ISLE of the ocean!-Zion of the seas!
Child of the waves !—and nursling of the breeze !How beauteous, Albion! on thy lonely steep,
Thou risest, like a vision, in the deep!
The temple of the brave, the good, the free,
Built, by some spirit, in the circling sea!..
Still hast thou floated, like a thing of light,
Through all the darkness of the moral night;
Where Freedom sheltered, when the world was dark;
When Science left her eastern home for thee,
And nestled, like the halcyon, in the sea!
Above thee, gentlest airs, in gladness, meet,-
The billows break, in music, at thy feet,—
And heaven's purest dews, and holiest dies,
Weep on thy breast, and brighten in thy skies!
Rome of the waters!-on thy sea-girt rock,'
Far from the battle, and the tempest's shock,
Thou sittest proudly, on thine ocean throne,
A sceptred queen,-majestic and alone!
In fairy state, on emerald couch reclined,
Rocked by the waves, and cradled in the wind!—
Far o'er the deep, thy crimson flag, unfurled,
Streams, like a meteor, to the gazing world !—
With stately necks and bounding motion, ride
Thy gallant barks, like swans, upon the tide ;
Lift up their swelling bosoms to the sky,
And spread their wings, to woo the gales from high!
From clime to clime thy hardy children roam,-
The wave their world-the ship their island-home!—
Where'er the waters in their wildness roar,
Or lead their surges to the sounding shore ;
Wherever winds lift up their song on high,
Or mercy paints an Iris in the sky;
Where o'er the burning line the billows roll,
Or lash themselves to madness at the Pole!-
Through seas o'er which the spirit of the north
Marshals his clouds, and sends his icebergs forth ;
Where the dark waves, without a tempest, roar,
As avalanches thunder from the shore;
'Mid everlasting cones that rise sublime,-
The trophies and the monuments of time,—
Sparkle like sapphire temples in the sun,
And make a daylight—when the day is done;
Where, in the heaven while meteor phantoms fly,
A thousand points reflect them ere they die,
And crystal pyramids and icy spires
Receive-and then fling back-the parting fires ;
Where mountain snows, by ages piled on high,
And glacier turrets, towering to the sky,
Return, in dazzling hues, the rushing light,
And shine, like moons, along the brow of night;
Where in the zenith smiles the polar star,
While the cold sun looks dimly from afar,
Obliquely scans the drear horizon round,
And flings Periscian shadows on the ground!-
Or, where he flashes summer through the sky,
While all its blooms burst forth, beneath his eye;
Where faints the magnet 'mid the burning zone,3
Ruled by a power mysterious as its own;
Where glow the midnight waves in liquid flame,*
And heaven is gemmed with stars without a name !—
Through hurricanes by night, and calms by day,
Thy gallant children win their steady way;
Borne by the billows,-wafted by the breeze,—
Thy forests float through undiscovered seas,
Explore the mines where science hides her stores,
And waft her treasures to thy island shores !
Gem of the ocean!-empress of the sea!
My heart could weep, in fondness, over thee!
My soul looks forward, through a mist of tears,
To pierce the darkness of the coming years,
And dimly reads, amid the future gloom,
Warnings she dares not utter of thy doom!
And canst thou perish,-island of the free!
Shall ruin dare to fling her shroud o'er thee,-
Thou who dost light the nations, like a star,
In solitary grandeur, from afar!
Thou who hast been, indeed, the pillared lights
For Israel's sons, in superstition's night!
Can desolation reach thy hallowed strand,
While Shakspeare's spirit breathes along the land,
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