LINES
WRITTEN IN A BLANK LEAF OF LA PEROUSE’S VOYAGES.

Loved Voyager! whose pages had a zest

More sweet than fiction to my wond’ring breast,

When, rapt in fancy, many a boyish day

I tracked his wanderings o’er the watery way,

Roamed round the Aleutian isles in waking dreams,

Or plucked the fleur-de-lys by Jesso’s streams—

Or gladly leaped on that far Tartar strand,

Where Europe’s anchor ne’er had bit the sand,

Where scarce a roving wild tribe crossed the plain,