Mine, to snuff up the pure ambrosial breeze, Which bears aloft the rose-bound car of morn, And mark his early flight
The rustling skylark wing.
And thou, Hygeia, shalt my steps attend,
Thou, whom distracted, I so lately woed,
As on my restless bed
Slow past the tedious night;
And slowly, by the taper's sickly gleam
Drew my dull curtain; and with anxious eye Strove through the veil of night
To mark the tardy morn.
Thou, Health, shalt bless me in my early walk,
As o'er the upland slope I brush the dew,
And feel the genial thrill
Dance in my lighten'd veins.
Star of the morning! these, thy joys I'll share, As rove my pilgrim feet the sylvan haunts;
While to thy blushing shrine
Due orisons shall rise.
THE HERMIT OF THE PACIFIC,
THE HORRORS OF UTTER SOLITUDE.
OH! who can paint the unspeakable dismay
Of utter Solitude, shut out from all
Of social intercourse. Oh! who can say
What haggard horrors hold in shuddering thrall
Him, who by some Carvaggian waterfall
A shipwreck'd man hath scoop'd his desert cave,
Where Desolation, in her giant pall,
Sits frowning on the ever-falling wave,
That wooes the wretch to dig, by her loud shore, his
Thou youthful pilgrim, whose untoward feet,
Too early have been torn in life's rough way,
Thou, who endow'd with Fancy's holiest heat
Seest dark Misfortune cloud thy morning ray:
Though doom'd in penury to pine thy day,
O seek not, seek not in the glooms to shroud
Of waste, or wilderness — a cast-away
Where noise intrudes not, save when in the cloud, Riding sublime, the storm roars fearfully, and loud.
Though man to man be as the ocean shark,
Reckless, and unrelentingly severe;
Though friendship's cloak must veil the purpose dark,
While the red poniard glimmers in the rear,
Yet, is society most passing dear.
Though mix'd with clouds its sunshine gleams refin'd Will through the glooms most pleasantly appear, And soothe thee, when thy melancholy mind Must ask for comfort else of the loud pitiless wind.
Yet is it distant from the muse's theme
To bid thee fly the rural covert still,
And plunge impetuous in the busy stream,
Of crowds to take of ** joys thy fill.
Ah! no, she woes thee to attune thy quill
In some low village's remote recess,
Where thou may'st learn - O enviable skill,
To heal the sick, and soothe the comfortless,
To give, and to receive - be blessed, and to bless.
God unto men hath different powers assign'd
There be, who love the city's dull turmoil;
There be, who proud of an ambitious mind
From lonely quiet's hermit-walks recoil :
Leave thou these insects to their grov❜lling toil -
Thou, whom retired leisure best can please;
For thee, the hazle copse's verdant aisle,
And summer bow'r, befitting studious ease,
Prepare a keener bliss than they shall ever seize.
Lo, the grey morning climbs the eastern tow'r,
The dew-drop glistening in her op'ning eye
Now on the upland lawns salute the hour
That wakes the warbling woods to melody;
There sauntering on the style, embower'd high
With fragrant hawthorn, and the gadding briar,
Pore on thy book, or cast by fits thine eye
Where far below, hill, dale, and village spire,
And brook, and mead, and wood, far from the sight retire.
But what are these, forsaken and forlorn
'Tis animation breathes the subtle spell
Hark! from the echoing wood the mellow horn
Winds round from hill to hill, with distant swell;
The peasant's matin rises from the dell ;
The heavy waggon creaks upon its way,
While tinkling soft the silver-tuning bell
Floats on the gale, or dies by fits away
From the sweet straw-roof'd grange, deep buried from the day.
Man was not made to pine in solitude,
Ensepulchred, and far from converse placed,
Not for himself alone, untamed and rude,
To live the Bittern of the desert waste;
It is not his (by manlier virtues grac'd)
To pore upon the noontide brook, and sigh,
And weep for aye o'er sorrow uneffaced;
Him social duties call the tear to dry,
And wake the nobler powers of usefulness to ply.
The savage broods that in the forest shroud,
The Pard and Lion mingle with their kind;
And, oh, shall man, with nobler pow'rs endow'd,
Shall he, to nature's strongest impulse blind,
Bury in shades his proud immortal mind? -
Like the sweet flow'r, that on some steep rock thrown,
Blossoms forlorn, rock'd by the mountain wind;
A little while it decks the rugged stone,
Then, withering, fades away, unnoticed and unknown!
For ye who, fill'd with fancy's wildest dreams,
Run from the imperious voice of human pride,
And shrinking quick from woe's unheeded screams,
Long in some desert-cell your heads to hide,
Where you may muse from morn to eventide,
Free from the taunts of contumely and scorn,
From sights of woe - the pow'r to soothe denied,
Attend the song which in life's early morn
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