Return, sweet Peace, ethereal form benign! Fair blue-eyed seraph! balmy power divine! Descend once more! thy hallow’d blessings bring, Wave thy bright locks, and spread thy downy wing! Luxuriant plenty, laughing in thy train, Shall crown with glowing stores the desert-plain: Young smiling Hope, attendant on thy way, Shall gild thy path with mild celestial ray. Descend once more, thou daughter of the sky! Cheer every heart, and brighten every eye; Justice, thy harbinger, before thee send, Thy myrtle-sceptre o’er the globe extend: Thy cherub-look again shall soothe mankind, Thy cherub-hand the wounds of discord bind; Thy smile of heaven shall every muse inspire, To thee the bard shall strike the silver lyre. Descend once more! to bid the world rejoice-- Let nations hail thee with exulting voice, Around thy shrine with purest incense throng, Weave the fresh palm, and swell the choral song! Then shall the shepherd’s flute, the woodland reed, The martial clarion and the drum succeed; Again shall bloom Arcadia’s fairest flowers, And music warble in Idalian bowers. Where war and carnage blew the blast of death, The gale shall whisper with Favonian breath; And golden Ceres bless the festive swain, Where the wild combat redden’d o’er the plain. These are thy blessings, fair benignant maid! Return, return, in vest of light array’d! Let angel-forms and floating sylphids bear Thy car of sapphire through the realms of air: With accents milder than Æolian lays, When o’er the harp the fanning zephyr plays, Be thine to charm the raging world to rest, Diffusing round the heaven that glows within thy breast! O Thou! whose fiat lulls the storm asleep! Thou, at whose nod subsides the rolling deep! Whose awful word restrains the whirlwind’s force, And stays the thunder in its vengeful course; Fountain of life! Omnipotent Supreme! Robed in perfection! crown’d with glory’s beam! Oh! send on earth thy consecrated dove, To bear the sacred olive from above; Restore again the blest, the halcyon time, The festal harmony of nature’s prime! Bid truth and justice once again appear, And spread their sunshine o’er this mundane sphere; Bright in their path, let wreaths unfading bloom, Transcendant light their hallow’d fane illume; Bid war and anarchy for ever cease, And kindred seraphs rear the shrine of Peace; Brothers once more, let men her empire own, And realms and monarchs bend before the throne, While circling rays of angel-mercy shed Eternal haloes round her sainted head! THE DOMESTIC AFFECTIONS, AND OTHER POEMS.