So thy fair hand, enamoured Fancy! gleans The treasured pictures of a thousand scenes; Thy pencil traces on the lover’s thought Some cottage-home, from towns and toil remote, Where love and lore may claim alternate hours, With Peace embosom’d in Idalian bowers! 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 splendour 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 faggots 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 Anna’s 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![22] 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!