Thy wing high-hovering spread; and to the gale,
The boreal fpirit breathing liberal round
From echoing hill to hill, the lyre attune
With answering cadence free, as best beseems
The tragic theme my plaintive verse unfolds.
Here, good Aurelius-and a scene more wild
The world around, or deeper folitude,
Affliction could not find-Aurelius here,
By fate unequal and the crime of war
Expell'd his native home, the sacred vale
That faw him blest, now wretched and unknown,
Wore out the flow remains of setting life
In bitterness of thought: and with the surge,
And with the founding storm, his murmur'd moan,
Would often mix-Oft as remembrance fad
Th' unhappy past recall'd; a faithful wife,
Whom Love first chose, whom Reason long endear'd, 65
His foul's companion and his fofter friend;
With one fair daughter, in her rosy prime,
Her dawn of opening charms, defenceless left
Within a tyrant's grasp! his foe-profess'd,
By civil madness, by intemperate zeal
For differing rites, embitter'd into hate,
And cruelty remorseless!-Thus he liv'd:
If this was life, to load the blast with sighs;
Hung o'er its edge, to swell the flood with tears,
At midnight hour: for midnight frequent heard
The lonely mourner, defolate of heart,
Pour all the husband, all the father forth
In unavailing anguish; stretch'd along
The naked beach; or shivering on the clift,
Smote with the wintery pole in bitter storm,
Hail, snow, and shower, dark-drifting round his head,
Such were his hours; till Time, the wretch's friend,
Life's great physician, skill'd alone to close,
Where forrow long has wak'd, the weeping eye,
And from the brain, with baleful vapours black, 85
Each fullen spectre chace, his balm at length,
Lenient of pain, through every fever'd pulse
With gentleft hand infus'd, A penfive calm
Arofe, but unassur'd: as, after winds
Of ruffling wing, the sea subsiding flow
Still trembles from the storm. Now Reason first,
Her throne resuming, bid Devotion raise
To heaven his eye; and through the turbid mist,
By sense dark-drawn between, adoring own,
Sole arbiter of fate, one Cause supreme,
All-just, all-wife, who bids what still is beft,
In cloud or fun-shine; whose severeft hand
Wounds but to heal, and chastens to amend.
Thus, in his bosom, every weak excess,
The rage of grief, the fellness of revenge,
To healthful measure temper'd and reduc'd
By Virtue's hand; and in her brightening beam
Each error clear'd away, as fen-born fogs
Before th' afcending fun; through faith he lives
Beyond Time's bounded continent, the walks
Of Sin and Death. Anticipating heaven
In pious hope, he feems already there,
Safe on her sacred shore; and fees beyond,
In radiant view, the world of light and love,
Where Peace délights to dwell; where one fair morn
Still orient smiles, and one diffusive spring,
That fears no storm and shall no winter know,
Th' immortal year empurples. If a figh
Yet murmurs from his breast; 'tis for the pangs
Those dearest names, a wife, a child must feel, 115
Still fuffering in his fate: 'tis for a foe,
Who, deaf himself to mercy, may of heaven
That mercy, when most wanted, ask in vain.
The fun, now station'd with the lucid Twins,
O'er every fouthern clime had pour'd profuse
The rofy year; and in each pleasing hue,
That greens the leaf, or through the bloffsom glows
With florid light, his fairest month array'd:
While Zephyre, while the filver-footed dews,
Her soft attendants, wide o'er field and grove
Fesh spirit breathe, and shed perfuming balm.
Nor here, in this chill region, on the brow
Of winter's waste dominion, is unfelt
The ray ethereal, or unhail'd the rife
Of her mild reign. From warbling vale and hill, 130
With wild-thyme flowering, betony, and balm,
Blue lavender and carmel's spicy root,
Song, fragrance, health, ambrofiate every breeze,
Line 132. The root of this plant, otherwise named "argatilis "sylvaticus," is aromatic; and by the natives reckoned cordial to the stomach. See Martin's Western Isles of Scotland, p. 180.
But, high above, the season full exerts
Its vernal force in yonder peopled rocks,
To whose wild folitude, from worlds unknown,
The birds of passage tranfmigrating come,
Unnumber'd colonies of foreign wing,
At Nature's fummons their aëreal state
Annual to found; and in bold voyage steer,
O'er this wide ocean, through yon pathless sky,
One certain flight to one appointed shore:
By heaven's directive spirit, here to raise
Their temporary realm; and form secure,
Where food awaits them copious from the wave,
And shelter from the rock, their nuptial leagues :
Each tribe apart, and all on tasks of love,
To hatch the pregnant egg, to rear and guard
Their helpless infants, pioufly intent.
Led by the day abroad, with lonely step,
And ruminating sweet and bitter thought,.
Aurelius, from the western bay, his eye
Now rais'd to this amusive scene in air,
With wonder mark'd; now cast with level ray
Wide o'er the moving wilderness of waves,
From pole to pole through boundless space diffus'd,
Magnificently dreadful! where, at large,
Leviathan, with each inferior name
Of fea-born kinds, ten thousand thousand tribes,
Finds endless range for pasture and for sport,
Amaz'd he gazes, and adoring owns
The hand Almighty, who its channel'd bed
Immeafurable funk, and pour'd abroad,
Fenc'd with eternal mounds, the fluid sphere;
With every wind to waft large commerce on,
Join pole to pole, consociate fever'd worlds,
And link in bonds of intercourse and love
Earth univerfal family. Now rofe
Sweet evening's folemn hour. The fun declin'd
Hung golden o'er this nether firmament;
Whose broad cerulean mirror, calmly bright,
Gave back his beamy visage to the sky
With splendor undiminish'd; and each cloud,
White, azure, purple, glowing round his throne
In fair aëreal landscape. Here, alone
On earth's remotest verge, Aurelius breath'd
The healthful gale, and felt the smiling scene
With awe-mix'd pleasure, musing as he hung
In filence o'er the billows hush'd beneath.
When lo! a found, amid the wave-worn rocks,
Deaf-murmuring rose, and plaintive roll'd along
From cliff to cavern: as the breath of winds,
At twilight hour, remote and hollow heard
Through wintery pines, high-waving o'er the steep
Of sky-crown'd Apenine. The Sea-pye ceas'd
At once to warble. Screaming, from his nest
The Fulmar foar'd, and shot a westward flight
From shore to sea. On came, before her hour,
Invading night, and hung the troubled sky
With fearful blackness round*. Sad ocean's face
A curling undulation shivery swept
From wave to wave: and now impetuous rose,
* See Martin's voyage to St. Kilda, p. 58.
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