Long have I wandered; the returning tide Brought back an exile to his cradle's side; And as my bark her time-worn flag unrolled, To greet the land-breeze with its faded fold, So, in remembrance of my boyhood's time, I lift these ensigns of neglected rhyme ;O more than blest, that, all my wanderings through, My anchor falls where first my pennons flew!

THE morning light, which rains its quivering beams
Wide o'er the plains, the summits, and the streams,
In one broad blaze expands its golden glow
On all that answers to its glance below;

Yet, changed on earth, each far reflected ray
Braids with fresh hues the shining brow of day;
Now, clothed in blushes by the painted flowers,
Tracks on their cheeks the rosy-fingered hours;
Now, lost in shades, whose dark entangled leaves
Drip at the noontide from their pendent eaves,
Fades into gloom, or gleams in light again
From every dew-drop on the jewelled plain.

We, like the leaf, the summit, or the wave, Reflect the light our common nature gave, But every sunbeam, falling from her throne, Wears, on our hearts, some coloring of our own; Chilled in the slave, and burning in the free, Like the sealed cavern by the sparkling sea; Lost, like the lightning in the sullen clod, Or shedding radiance, like the smiles of God; Pure, pale in Virtue, as the star above, Or quivering roseate on the leaves of Love; Glaring like noontide, where it glows upon Ambition's sands, the desert in the sun; Or soft suffusing o'er the varied scene Life's common coloring, — intellectual green.

Thus Heaven, repeating its material plan,
Arched over all the rainbow mind of man;
But he, who, blind to universal laws,
Sees but effects, unconscious of their cause,
Believes each image in itself is bright,
Not robed in drapery of reflected light,—
Is like the rustic, who, amidst his toil,
Has found some crystal in his meagre soil,
And, lost in rapture, thinks for him alone

Earth worked her wonders on the sparkling stone,

Nor dreams that Nature, with as nice a line,

Carved countless angles through the boundless mine.

Thus err the many, who, entranced to find
Unwonted lustre in some clearer mind,

Believe that Genius sets the laws at nought
Which chain the pinions of our wildest thought;
Untaught to measure, with the eye of art,
The wandering fancy or the wayward heart;
Who match the little only with the less,
And gaze in rapture at its slight excess,
Proud of a pebble, as the brightest gem
Whose light might crown an emperor's diadem.

And, most of all, the pure ethereal fire,
Which seems to radiate from the poet's lyre,
Is to the world a mystery and a charm,

An Ægis wielded on a mortal's arm,
While Reason turns her dazzled eye away,
And bows her sceptre to her subject's sway;
And thus the poet, clothed with godlike state,
Usurped his Maker's title — to create ;

He, whose thoughts differing not in shape, but dress,
What others feel, more fitly can express,

Sits like the maniac on his fancied throne,

Peeps through the bars, and calls the world his own.

There breathes no being but has some pretence To that fine instinct called poetic sense;

The rudest savage roaming through the wild,
The simplest rustic, bending o'er his child,
The infant listening to the warbling bird,
The mother smiling at its half-formed word;
The boy uncaged, who tracks the fields at large,
The girl, turned matron to her babe-like charge ;
The freeman, casting with unpurchased hand
The vote that shakes the turrets of the land;
The slave, who, slumbering on his rusted chain,
Dreams of the palm-trees on his burning plain;
The hot-cheeked reveller, tossing down the wine,
To join the chorus pealing "Auld lang syne";
The gentle maid, whose azure eye grows dim,
While Heaven is listening to her evening hymn;
The jewelled beauty, when her steps draw near
The circling dance and dazzling chandelier;
E'en trembling age, when Spring's renewing air
Waves the thin ringlets of his silvered hair;
All, all are glowing with the inward flame,
Whose wider halo wreaths the poet's name,
While, unembalmed, the silent dreamer dies,
His memory passing with his smiles and sighs!

If glorious visions, born for all mankind, The bright auroras of our twilight mind; If fancies, varying as the shapes that lie Stained on the windows of the sunset sky; If hopes, that beckon with delusive gleams, Till the eye dances in the void of dreams; If passions, following with the winds that urge Earth's wildest wanderer to her farthest verge;— If these on all some transient hours bestow Of rapture tingling with its hectic glow, Then all are poets; and, if earth had rolled Her myriad centuries, and her doom were told, Each moaning billow of her shoreless wave Would wail its requiem o'er a poet's grave!

If to embody in a breathing word

Tones that the spirit trembled when it heard;
To fix the image all unveiled and warm,
And carve in language its ethereal form,
So pure, so perfect, that the lines express
No meagre shrinking, no unlaced excess;
To feel that art, in living truth, has taught
Ourselves, reflected in the sculptured thought;-

If this alone bestow the right to claim

The deathless garland and the sacred name;