Peace to her banish'd heart, at last, In thy dominions shall descend, And, strong as beechwood in the blast, Enduring life without a friend, The world and falsehood left behind, Thy votary shall bear elate, (Triumphant o'er opposing Fate,) Her dark inspired mind. But dost thou, Folly, mock the muse A wanderer's mountain walk to sing, Who shuns a warring world, nor wooes The vulture cover of its wing? Then fly, thou cowering, shivering thing, Back to the fostering world beguiled, To waste in self-consuming strife The loveless brotherhood of life, Reviling and reviled! Away, thou lover of the race That hither chased yon weeping deer! If nature's all majestic face More pitiless than man's appear; Or if the wild winds seem more drear Than man's cold charities below, Behold around his peopled plains, Where'er the social savage reigns, Exuberance of woe! His art and honours wouldst thou seek Emboss'd on grandeur's giant walls? Or hear his moral thunders speak Or sends his whirlwind warrants forth To rouse the slumbering fiends of war, To dye the blood-warm waves afar, And desolate the earth? From clime to clime pursue the scene, And mark in all thy spacious way, Where'er the tyrant man has been, There Peace, the cherub, cannot stay; In wilds and woodlands far away She builds her solitary bower, Where only anchorites have trod, Or friendless men, to worship God, STANZAS TO PAINTING. O THOU by whose expressive art In union with the Graces start, And sweeter by reflection please! In whose creative hand the hues Fresh from yon orient rainbow shine; I bless thee, Promethéan Muse ! And call thee brightest of the Nine! Possessing more than vocal power, Persuasive more than poet's tongue; а Whose lineage, in a raptured hour, a Does Hope her high possession meet? Sweet is the trance, the tremor sweet, But oh! thou pulse of pleasure dear, Slow throbbing, cold, I feel thee part; Lone absence plants a pang severe, Or death inflicts a keener dart. a Alluding to the well-known tradition respecting the origin of painting, that it arose from a young Corinthian female tracing the shadow of her lover's profile on the wall, as he lay asleep. VOL. II. |