From forest shades they peered, with awful dread, When, uttering flame and thunder from its side, The ocean-monster, with broad wings outspread, Came ploughing gallantly the virgin tide. Few years have pass'd, and all their forests' pride From shores and hills has vanished, with the race, Their tenants erst, from memory who have died, Like airy shapes, which eld was wont to trace, In each green thicket's depths, and lone, sequestered place. And many a gloomy tale, tradition yet Saves from oblivion, of their struggles vain, Their prowess and their wrongs, for rhymer meet, To people scenes, where still their names remain; And so began our young, delighted strain, That would evoke the plumed chieftains brave, And bid their martial hosts arise again, Where Narraganset's tides roll by their grave, And Haup's romantic steeps are piled above the wave. Friend of my youth! with thee began my song, And o'er thy bier its latest accents die; Misled in phantom-peopled realms too long,-- Though not to me the muse averse deny, Sometimes, perhaps, her visions to descry, Such thriftless pastime should with youth be o'er; And he who loved with thee his notes to try, But for thy sake, such idlesse would deplore, And swears to meditate the thankless muse no more. But, no! the freshness of the past shall still Sacred to memory's holiest musings be; When through the ideal fields of song, at will, He roved and gathered chaplets wild with thee; When, reckless of the world, alone and free, Like two proud barks, we kept our careless way, That sail by moonlight o'er the tranquil sea; Their white apparel and their streamers gay, Bright gleaming o'er the main, beneath the ghostly ray;-- And downward, far, reflected in the clear Blue depths, the eye their fairy tackling sees; So buoyant, they do seem to float in air, And silently obey the noiseless breeze; Till, all too soon, as the rude winds may please, They part for distant ports: the gales benign Swift wafting, bore, by Heaven's all-wise decrees, To its own harbour sure, where each divine And joyous vision, seen before in dreams, is thine. Muses of Helicon! melodious race Of Jove and golden-haired Mnemosyné; Whose art from memory blots each sadder trace, And drives each scowling form of grief away! Who, round the violet fount, your measures gay Once trod, and round the altar of great Jove; Whence, wrapt in silvery clouds, your nightly way Ye held, and ravishing strains of music wove, That soothed the Thunderer's soul, and filled his courts above.