| |
| WHILE others chant of gay Elysian scenes, | |
| Of balmy zephyrs, and of flow’ry plains, | |
| My song more happy speaks a greater name, | |
| Feels higher motives and a nobler flame. | |
| For thee, O R—, the muse attunes her strings, | 5 |
| And mounts sublime above inferior things. | |
| |
| I sing not now of green embow’ring woods, | |
| I sing not now the daughters of the floods, | |
| I sing not of the storms o’er ocean driv’n, | |
| And how they howl’d along the waste of heav’n, | 10 |
| But I to R— would paint the British shore, | |
| And vast Atlantic, not untry’d before: | |
| Thy life impair’d commands thee to arise, | |
| Leave these bleak regions, and inclement skies, | |
| Where chilling winds return the winter past, | 15 |
| And nature shudders at the furious blast. | |
| |
| O thou stupendous, earth-enclosing main | |
| Exert thy wonders to the world again! | |
| If ere thy pow’r prolong’d the fleeting breath, | |
| Turn’d back the shafts, and mock’d the gates of death, | 20 |
| If ere thine air dispens’d an healing pow’r, | |
| Or snatch’d the victim from the fatal hour, | |
| This equal case demands thine equal care, | |
| And equal wonders may this patient share. | |
| But unavailing, frantic is the dream | 25 |
| To hope thine aid without the aid of him | |
| Who gave thee birth, and taught thee where to flow, | |
| And in thy waves his various blessings show. | |
| |
| May R— return to view his native shore | |
| Replete with vigour not his own before, | 30 |
| Then shall we see with pleasure and surprize, | |
| And own thy work, great Ruler of the skies! | |
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