For him we found the melancholy lyre, The lyre responsive to each distant sigh: No grief like that which mourns departing souls Of holy, just and venerable men, Whom pitying Heav'n sends from their native skies To light our way and bring us nearer God. But come, Leander, since we know the past And present glory of this empire wide, What hinders to pervade with searching eye The mystic scenes of dark futurity? Say, shall we ask what empires yet must rise, What kingdoms, pow'rs and states where now are seen But dreary wastes and awful solitude, Where melancholy sits with eye forlorn And hopes the day when Britain's sons shall spread Dominion to the north and south and west Far from th' Atlantic to Pacific shores? A glorious theme, but how shall mortals dare To pierce the mysteries of future days, And scenes unravel only known to fate. ACASTO This might we do if warm'd by that bright coal Snatch'd from the altar of seraphic fire, Which touch'd Isaiah's lips, or if the spirit Of Jeremy and Amos, prophets old, Should fire the breast; but yet I call the muse And what we can will do. I see, I see A thousand kingdoms rais'd, cities and men Num'rous as sand upon the ocean shore; Th' Ohio then shall glide by many a town Of note: and where the Mississippi stream By forests shaded now runs weeping on, Nations shall grow and states not less in fame Than Greece and Rome of old: we too shall boast Our Alexanders, Pompeys, heroes, kings That in the womb of time yet dormant lye Waiting the joyful hour for life and light. O snatch us hence, ye muses! to those days When, through the veil of dark antiquity, Our sons shall hear of us as things remote, That blossom'd in the morn of days, alas! How could I weep that we were born so soon, In the beginning of more happy times! But yet perhaps our fame shall last unhurt. The sons of science nobly scorn to die; Immortal virtue this denies, the muse Forbids the men to slumber in the grave Who well deserve the praise that virtue gives. EUGENIO