PLEASURES OF HOPE,

PART I.

Ar summer eve, when Heaven's ethereal bow

Spans with bright arch the glittering hills below, Why to yon mountain turns the musing eye, Whose sunbright summit mingles with the sky? Why do those cliffs of shadowy tint appear

More sweet than all the landscape smiling near?—

'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,

And robes the mountain in its azure hue.

Thus, with delight we linger to survey

The promised joys of life's unmeasured way;

Thus, from afar, each dim-discovered scene

More pleasing seems than all the past hath been ;

And every form, that Fancy can repair

From dark oblivion, glows divinely there.

What potent spirit guides the raptured eye To pierce the shades of dim futurity?

Can Wisdom lend, with all her heav'nly pow'r,

The pledge of Joy's anticipated hour?

Ah, no! she darkly sees the fate of man—

Her dim horizon bounded to a span;

Or, if she hold an image to the view,

"Tis Nature pictured too severely true.

With thee, sweet HOPE! resides the heavenly

light,

That pours remotest rapture on the sight:

Thine is the charm of life's bewilder'd way,

That calls each slumbering passion into play.
Waked by thy touch, I see the sister band,
On tiptoe watching, start at thy command,

And fly where'er thy mandate bids them steer,
To Pleasure's path, or Glory's bright career.

Primeval HOPE, the Aönian Muses say, When Man and Nature mourn'd their first decay; When every form of death, and every woe,

Shot from malignant stars to earth below,

When Murder bared her arm, and rampant War
Yoked the red dragons of her iron car,

When Peace and Mercy, banish'd from the plain,
Sprung on the viewless winds to Heav'n again;
All, all forsook the friendless guilty mind,
But HOPE, the charmer, linger'd still behind.

Thus, while Elijah's burning wheels prepare From Carmel's heights to sweep the fields of air, The prophet's mantle, ere his flight began, Dropt on the world a sacred gift to man.

Auspicious HOPE! in thy sweet garden grow

Wreaths for each toil, a charm for every woe;

Won by their sweets, in Nature's languid hour,

The way-worn pilgrim seeks thy summer bower;
There, as the wild bee murmurs on the wing,

What peaceful dreams thy handmaid spirits bring!
What viewless forms th' Æolian organ play,

And sweep the furrow'd lines of anxious thought

away.

Angel of life! thy glittering wings explore

Earth's loneliest bounds, and Ocean's wildest

shore...

Lo to the wintry winds the pilot yields

His bark careering o'er unfathom'd fields;

Now on Atlantic waves he rides afar,

Where Andes, giant of the western star,

With meteor-standard to the winds unfurl'd,

Looks from his throne of clouds o'er half the world!

Now far he sweeps, where scarce a summer smiles On Behring's rocks, or Greenland's naked isles: