And felt the fierce extremes of either zone: Where polar skies congeal the eternal snow, Or equinoctial suns for ever glow, 50 Smote by the freezing, or the scorching blast, 'A ship-boy on the high and giddy mast,' [1] From regions where Peruvian billows roar, To the bleak coasts of savage Labrador; From where Damascus, pride of Asian plains, Stoops her proud neck beneath tyrannic chains, To where the Isthmus, [2] laved by adverse tides, Atlantic and Pacific seas divides: But while he measured o'er the painful race In fortune's wild illimitable chase, 60 Adversity, companion of his way, Still o'er the victim hung with iron sway, Bade new distresses every instant grow, Marking each change of place with change of woe: In regions where the Almighty's chastening hand With livid pestilence afflicts the land, Or where pale famine blasts the hopeful year, Parent of want and misery severe; Or where, all-dreadful in the embattled line, The hostile ships in naming combat join, 70 Where the torn vessel wind and waves assail, Till o'er her crew distress and death prevail. Such joyless toils in early youth endured, The expanding dawn of mental day obscured, Each genial passion of the soul oppress'd, And quench'd the ardour kindling in his breast. Then censure not severe the native song, Though jarring sounds the measured verse prolong, Though terms uncouth offend the softer ear, Yet truth and human anguish deign to hear: 80 No laurel wreath these lays attempt to claim, Nor sculptured brass to tell the poet's name. And, lo! the power that wakes the eventful song Hastes hither from Lethean banks along: She sweeps the gloom, and rushing on the sight, Spreads o'er the kindling scene propitious light. In her right hand an ample roll appears, Fraught with long annals of preceding years, With every wise and noble art of man, Since first the circling hours their course began: 90 Her left a silver wand on high display'd, Whose magic touch dispels oblivion's shade: Pensive her look; on radiant wings that glow Like Juno's birds, or Iris' flaming bow, She sails; and swifter than the course of light Directs her rapid intellectual flight: The fugitive ideas she restores, And calls the wandering thought from Lethe's shores; To things long past a second date she gives, And hoary time from her fresh youth receives; 100 Congenial sister of immortal Fame, She shares her power, and Memory is her name. O first-born daughter of primeval time! By whom transmitted down in every clime The deeds of ages long elapsed are known, And blazon'd glories spread from zone to zone; Whose magic breath dispels the mental night, And o'er the obscured idea pours the light: Say on what seas, for thou alone canst tell, What dire mishap a fated ship befell, 110