No time his midnight lamps—the stars—could dim;
His matin music was the cataract’s hymn;
His Academe the forest’s high arcade—
(To Numa thus Egeria blessed the shade;)
With kindling soul, the solitude he trod—
The temple of high thoughts—and spake with God:
Thus towered the man—amid the wide and wild—
And Nature claimed him as her noblest child.
Nurtured to peril, lo! the peril came,
To lead him on, from field to field, to fame.