To be the theme of every hour
The heart devotes to Fancy's power,
When her soft magic fills the mind
With friends and joys we've left behind,
And joys return and friends are near,
And all are welcomed with a tear!
In the mind's purest seat to dwell,
To be remembered oft and well

By one whose heart, though vain and wild,
By passion led, by youth beguiled,
Can proudly still aspire to know
The feeling soul's divinest glow!
If thus to live in every part
Of a lone weary wanderer's heart;
If thus to be its sole employ
Can give thee one faint gleam of joy,
Believe it, Mary! oh! believe
A tongue that never can deceive,
When passion doth not first betray
And tinge the thought upon its way!
In pleasure's dream or sorrow's hour,
In crowded hall or lonely bower,
The business of my life shall be,
For ever, to remember thee!

And though that heart be dead to mine,
Since love is life and wakes not thine,
I'll take thy image as the form

Of something I should long to warm,

Which, though it yield no answering thrill, Is not less dear, is lovely still!

I'll take it, wheresoe'er I stray,

The bright, cold burthen of my way!
To keep this semblance fresh in bloom,
My heart shall be its glowing tomb,
And love shall lend his sweetest care,
With memory to embalm it there!

SONG.

TAKE back the sigh, thy lips of art
In passion's moment breathed to me;
Yet, no-it must not, will not part,
'Tis now the life-breath of my heart,
And has become too pure for thee!

Take back the kiss, that faithless sigh
With all the warmth of truth imprest;
Yet, no-the fatal kiss may lie,
Upon thy lip its sweets would die,

Or bloom to make a rival blest!

Take back the vows that, night and day,
My heart received, I thought, from thine;
Yet, no-allow them still to stay,
They might some other heart betray,

As sweetly as they've ruined mine!

A BALLAD.

THE LAKE OF THE DISMAL SWAMP.

WRITTEN AT NORFOLK IN VIRGINIA.

As he had frequently

denly disappearing from his friends, was never afterwards heard of. 'They tell of a young man who lost his mind upon the death of a girl he loved, and who, sudsaid, in his ravings, that the girl was not dead, but gone to the Dismal Swamp, it is supposed he had wandered into that dreary wilderness, and had died of hunger, or been lost in some of its 'La Poésie a ses monstres comme la Nature.'-D'Alembert.

dreadful morasses.'-Anon.

THEY made her a grave, too cold and damp

For a soul so warm and true;

And she's gone to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp,1
Where, all night long, by a fire-fly lamp,

She paddles her white canoe.

And her fire-fly lamp I soon shall see,
And her paddle I soon shall hear ;

Long and loving our life shall be,
And I'll hide the maid in a cypress tree,
When the footstep of Death is near !'

Away to the Dismal Swamp he speeds-
His path was rugged and sore,
Through tangled juniper, beds of reeds,
Through many a fen, where the serpent feeds,
And man never trod before !

And when on the earth he sunk to sleep,
If slumber his eyelids knew,

He lay where the deadly vine doth weep
Its venomous tear, and nightly steep

The flesh with blistering dew!

And near him the she-wolf stirred the brake,

And the copper-snake breathed in his ear,

middle of it (about seven miles long) is called Drummond's Pond

The Great Dismal Swamp is ten or twelve miles distant from Norfolk, and the Lake in the

Till he starting cried, from his dream awake,
'Oh! when shall I see the dusky Lake,
And the white canoe of my dear?

He saw the Lake, and a meteor bright
Quick over its surface played-

6

'Welcome,' he said, my dear-one's light!'
And the dim shore echoed, for many a night,
The name of the death-cold maid!

Till he hollowed a boat of the birchen bark,
Which carried him off from shore;
Far he followed the meteor spark,

The wind was high and the clouds were dark,
And the boat returned no more.

But oft, from the Indian hunter's camp,
This lover and maid so true

Are seen, at the hour of midnight damp,
To cross the lake by a fire-fly lamp,
And paddle their white canoe!

EPISTLE III.

TO THE MARCHIONESS DOWAGER OF D-LL.

FROM BERMUDA, JANUARY, 1804.

LADY, where'er you roam, whatever beam
Of bright creation warms your mimic dream;
Whether you trace the valley's golden meads,
Where mazy Linth his lingering current leads ;1
Enamoured catch the mellow hues that sleep,
At eve, on Meillerie's immortal steep:
Or, musing o'er the Lake, at day's decline,
Mark the last shadow on the holy shrine,"
Where, many a night, the soul of Tell complains
Of Gallia's triumph and Helvetia's chains;
Oh! lay the pencil for a moment by,
Turn from the tablet that creative eye,
And let its splendour, like the morning ray
Upon a shepherd's harp, illume my lay!

Yet, Lady! no-for song so rude as mine,
Chase not the wonders of your dream divine;
Still, radiant eye! upon the tablet dwell;
Still, rosy finger! weave your pictured spell;
And, while I sing the animated smiles
Of fairy nature in these sun-born isles,

1 Lady D., I supposed, was at this time still in Switzerland, where the powers of her pencil must have been frequently awakened.

2 The chapel of William Tell, on the Lake of Lucerne.

Oh! might the song awake some bright design,
Inspire a touch, or prompt one happy line,
Proud were my soul to see its humble thought
On painting's mirror so divinely caught,
And wondering genius, as he leaned to trace
The faint conception kindling into grace,
Might love my numbers for the spark they threw,
And bless the lay that lent a charm to you!

Have you not oft, in nightly vision, strayed
To the pure isles of ever-blooming shade,
Which bards of old, with kindly magic, placed
For happy spirits in the Atlantic waste?
There, as eternal gales, with fragrance warm,
Breathed from Elysium through each shadowy form
In eloquence of eye, and dreams of song,

They charmed their lapse of nightless hours along!
Nor yet in song that mortal ear may suit,
For every spirit was itself a lute,

Where Virtue wakened, with elysian breeze,
Pure tones of thought and mental harmonies!
Believe me, Lady, when the zephyrs bland
Floated our bark to this enchanted land,
These leafy isles upon the ocean thrown,
Like studs of emerald o'er a silver zone;
Not all the charm that ethnic fancy gave
To blessed arbours o'er the western wave,
Could wake a dream more soothing or sublime,
Of bowers ethereal and the spirit's clime!

The morn was lovely, every wave was still,
When the first perfume of a cedar-hill
Sweetly awaked us, and with smiling charms
The fairy harbour wooed us to its arms.1
Gently we stole before the languid wind,

Through plantain shades that like an awning twined,
And kissed on either side the wanton sails,
Breathing our welcome to these vernal vales;
While far reflected, o'er the wave serene,
Each wooded island sheds so soft a green,
That the enamoured keel, with whispering play,
Through liquid herbage seemed to steal its way!
Never did weary bark more sweetly glide,

Or rest its ancher in a lovelier tide!

Along the margin many a brilliant dome,
White as the palace of a Lapland gnome,

Brightened the wave; in every myrtle grove
Secluded bashful, like a shrine of love,

islets, the singular clearness of the water, and altogether the sweetest miniature of nature that harbour of St. George. The number of beautiful to sail from one cedar-grove into another, orm Nothing can be more romantic than the little gliding for ever between the islands, and seering

the animated

Play of the graceful little boats,

can be imagined.

"Twas one of those enchanting dreams,
That lull me oft, when Music seems
To pour the soul in sound along,
And turn its every sigh to song!
I thought of home, the according lays
Respired the breath of happier days;
Warmly in every rising note

I felt some dear remembrance float,
Till, led by Music's fairy chain,
I wandered back to home again!
Oh! love the song, and let it oft
Live on your lip, in warble soft!
Say that it tells you, simply well,
All I have bid its murmurs tell,
Of memory's glow, of dreams that shed
The tinge of joy when joy is fled,
And all the heart's illusive hoard
Of love renewed and friends restored!
Now, sweet, adieu-this artless air,
And a few rhymes, in transcript fair,
Are all the gifts I yet can boast
To send you from Columbia's coast;
But when the sun, with warmer smile,
Shall light me to my destined Isle.
You shall have many a cowslip-bell
Where Ariel slept, and many a shell
In which the gentle spirit drew
From honey flowers the morning dew!

TO CARA,

AFTER AN INTERVAL OF ABSENCE.

CONCEALED within the shady wood
A mother left her sleeping child,
And flew to cull her rustic food,
The fruitage of the forest wild.

But storms upon her pathway rise,

The mother roams, astray and weeping,

Far from the weak appealing cries

Of him she left so sweetly sleeping.

She hopes, she fears-a light is seen,
And gentler blows the night-wind's breath
Yet no-
-'tis gone-the storms are keen,
The baby may be chilled to death!

Perhaps his little eyes are shaded
Dim by Death's eternal chill-
And yet, perhaps, they are not faded;
Life and love may light them still.