pleasures of yon’ smiling plain
Would feebly image Joy’s eternal reign.
As that bright prospect, still to beauty true,
Presents new charms at every varied view,
Here towns and waving forests rise reveal’d,
There the blue deep, and here the golden field;
Such and so boundless are the joys decreed
To those, whom Truth from all their chains has freed.
Nor time shall limit, nor dull space control
The winged motions of th’ immortal soul.
From star to star to spread her restless wing,
Learn each dread law, and trace each mighty spring;
To mix with angels, and renew the hours
Of earthly friendship in celestial bowers;
The Source of All, undazzled, to survey,
His triumphs join, and his commands obey:—
To span Futurity with raptured sight,
Age after age interminably bright,
While with one tranquil all-enlightening beam,
The past, the present, and the future gleam:—
Still, as the joyful ages run their race,
Progressive glories ripening as they pass,
With new perfections, new desires, to shine,
Her will reflected by the will divine:—
To see new suns arise, and see their flame
Lost and extinct in night, herself the same:—
Such the soul’s hopes; and such the blessings given
To Virtue’s sons,—the brightest stars of heaven!
on earth, by Heaven’s unfathom’d doom,
She breaks thro’ her dark fortune’s circling gloom,
And thro’ the dim-dissolving cloud of woe
Refulgent mounts, and gilds the world below.
Pale Envy pines, and sickens in the dust,
And gazing nations learn that Heaven is just.
the truths thy vision would relate,
And such the secret of thy doubtful fate.
God has fix’d thy future doom,
And light and transient are thy woes to come:
Those sorrows past, ev’n Earth has joys in store;
And Heaven expects thee on her happy shore.
Go—and, by chilling grief no more oppress’d,
Hold firm thy heart—to stand, is to be bless’d!”
from his sight the Seraph sped,
And all the dream in gay confusion fled.
Soft o’er the wave the summer-breezes sigh’d,
The moon play’d quivering on the restless tide.
He rose, and now with new ideas fraught,
Revolv’d the vision in his alter’d thought;
An eye of meek contrition upward cast,
And stretch’d in lonely prayer, bewail’d the past;
Traced all his years, and with a tranquil eye
Exulting scann’d his promised destiny;
Then steer’d his bark, with Providence his guide,
To realms unknown, and oceans yet untried.
TO THE COMET, 1811.
WRITTEN ON ITS APPEARANCE.