perished on the wave!
Yes, at the dead of night, by Lonna's steep,
The seaman's cry was heard along the deep;
There on his funeral waters, dark and wild,
The dying father blessed his darling child ;
O, Mercy, shield her innocence! he cried,
Spent on the prayer his bursting heart, and died!

Or they will learn how generous worth sublimes
The robber Moor, and pleads for all his crimes!
How poor Amelia kissed, with many a tear,
His hand, blood-stained, but ever, ever dear!
Hung on the tortured bosom of her lord,

And wept and prayed perdition from his sword!
Nor sought in vain at that heart-piercing cry
The strings of Nature cracked with agony!

He, with delirious laugh, the dagger hurled,
And burst the ties that bound him to the world!
Turn from his dying words, that smite with steel
The shuddering thoughts, or wind them on the wheel-
Turn to the gentler melodies that suit

Thalia's harp, or Pan's Arcadian lute;

Or, down the stream of Truth's historic page,
From clime to clime descend, from age to age!

Yet there, perhaps, may darker scenes obtrude
Than Fancy fashions in her wildest mood;
There shall he pause, with horrent brow, to rate
What millions died that Cæsar might be great!
Or learn the fate that bleeding thousands bore,
Marched by their Charles to Dneiper's swampy shore;
Faint in his wounds, and shivering in the blast,
The Swedish soldier sunk and groaned his last!
File after file the stormy showers benumb,
Freeze every standard-sheet, and hush the drum!
Horseman and horse confessed the bitter pang,
And arms and warriors fell with hollow clang!
Yet, ere he sunk in Nature's last repose,
Ere life's warm torrent to the fountain froze,
The dying man to Sweden turned his eye,
Thought of his home, and closed it with a sigh;

Imperial Pride looked sullen on his plight,
And Charles beheld nor shuddered at the sight!
Above, below, in Ocean, Earth, and Sky,

Thy fairy worlds, Imagination, lie,

And HOPE attends, companion of the way,
Thy dream by night, thy visions of the day!
In yonder pensile orb, and every sphere
That gems the starry girdle of the year-
In those unmeasured worlds, she bids thee tell,
Pure from their God, created millions dwell,
Whose names and natures, unrevealed below,
We yet shall learn, and wonder as we know;
For, as Iona's saint, a giant form,
Throned on her towers, conversing with the storm
(When o'er each Runic altar, weed-entwined,
The vesper-clock tolls mournful to the wind),
Counts every wave-worn isle, and mountain hoar,
From Kilda to the green Ierne's shore;
So, when thy pure and renovated mind
This perishable dust hath left behind,
Thy seraph eye shall count the starry train,
Like distant isles embosomed in the main;
Rapt to the shrine where motion first began,
And light and life in mingling torrent ran;
From whence each bright rotundity was hurled,
The throne of God-the centre of the world!
O, vainly wise, the moral Muse hath sung
That suasive HOPE hath but a Siren tongue!
True; she may sport with life's untutored day,
Nor heed the solace of its last decay,
The guileless heart her happy mansion spurn,
And part, like Ajut never to return!

But yet, methinks, when Wisdom shall assuage
The grief and passions of our greener age,
Though dull the close of life, and far away
Each flower that hailed the dawning of the day;
Yet o'er her lovely hopes, that once were dear,
The time-taught spirit, pensive, not severe,
With milder griefs her aged eye shall fill,

And weep their falsehood, though she loves them still!
Thus, with forgiving tears, and reconciled,
The King of Judah mourned his rebel child!
Musing on days when yet the guiltless boy
Smiled on his sire, and filled his heart with joy;
My Absalom! the voice of Nature cried,
O, that for thee thy father could have died!
For bloody was the deed, and rashly done,
That slew my Absalom! my son!-my son !
Unfading HOPE! when life's last embers burn,
When soul to soul and dust to dust return,
Heaven to thy charge resigns the awful hour!
O, then thy kingdom comes! Immortal Power!
What though each spark of earth-born rapture fly
The quivering lip, pale cheek, and closing eye!
Bright to the soul thy seraph hands convey
The morning dream of life's eternal day -
Then, then, the triumph and the trance begin,
And all the phoenix spirit burns within!

O, deep-enchanting prelude to repose,
The dawn of bliss, the twilight of our woes!
Yet half I hear the panting spirit sigh,
It is a dread and awful thing to die!
Mysterious worlds, untravelled by the sun!
Where Time's far-wandering tide has never run,