But the verse which follows is an admirable addition of his own.
And when its yellow lustre smiled,
O'er mountains yet untrod,
Each mother held aloft her child,
To bless the bow of God.
This finishes the picture, and makes it perfect. And Vaughan's two first lines,
Still young and fine, but what is still in view,
We slight as old and soil'd, though fresh and new,
together with his two last,
Who looks upon thee from his glorious throne,
And minds the covenant betwixt ALL and ONE,
obviously kindled Campbell's two closing stanzas—
As fresh in yon horizon dark,
As young thy beauties seem,
As when the eagle from the ark
First sported in thy beam.
For faithful to its sacred page,
Heaven still rebuilds thy span,
Nor lets the type grow pale with age
That first spoke peace to man.
A splendid improvement indeed! In short, Campbell's Rainbow (or the best part of it, from the fifth verse to the end,) is but a sort of secondary of Vaughan's, though it is not in this case, as in nature, fainter, but triumphantly brighter and more beautiful than the first.1
1 Perhaps the reader may like to see Vaughan's piece entire. Here it is.