Mute the Lavrac and forlorn,

While she moults those firstling plumes.

That had skimm'd the tender Corn,

Or the Bean-field's odorous blooms:

Soon with renovated wing

Shall she dare a loftier flight, Upwards to the Day-star sing, And embathe in heavenly light..

LINES

Descriptive of feelings produced by a Visit to the place where the first nineteen years of my Life were spent, in a stormy day, after an absence of thirteen months.

Thou Ocean dark and terrible in storms!

My eye is closed upon thee, and I view
The light of other days. The sunbeams dance
Upon thy waves, the purple clouds of morn
Hang o'er thy rocks resplendent. Scenes beloved!
Scenes of my youth! within my throbbing breast
Ye have awakened rapture. Round me crowd
Tumultuous passions, all the joys and cares
Of Infancy, the glittering dreams of youth
Ambitious and energic.

Here my eyes

First trembled with the lustre of the day,

And here the gently-soothing sounds of love
First lulled my feeble spirit to repose.

Here first a mother's care awoke my sense

To mild enjoyment. Here my opening mind

First in the mingled harmony of voice
And speaking countenance, astonished read
Another's living feelings and his thoughts.
Here first I woo'd thee Nature, in the forms
Of majesty and freedom, and thy charms
Soft mingling with the sports of infancy
Its rising social passions and its wants
Intense and craving, kindled into one
Supreme emotion.

Hence awoke to life

Sublimest thoughts, a living energy

That still has warm'd my beating heart, and still

Its objects varying, has impelled me on

To various action.

Here the novel sense

Of beauty thrilling through my new-tuned frame, Called into being gentlest sympathies:

Then through the trembling moonshine of the grove

My earliest lays were wafted by the breeze.

Here first my serious spirit learnt to trace
The mystic laws, from whose high energy
The moving atoms in eternal change
Still rise to animation.

Many days

Are passed, O scene beloved! since last my eyes
Beheld the moon-beams gild thy foaming waves.
Ambitious then, confiding in her powers,

Spurning her prison, onward flew my soul
To mingle with her kindred. In the breeze
That wafts futurity upon its wings

To hear the sounds of praise.

Have those high hopes existed.

And not in vain

Not in vain
The dew of labor has oppressed my brow,
On which the rose of pleasure never glow'd;
For I have tasted of that sacred stream
Of Science, whose delicious waters flow

From Nature's bosom. I have felt the warm,

The gentle influence of congenial souls

Whose kindred hopes have cheered me. Who have taught My irritable spirit how to bear

Injustice and oppression, nor to droop

In its high flight beneath the feeble rage

Of noisy tempests, whose kind hands have given
New plumes of rapture to my drooping wing

When ruffled by their wild and angry breath.

Beloved rocks! thou Ocean, white with mist
Once more ye live upon my humid eyes,
Again ye waken in my throbbing breast
The sympathies of Nature.

Now I go

Once more to visit my remembered home,
With heart-felt rapture, there to mingle tears
Of purest joy, to feel the extatic glow
Of warm affection, and again to view
The rosy light that shone upon my youth.

K..