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(From The Lovers of the Deep)
CITY of gardens, verdant parks, sweet bowers; | |
| Blooming upon thy bosom, bright and fair, | |
| Wet with the dews of spring, and summer’s showers, | |
| And fanned by every breath of wandering air; | |
| Rustling the foliage of thy green groves, where | 5 |
| The bluebird’s matin wakes the smiling morn, | |
| And sparkling humming-birds of plumage rare, | |
| With tuneful pinions on the zephyrs borne, | |
| Disport the flowers among, and glitter and adorn: | |
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| Fair is thy seat, in soft recumbent rest | 10 |
| Beneath the grove-clad hills; whence morning wings | |
| The gentle breezes of the fragrant west, | |
| That kiss the surface of a thousand springs: | |
| Nature, her many-colored mantle flings | |
| Around thee, and adorns thee as a bride; | 15 |
| While polished Art his gorgeous tribute brings, | |
| And dome and spire ascending far and wide, | |
| Their pointed shadows dip in thy Ohio’s tide. | |
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| So fair in infancy,—oh, what shall be | |
| Thy blooming prime, expanding like the rose | 20 |
| In fragrant beauty; when a century | |
| Hath passed upon thy birth, and time bestows | |
| The largess of a world, that freely throws | |
| Her various tribute from remotest shores, | |
| To enrich the Western Rome: here shall repose | 25 |
| Science and art; and from time’s subtile ores— | |
| Nature’s unfolded page—knowledge enrich her stores. | |
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| Talent and Genius to thy feet shall bring | |
| Their brilliant offerings of immortal birth; | |
| Display the secrets of Pieria’s spring, | 30 |
| Castalia’s fount of melody and mirth: | |
| Beauty, and grace, and chivalry, and worth, | |
| Wait on the Queen of Arts, in her own bowers, | |
| Perfumed with all the fragrance of the earth, | |
| From blooming shrubbery, and radiant flowers; | 35 |
| And hope with rapture wed life’s calm and peaceful hours. | |
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| Oft as the spring wakes on the verdant year, | |
| And nature glows in fervid beauty dressed, | |
| The loves and graces shall commingle here, | |
| To charm the queenly City of the West; | 40 |
| Her stately youth, with noble warmth impressed, | |
| Her graceful daughters, smiling as the May,— | |
| Apollos these, and Hebes those confessed,— | |
| Bloom in her warm and fertilizing ray, | |
| While round their happy sires the cherub infants play. | 45 |
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| So sings the Muse, as she, with fancy’s eye, | |
| Scans, from imagination’s lofty height, | |
| Thy radiant beaming day,—where it doth lie | |
| In the deep future; glowing on the night | |
| From whose dark womb empires unveiled to light: | 50 |
| Mantled and diademed, and sceptred there, | |
| Thou waitest but the advent of thy flight, | |
| When, like a royal Queen, stately and fair, | |
| The City of the West ascends the regal chair. | |
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