Он thou, who lov'st to dwell
Within some far sequester'd cell,
Unknown to Folly's noisy train,
Untrod by Riot's step profane,
Meek Meditation! silent maid,
To thee my votive verse be paid;
To thee, whose mildly pleasing power
Could check wild youth's impetuous flight,
And in affection's gloomy night
Could soothe the "torturing hour,"
To thee the strains belong;
But say, what powerful spell,
What magic force of song
Can lure thy solemn steps, to my uncultured bower
By night's pale orb, beneath whose ray
With thee thy Plato oft would stray;
By the brilliant star of morn
That saw thee bend o'er Solon's urn;
By all the tears you shed
When Numa bow'd his languid head;
By the mild joys that in thy breast would swell,
When Antonine, by grateful realms adored,
Majestic Rome's immortal lord,
Would leave the toils, the pomp of state,
The crimson splendors of the victor's car,
The painful pleasures of the great,
The shouts of triumph, and the din of war,
In Tiber's hallowed groves with thee to dwell.
But ah!-on Grecian plains no more
Exists the taste for ancient lore,
For from oppression's scourge the muses fled;
And Tiber's willow'd banks along
Where Maro pour'd the classic song,
Grim superstition stalks with giant tread.
Yet can Columbia's plains afford
The magic spell, the potent word;-
A spell to charm thy sober ear,
A name to thee, to freedom dear!
By the soft sigh that stole o'er Schuylkill's wave,
When he around whose urn
Dejected nations mourn,
Immortal Franklin sunk into the grave;
By his thoughts, by thee inspired;
By his works by worlds admired;
By the tears by science shed,
O'er the patriot's dying head;
By the voice of purest fame
That gave to time his deathless name,
By these, and every powerful spell,
Oh! come meek nymph, with me to dwell.
The garland weave for Franklin's head,
Wreaths of oak from Runnymead,
Where the British barons bold
Taught their king in days of old,
To tremble at insulted Freedom's frown,
And venerate the rights her children deem'd their own. For he, like them, intrepid rose
Against insulted Freedom's foes,
Fix'd the firm barrier 'gainst oppression's plan,
And dared assert the sacred rights of man!
And in the wreath, which Freedom's hand shall twine
To deck her champion's ever honor'd shrine,
The victor's laurel shall be seen
In folds of never-dying green;
The muses too, shall bring
Each flow'ret of the spring,
Wet with the beamy tears of morn;
And there with all her tresses torn,
What time meek twilight's parting ray
Sinks lingering in nights dun embrace,
Pale-eyed Philosophy shall stray
In hopes his awful form to trace,
Hovering on some pregnant cloud,
From whence, while thunders burst aloud,
From whence, while through the trembling air
In lurid streams the lightnings glare,
His rod her head she 'll wave around,
And lead the harmless terrors to the ground.
But, should milder scenes than these
Thy sober, pensive bosom please,
We'll seek the dark embrowning wood
That frowns o'er broad Ohio's flood,
And while amid the gloom of night
No twinkling star attracts the sight;
And while beneath, the sullen tide
Shall in majestic silence glide,
We'll listen to the notes of wo,
By echo borne from plains below,
Where Genius droops his laurel'd head,
And Honor mourns a Clymer dead.
Thou sullen flood, whose dreary shore Has oft been stain'd with streams of gore, Ah! never did a meeker tear
Impearl thy banks from Virtue's eye; Ah! never did thy breezes bear
A purer breath than Clymer's sigh.
Ye plains that saw sedition wave
Her impious banners to the wind,
With you the youth has found his grave,
To you is virtue's friend consign'd;
Yet still, as each succeeding race
Through time to fate shall pass away,
Ah! never shall your sods embrace
A dearer pledge than Clymer's clay.
Oft o'er the spot that wraps his head
Shall Pity's softest tears be shed,
There Friendship's sacred form shall come
To strow with flowers his Clymer's tomb,
And while the queen of night shall shroud
Her beams behind some threatening cloud;
And while the western mountain's brow
The star of eve shall sink below;
And while the consecrated ground
Mute Melancholy stalks around,
There, Meditation, shalt thou find
A scene to suit thy sober mind,
There Fancy's hand shall form the cell
In which thou long shalt love to dwell,
And undisturbed by wild sedition's tread,
Muse o'er the virtues of the silent dead.
So very deaf, so blind a creature,
As Delia, ne'er was seen in nature.
Blind to each failing of a friend,
But ever ready to commend ;
Yet not to failings blind alone,
Blind to each beauty of her own.
So very deaf, that if around
A thousand shrill-toned tongues should sound,
With scandal tipt, good names to tear,
A single word she would not hear;
Or, if, by chance, amidst a crowd,
Some antiquated maid, so loud,
Against a youthful fair should rail,
That deafness' self must hear the tale :
Her comprehension is so slow,
A single word she would not know;
Or did she know, so weak her brain,
That scandal's tale it can't contain.
Yet these are trifles, when compared
To things that all the town has heard,
For though so stupid, deaf and blind,
The greatest charge is left behind;
The faults of nature, I'd forgive,
But she's the greatest thief alive.
In earliest youth, the cunning chit
Had pilfer'd Hermes of his wit!
Within a deep embowering wood,
A hoary hermit's cottage stood;
There as Minerva once retired,
To seek the sage herself inspired,
While all around was wrapt in night,
Save the pale student's glimmering light,
She came with worse than burglar's tread,
And filch'd the helmet from her head!
She robb'd the Graces of their charms,
And off she ran with Cupid's arms.
She stole the queen of beauty's zone,
And made Diana's smiles her own;
Nor does she ever spend a day
But what she steals some heart away;
E'en while I write this hasty line,
I feel, I feel she 's stealing mine.
Yes-stupid, deaf and blind's the creature,
And yet the greatest thief in nature.
WROTE a volume entitled Descriptive Poems, containing picturesque views of the state of New York. It was pub lished at New York, in 1802.
THE morn now glittering on the sandy brows
Of Alba's sloping city, westward spreads
A canopy of azure o'er the woods
And smiling lakes. The Mohawk's Falls we seek;
And, turning to the rich and fragrant vales
That westward wind, approach the fractured steep,
In hoarse and silver fountains, where he pours
His urn amongst the far resounding rocks.
Let Science tell the mighty cause that erst
The mountain fabric's horizontal base
Upturning, gave the roaring waters vent
Along their lacerated bed, slate-paved,
And branching to the Hudson; while the muse,
With humbler views, the cataract admires,
In streams of foam, where, glancing down
The precipice, it widens to a gulf,
And amphitheatre of quarried rocks,
Their sylvan brows with spiral cedars set,
Or coppice crown'd; and issuing through the vale,
With pleasing murmur steals along the shrubs
And shadowy elms.-Here, where the Mohawk gazed,
And wonder'd at th' abode vortiginous
Of his tremendous father, in the rocks
And flood impassable, see Art pervades
E'en Nature's ruins, with aspiring hand
Stretch'd o'er the torrent's foam, the rifted banks
Uniting, with such works as Rome, when throned
On nations, wrought. Across a giddy pile
Of wood the horseman now pursues his way,
Succeeded by the length'ning herd and swains
In slow procession, while beneath them roars
The headlong river. Leaving now the Falls,
With all their grander lineaments, behind,
We pass along the peaceful Mohawk's shore,
|