Oh, thou bright spirit, of whose power I sing, Electric, deathless energy of mind, Harp of the soul, by genius swept, awake! Inspire my strains, and aid me to portray The base and joyless vanities which man Madly prefers to everlasting bliss!-- Come! let us mount gay Fancy's rapid car, And trace through forest and o'er mountain rude The bounding footsteps of the youthful bard, Yet new to life--a stranger to the woes His harp is doomed to mourn in plaintive tones. His ardent unsophisticated mind, On all things beautiful, delighted, dwells. Earth is to him a paradise. No cloud Floats o'er the golden promise of the morn. Hope daily weaves fresh roses for his brow, Shrouding the grim and ghastly phantom, Death, Beneath her soft and rainbow-tinted wings. Ere Care has tainted with her poisonous breath Life's opening buds, all objects wear to him A lovely aspect, and he peoples space With creatures of his own. The glorious forms Which haunt his solitude, and brightly fill Imagination's airy hall, atone For all the faults and follies of his kind. Nor marvel that he cannot comprehend The speculative aims of worldly men: Dearer to him a leaf, or bursting bud, Culled fresh from Nature's treasury, than all The golden dreams that cheat the care-worn crowd. His world is all within. He mingles not In their society; he cannot drudge To win the wealth they toil to realize. A different spirit animates his breast. Their eager calculations, hopes, and fears, Still flit before him, like dim shadows thrown By April's passing clouds upon the stream, A moment mirrored in its azure depths, Till the next sunbeam turns them into light!--
Rashly confiding, still to be deceived, Our youthful poet overleaps the bounds Of probability. He walks this earth Like an enfranchised spirit; and the storms, That darken and convulse a guilty world, Come like faint peals of thunder on his ear, Or hoarser murmurs of the mighty deep, Which heard in some dark forest's leafy shade But add a solemn grandeur to the scene.-- The genial tide of thought still swiftly flows Rejoicing onward, ere the icy breath Of sorrow falls upon the sunny fount, And chains the music of its dancing waves.-- What is the end of all his lovely dreams-- The bright fulfilment of his earthly hopes? Too often penury and dire disease, Neglect, a broken heart, an early grave!-- Oh, had he tuned his harp to truths divine, With saints and martyrs sought a heavenly crown, How had his theme immortalized his song!--