And yet, fair bow, no fabling dreams, But words of the Most High,
Have told why first thy robe of beams Was woven in the sky.
When o'er the green undeluged earth
Heaven's covenant thou didst shine,
How came the world's grey fathers forth
To watch thy sacred sign.
And when its yellow lustre smiled
O'er mountains yet untrod,
Each mother held aloft her child
To bless the bow of God.
Methinks, thy jubilee to keep,
The first made anthem rang
On earth delivered from the deep,
And the first poet sang.
Nor ever shall the Muse's eye
Unraptured greet thy beam:
Theme of primeval prophecy,
Be still the poet's theme!
The earth to thee her incense yields,
The lark thy welcome sings,
When glittering in the freshened fields
The snowy mushroom springs.
How glorious is thy girdle cast
O'er mountain, tower, and town,
Or mirrored in the ocean vast,
A thousand fathoms down!
As fresh in yon horizon dark,
As young thy beauties seem,
As when the eagle from the ark
First sported in thy beam.
For, faithful to its sacred page,
Heaven still rebuilds thy span,
Nor lets the type grow pale with age
That first spoke peace to man.
THE LOVE OF COUNTRY AND OF HOME.
THERE is a land, of every land the pride,
Beloved by Heaven o'er all the world beside;
Where brighter suns dispense serener light,
And milder moons emparadise the night;
A land of beauty, virtue, valour, truth,
Time-tutored age, and love-exalted youth;
The wandering mariner, whose eye explores
The wealthiest isles, the most enchanting shores,
Views not a realm so bountiful and fair,
Nor breathes the spirit of a purer air;
In every clime the magnet of his soul,
Touched by remembrance, trembles to that pole;
For in this land of Heaven's peculiar grace,
The heritage of nature's noblest race,
There is a spot of earth supremely blest,
A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest,
Where man, creation's tyrant, casts aside
His sword and sceptre, pageantry and pride,
While in his softened looks benignly blend
The sire, the son, the husband, brother, friend:
Here woman reigns; the mother, daughter, wife,
Strews with fresh flowers the narrow way of life;
In the clear heaven of her delightful eye,
An angel-guard of loves and graces lie;
Around her knees domestic duties meet,
And fire-side pleasures gambol at her feet.
"Where shall that land, that spot of earth be found?"
Art thou a man?—a patriot ?-look around;
O, thou shalt find, howe'er thy footsteps roam,
That land thy country, and that spot thy home!
On Greenland's rocks, o'er rude Kamschatka's plains, In pale Siberia's desolate domains;
When the wild hunter takes his lonely way,
Tracks through tempestuous snows his savage prey,
The reindeer's spoil, the ermine's treasure shares,
And feasts his famine on the fat of bears;
Or, wrestling with the might of raging seas,
Where round the pole the eternal billows freeze,
Plucks from their jaws the stricken whale, in vain
Plunging down headlong through the whirling main;
-His wastes of ice are lovelier in his eye
Than all the flowery vales beneath the sky,
And dearer far than Cæsar's palace-dome,
His cavern-shelter, and his cottage-home.
O'er China's garden-fields and peopled floods;
In California's pathless world of woods;
Round Andes' heights, where Winter, from his throne,
Looks down in scorn upon the summer zone;
By the gay borders of Bermuda's isles,
Where Spring with everlasting verdure smiles,
On pure Madeira's vine-robed hills of health;
In Java's swamps of pestilence and wealth;
Where Babel stood, where wolves and jackals drink,
Midst weeping willows, on Euphrates' brink;
On Carmel's crest; by Jordan's reverend stream,
Where Canaan's glories vanished like a dream ;
Where Greece, a spectre, haunts her heroes' graves,
And Rome's vast ruins darken Tiber's waves;
Where broken-hearted Switzerland bewails
Her subject mountains and dishonoured vales;
Where Albion's rocks exult amidst the sea,
Around the beauteous isle of Liberty;
-Man, through all ages of revolving time,
Unchanging man, in every varying clime,
Deems his own land of every land the pride,
Beloved by Heaven o'er all the world beside;
His home the spot of earth supremely blest,
A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest.
SWELL, Swell the shrill trumpet clear sounding afar, Our sabres flash splendour around;
For Freedom has summoned her sons to the war,
Nor Britain has shrunk from the sound.
Let plunder's vile thirst the invaders inflame;
Let slaves for their wages be bold;
Shall valour the harvest of avarice claim?
Shall Britons be bartered for gold?
No! free be our aid, independent our might,
Proud honour our guerdon alone :
Unbought be the hand that we raise in the fight,
And the sword that we brandish our own.
And all that we love to our thoughts shall succeed,
Their image each labour shall cheer;
For them we will conquer, for them we will bleed,
And our pay be a smile or a tear.
And oh! if returning triumphant we move,
Or sink on the land that we save-
Oh! blest by his country, his kindred, his love,
How vast the reward of the brave!
THE PAINTER WHO PLEASED NOBODY
AND EVERY BODY.
LEST men suspect your tale untrue,
Keep probability in view.
The traveller leaping o'er those bounds,
The credit of his book confounds.
Who with his tongue hath armies routed,
Makes even his real courage doubted;
But flattery never seems absurd;
The flattered always take your word :
Impossibilities seem just;
They take the strongest praise on trust.
Hyperboles, though ne'er so great,
Will still come short of self-conceit.
So very like a Painter drew,
That every eye the picture knew ;
He hit complexion, feature, air,
So just, the life itself was there.
No flattery with his colours laid,
To bloom restored the faded maid;
He gave each muscle all its strength;
The mouth, the chin, the nose's length.
His honest pencil touched with truth,
And marked the date of age and youth.
He lost his friends, his practice failed;
Truth should not always be revealed;
In dusty piles his pictures lay,
For no one sent the second pay.
Two bustos, fraught with every grace,
A VENUS and APOLLO's face,
He placed in view; resolved to please,
Whoever sat, he drew from these,
From these corrected every feature,
And spirited each awkward creature.
All things were set; the hour was come,
His palette ready o'er his thumb.
My lord appeared; and seated right
In proper attitude and light,
The painter looked, he sketched the piece,
Then dipt his pencil, talked of Greece,
Of TITIAN'S tints, of GUIDO's air;
"Those eyes, my Lord, the spirit there
Might well a RAPHAEL'S hand require, "To give them all the native fire;
"The features fraught with sense and wit, "You'll grant are very hard to hit ; "But yet with patience you shall view "As much as paint and art can do." "Observe the work." My Lord replied, ""Till now I thought my mouth was wide; Besides, my nose is somewhat long; "Dear Sir, for me, 'tis far too young."
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