Mark! the bright moon, thro’ azure sky,
Sails slow, in conscious majesty!
No cloud o’er all the heav’n is seen,
But, like the spirit of a dream,
When nought of earth dare intervene,
She darts around her softest beam!
It glitters on the rippling stream;
It dwells along the hillock’s side;
It sleeps upon the ocean’s tide;
It sparkles o’er the forest wide;
And every shrub, and every flower,
Owns its soft sway, and magic power:
The dew drops, on the velvet green,
Glitter beneath the radiance sheen;
Around, in wild profusion spread,
The violet droops its modest head,
The daisy rears its pensile stem,
Dressing the turf with many a gem;
A chequer’d carpet, spangled meet
For sprightly dance of fairy feet.
Titania, as in ancient days
She liv’d in Shakespeare’s magic lays,—
Might o’er the turf unearthly glance,
And lead the circles of the dance;
With Oberon in concert move,
The peerless Queen of airy love.
XX
Upon the rude rock’s barren height
Shoots the pale ray of lunar light;
And, streaming round its gloomy base,
Bright beams the murky darkness chase.—
There, the intentive eye may trace
The sparkling granite’s shining grain;
The dusky flint’s conspicuous vein;
And many a fragment, rudely rent
When thunder shook the firmament.
Let the proud sons of wealth and power
In riot spend the midnight hour;
In wine dissolve their cares away,
And fain be vicious, to be gay.
Let wealth unfold her glittering store,
An hour of peace, I value more
Than mines of India’s golden ore;—
Let all her pleasures sense display,
That hour more rapture yields than they.
In such an hour, the soul is free
From shackles of mortality;
In such an hour, in scenes like this,
Reflection opes her store of bliss,
And fancy’s bright, unclouded trance
Bids, before the enraptured eyes,
Light unearthly spirits dance,
And many a fabled form arise
In recording memory’s glance.
XXI
O’er all the landscape’s varied scene
My footsteps wander’d; up the green;
Thro’ tangled forest spreading wide;
Along the mountain’s echoing side;
Through vales where streams pellucid glide;
O’er lawns the forest groves between,
Whence, dim, the mountain’s head is seen,
Embosom’d in a misty veil,
In giant strength it views the dale;
O’er the soft landscape’s tranquil form
Frowns, midst the terrors of the storm,
Scorns the low beauties of the vale,
And bares its forehead to the gale.
Such he, whose high, ambitious mind
Sighs for an empire unconfined;
The path of blood, and danger braves,
To tyrannise a land of slaves;
Who stems, with iron nerve, the tide,
To raise his empire’s tow’ring pride;
Who scorns the humble vale of peace,
Retirement, and domestic ease;
No joy within his bosom glows,
To virtue cold as Alpine snows;
No blessing falls upon his head,
For him no fervant prayer is said;
Unknown to him the soul serene,
The smiling eye, the cheerful mein;
Peace flies his bosom, fell despair
Fixes her fiend-like impress there;—
None weep his fall, none dress his bier,
Or heave for him one sigh sincere;
Nor love, nor friendship’s soothing power
Attend his dissolution’s hour.
XXIII
The Macedonian’s restless mood
Deluged the world in kindred blood.
Not half the globe in fetters chain’d,
Could sate him, while the rest remain’d.
Unmeasured, as earth’s farthest bound,
Ambition, still new conquest found;
But still, though lord of every soil,
Enrich’d by every kingdom’s spoil,
Unknown to him the pure delight,
Of deeds approved in virtue’s sight;
Blood mark’d the progress of his fame,
And terror waits upon his name.
XXIV
The Roman, whose resistless hand
Spread war to Britain’s distant land;
Bade Rome’s brave eagles, proudly sweep
O’er every strand, o’er every deep,
And after thousand perils brav’d,
His country’s liberties enslaved:—
Count not the nations he subdued;
Count not the toils his strength withstood;
Count not his honest martial fame,
To fix a stamp to Cæsar’s name!
Mark but the moral of his end,
Beneath the poinard of his friend.