The sad memorial of a tale of woe!

A scene from dumb oblivion to restore,

To fame unknown, and new to epic lore!

Alas! neglected by the sacred Nine,
Their suppliant feels no genial ray divine :
Ah! will they leave Pieria's happy shore
To plough the tide where wintry tempests roar?
Or shall a youth approach their hallow'd fane,
Stranger to Phoebus, and the tuneful train?
Far from the Muses' academic grove
'Twas his the vast and trackless deep to rove;
Alternate change of climates has he known,
And felt the fierce extremes of either zone:
Where polar skies congeal the eternal snow,
Or equinoctial suns for ever glow,
Smote by the freezing or the scorching blast,
"A ship-boy on the high and giddy mast,"1
From regions where Peruvian billows roar,
To the bleak coasts of savage Labrador;
From where Damascus, pride of Asian plains!
Stoops her proud neck beneath tyrannic chains,
To where the Isthmus," laved by adverse tides,
Atlantic and Pacific seas divides.

But while he measured o'er the painful race
In fortune's wild illimitable chase,

Adversity, companion of his way,

Still o'er the victim hung with iron sway,
Bade new distresses every instant grow,

1 Shakspeare's Henry IV., act iii.

2 Darien.

Marking each change of place with change of woe:
In regions where the Almighty's chastening hand
With livid pestilence afflicts the land;

Or where pale famine blasts the hopeful year,
Parent of want and misery severe;

Or where, all-dreadful in the embattled line,
The hostile ships in flaming combat join;
Where the torn vessel wind and wave assail,
Till o'er her crew distress and death prevail-
Such joyless toil in early youth endured,

The expanding dawn of mental day obscured,
Each genial passion of the soul oppress'd,

And quench'd the ardour kindling in his breast.
Then let not censure, with malignant joy,
The harvest of his humble hope destroy!
His verse no laurel wreath attempts to claim,
Nor sculptur'd brass to tell the poet's name.
If terms uncouth and jarring phrases wound
The softer sense with inharmonious sound,
Yet here let listening sympathy prevail,

While conscious Truth unfolds her piteous tale!

And lo! the power that wakes the eventful song Hastes hither from Lethean banks along :

She sweeps the gloom, and rushing on the sight,
Spreads o'er the kindling scene propitious light.
In her right hand an ample roll appears,
Fraught with long annals of preceding years,
With every wise and noble art of man,

Since first the circling hours their course began;

Her left a silver wand on high display'd,

Whose magic touch dispels oblivion's shade.
Pensive her look; on radiant wings that glow
Like Juno's birds, or Iris' flaming bow,

She sails; and swifter than the course of light
Directs her rapid intellectual flight.

The fugitive ideas she restores,

And calls the wandering thought from Lethe's shores;

To things long past a second date she gives,

And hoary time from her fresh youth receives;
Congenial sister of immortal Fame,

She shares her power, and Memory is her name.
O first-born daughter of primeval time!
By whom transmitted down in every clime
The deeds of ages long elapsed are known,
And blazon'd glories spread from zone to zone;
Whose magic breath dispels the mental night,
And o'er the obscured idea pours the light;
Say on what seas, for thou alone canst tell,
What dire mishap a fated ship befell,

Assail'd by tempests, girt with hostile shores?—
Arise! approach! unlock thy treasured stores!
Full on my soul the dreadful scene display,
And give its latent horrors to the day.