Summer advances on her golden car,
And Spring's young graces timidly retire,
With fainting steps, before her glance of fire.
The time approaches; I must soon be far
From thee, in long, long absence and alone:
Ah! will my memory live when I am gone?
Say, Mary, wilt thou not too soon forget
The fond associate of thine earlier years,
Who shar'd with thee the little hopes and fears
Of infancy and youth? Oh! even yet
The mind recals their too long vanish'd bliss,
When will it find again such happiness?
Yet, when you roam through Tilford's sylvan bowers,
And their dear simple loveliness survey,
Think there is one, although so far away,
Who oft for thee has cull'd its sweet wild flowers,
With thee has wander'd by its streams and
Which, e'en in absence, he more dearly loves.
Yes, Mary, yes, thy thoughts will pass the sea;
And should the mournful gaze of memory look
Upon the pages of this cherish'd book,
Then read these careless lines, and muse on me ;
Let. hope a moment every fear beguile,
And, with her gentle whispers, wake a transient smile.
Oh, ever be our friendship here,
Like fam'd Bethesda's hallow'd well, Which rose the glorious temple near, Where God himself had deign'd to dwell; May nought disturb the tranquil spring, Nor break the Heaven reflected clear, Save, like the angel's troubling wing, To leave its sacred healing there.
AH! when did painter's magic pencil trace
Scenes of such gentle loveliness, combin'd
With beautiful and dread magnificence;
Where Art has lent not ev'n her simplest grace,
But Nature lingers in her early beauty,
Like Eve amid the rocks and garden bowers
Of Eden's happy vale, when innocent,
In purity and love, she calmly slept,
And the soul-breathing, godlike countenance
Of Adam, hung over her enamoured:
When Shame had never left upon the cheek
Her hot and deep'ning blush, nor dimm'd with
The eye so beautiful and bright, nor hung
Her cloud upon the clear majestic brow
Were memory extinct, a sinless child
Might deem the glorious dawn of nature glow'd Upon this cloudless sky, the earliest dew
Weigh'd down the fair heads of these tender flowers,
To the first sun, the lovely depths revealing
Of their ambrosial cells; might deem himself
The solitary inmate of the world,
And his light tread, the only footstep trac'd
Upon the printless herbage by mankind.
Mark, how in airy height pre-eminent
The spiral mountains pierce the azure sky;
And how, in dropping lightness, fleecy clouds
Around them wreathe and sever; from their
sides
How many rills of trickling silver steal,
Emerging in white lustre from the gloom
Of the dark pine woods, whose wild branches fringe
The spotless and perpetual snows above.
Mark, how the frolic sunbeams melt among
The cloudy spray of yonder stream, that pours
Its broad unbroken flood into the vale:
In hues of vivid splendor, blending there
The rich and delicate rainbow, or, distinct
With rays of golden light, the mist dividing.
Through fields of emerald verdure rolls along
The swift and rushing river, o'er whose banks
Waves many a giant birch its drooping wreaths,
From branches gleaming with a pearl-like lustre.
Here dark green beeches form a grove of shade,
Around whose polish'd trunks the eglantine
Its faintly blushing garlands lightly twines.
Art has not turn'd that lucid rivulet
In mazy windings through the velvet mead.
Here, gushing brightly in a crystal fount,
'Mid scatter'd rocks, o'ergrown with moss and flowers;
Here, smoothly flowing o'er the level green
With scarce a ripple on its glossy wave.
Art has not group'd the arching shrubs which form
That bower, o'ershaded from the mid-day sun. Mortality has never wanton'd here,
And left the relics of a short-liv'd reign.
No crumbling columns, no disjointed plinth,
Profusely strew the ground in abject grace,
Where once the palace rear'd its sculptur'd walls,
Or, in their slight and exquisite proportion,
Ionic shafts upheld the marble fane.
Here, to lascivious Gods, the innocent maid
Has never knelt, or rais'd the choral song;
Ne'er cull'd the blossoms of this vale, to waste
Their dying perfume on some heathen shrine.
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