| |
| O THOU, who, with thy blue cerulean blaze, | |
| Hast circled Europe’s brow with love-lorn praise; | |
| Whose magic pen its gelid lightning throws, | |
| Is now a sunbeam, now a fragrant rose. | |
| Child of the dappled spring, whose green delight, | 5 |
| Drinks, with her snow-drop lips, the dewy light. | |
| Son of the summer’s bland, prolific rays, | |
| Who sheds her loftiest treasures in thy lays; | |
| Who swells her golden lips to trump thy name, | |
| Which sinks to whispers, at thy azure fame. | 10 |
| Brown autumn nursed thee with her dulcet dews, | |
| And lurid winter rock’d thy cradled muse. | |
| Seasons and suns, and spangled systems roll, | |
| Like atoms vast, beneath thy cloud-capt soul. | |
| Time wings its panting flight in hurried chase, | 15 |
| But sinks in dew-dropt languor in the immortal race. | |
| O thou, whose soul the nooky Britain scorns; | |
| Whose white cliffs tremble, when thy genius storms. | |
| The sallow Afric, with her curled domains, | |
| And purpled Asia with her muslin plains, | 20 |
| And surgy Europe—vain—thy soul confined, | |
| Which fills all space—and e’en Matilda’s mind! | |
| Anna’s capacious mind, which all agree, | |
| Contain’d a wilderness of words in thee. | |
| More happy thou than Macedonia’s lord, | 25 |
| Who wept for worlds to feed his famish’d sword, | |
| Fatigued by attic conquest of the old, | |
| Fortune to thee a novel world unfolds. | |
| Come, mighty conqueror, thy foes disperse; | |
| Let loose thy epithets, those dogs of verse; | 30 |
| Draw forth thy gorgeous sword of damask’d rhyme, | |
| And ride triumphant through Columbia’s clime, | |
| Till sober letter’d sense shall dying smile, | |
| Before the mighty magic of thy style. | |
| What tawny tribes in dusky forest wait, | 35 |
| To grace th’ ovation of thy victor state. | |
| What ochred chiefs, vermilion’d by thy sword, | |
| Mark’d by thy epithets, shall own thee lord. | |
| The punic Creek, and nigrified Choctaw, | |
| The high boned Wabash, and bland hanging Maw; | 40 |
| Great little Billy, Piamingo brave, | |
| With pity’s dew-drops wet M’Gilvery’s grave. | |
| What sonorous streams meander through thy lays, | |
| What lakes shall bless thy rich bequest of praise, | |
| Rough Hockhocking, and gentle Chicago, | 45 |
| The twin Miamis—placid Scioto. | |
| How will Ohio roll his lordly stream, | |
| What blue mists dance upon the liquid scene, | |
| Gods! how sublime shall Della Crusca rage, | |
| When all Niagara cataracts thy page. | 50 |
| What arts, what arms, unknown to thee belong? | |
| What ruddy scalps shall deck thy sanguined song? | |
| What fumy cal’mets scent the ambient air, | |
| What love-lorn war-whoops capitals declare. | |
| Cerulean tomahawks shall grace each line, | 55 |
| And blue-eyed wampum glisten through thy rhyme. | |
| Rise, Della Crusca, prince of bards sublime, | |
| And pour on us whole cataracts of rhyme. | |
| Son of the sun, arise, whose brightest rays, | |
| All merge to tapers in thy ignite blaze. | 60 |
| Like some colossus, stride the Atlantic o’er, | |
| A leg of genius place on either shore, | |
| Extend thy red right arm to either world; | |
| Be the proud standard of thy style unfurl’d; | |
| Proclaim thy sounding page, from shore to shore, | 65 |
| And swear that sense in verse, shall be no more. | |
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