ONE OF THE AZORES, OR WESTWARD ISLANDS[180]
Attracted to this airy steep
Above the subject hills,
Ocean, from his surrounding deep
The urn of Pico fills.
Thence gushing streams, unstinted, stray
To glad the mountain's side;
Or, winding through the vallies, gay,
Through fields, and groves, and vineyards glide.
To him the plains their verdure owe
Confessing what your smiles bestow,
Thou Peak of the Azores.
From day to day the unwearied sail
Surveys your towering cone,
And when th' adjacent prospects fail,
And neighboring isles no more they hail,
You meet the eye alone.
Twice forty miles the exploring eye
Discerns you o'er the waste,
Now, a blue turret in the sky
When not by mists embraced.
Long may you stand, the friendly mark,
To those who sail afar,
A spot that guides the wandering barque,
A second polar star.
[180] From the edition of 1815. Freneau sailed for the Madeira Islands May 12, 1803, arriving there on June 23. He was back in Charleston on August 16 following.
A BACCHANALIAN DIALOGUE
Written 1803[181]
Arrived at Madeira, the island of vines,
Where mountains and vallies abound,
Where the sun the wild juice of the cluster refines,
To gladden the magical ground:
As pensive I stray'd in her elegant shade,
Now halting and now on the move,
Old Bacchus I met, with a crown on his head,
In the darkest recess of a grove.