INTRODUCTORY EPISTLE
TO PART THIRD.
TO MR. --- ---.
September 7th, 1817.
The bark is bounding, with her canvass wide,
Where gallant Hudson pours his full, deep tide;
Through scenes still varying, and through regions blest,
Where art smiles loveliest, nature's reign confest.
With eye untiring, still absorpt, I mark
The yellow meadow and the forest dark;
The serried rocks, the cedars never sere,
The fisher's cot, that tells that man is here;
The darkening mountains' far extended sweep,
Heav'd in mild majesty each rising steep;
Or frowning, in their shadowy honours clad,
Or with each tall head in the day-beam glad,
While, far below, their girdle's dusky fold
Shows the grew clouds in billowing warfare roll'd.
Where, if the mellow horn the silence breaks,
Wild echo, with her hundred voices, wakes;
Or all is still, unless some tinkling bell
The giant mountain's simple tenants tell.
A deeper hum the listening ear invades,
And cities rise amid the frowning shades;
The cedars quit the deep descent's broad span,
That shines and gladdens with the haunts of man.
Lo! where, through saffron bright and purple deep,
The eternal orb descends the gorgeous steep—
Flings o'er yon Andean brethren's fading pride,
The dazzling radiance of his ruby tide,
By the bright blaze of lengthen'd glory spread,
Defining each blue mountain's waving head,
That else, commingling with the tints profound,
Had shar'd with heaven the shadowy arch around.
Such flame to Guebre had reveal'd the flood
That fills the fiery palace of his god;
Too bright for ken—its lustre unrestrain'd,
As if yon jewel of the heavens disdain'd
O'er other steeps to see his flag unfurl'd,
Than those whose giant limbs repose o'er half the world!
Each fleecy cloud, as fast the monarch fled,
With roseate lustre look'd towards his bed;
They linger still, till darkness wraps the wave,
Like hopes whose radiance trembles on the grave.
Majestic, beautiful! my native land!
How wildly fair! how nobly, darkly grand!
Born in the moonlight of a latter age,
And the last leaf in earth's extended page—
Opening, like heaven, upon a race of crime,
Thou look'st through tears of blood, in grief sublime!
The lyre of heaven is bright in thy clear sky,
But speaks not e'er its tones of mystery:
Whether the warwhoop wakes thy mountain hold,
Or the clear horn its milder tale hath told,
No minstrel measures to the gale are given,
And all is apathy where all is heaven!
Where rocks eternal speak, man only mute,
Holds high communion with his kindred brute.
And why? ah wherefore! be it theirs to tell,
Who know all things, and nothing eke so well—
The mighty whipsters, on our western shore,
Who stride the Pegasus of wit and lore—
School-boy reviewers, mountebanks of sense,
Who never bungled thro' their accidence!
And now the star-bright queen of closing even
Lights the pure vault of yon unfathom'd heaven;
While fickle breeze holds dalliance with the sail,
The deep wave scarcely rippling in the gale:
Slow walks the bark, while round her all is bright,
Where in chaste brilliance sports the inconstant light;
But the dark mountain, melting into shade,
Beyond, the billow hath in night array'd;
Still, as to woo the south-wind turns the prore,
The shades retreat as nearer frowns the shore.
—This is the bark of life,—and that, the tide
That bears our fate, and frets beneath our pride;
Yon black, veil'd steep, the mount of destiny—
Time's shadows darkling swift around us flee,
As yon fair orb supreme illumes our path,
And gleams and sparkles in the gulf of death—
Beams—the warm consciousness of being, still,
Hope, quenchless hope, that earth can never chill.
Cold blows the wind; and warmer rests invite
To shun the chilly gales of closing night;
O let us hope! though all be colder far,
Where trembles poesy's unworshipp'd star!
Although no chord the slumbering echo wakes,
The golden bowl, unmov'd, no music makes—
The time shall come, perchance these orbs shall wane,
And cold this wither'd heart shall crumble then—
The time shall come, the dawn must break perforce,
When circling lustres have perform'd their course,
When the full sweep o'er burning chords shall try
The diapason's thrill of ecstacy—
As heav'd yon mountains to the spheral chaunt,
The fire nor fear nor apathy can daunt,
The shaggy vesture of the hills shall pierce
And kindle every wave with beams more fierce—
Earth, ocean, heaven shall burst the bonds of fate
And wake to life, in song regenerate!
O thou! to whom, where'er my footsteps wend,
My heart turns ever, scholar, minstrel, friend!
At whose Promethean font, with glory fraught,
My trembling taper's dubious beam was caught,
Be thine the lay—upon whose op'ning youth
Shines the clear blaze of poesy and truth—
Be thine the saviour song, that gives to fame
Each gallant tide, each steep without a name—
Be thine the light, whose parting rays shall pour
The effulgent line the broad Atlantic o'er,
As Plata broad, as Mississippi strong,
The champion strain that gives her fields to song!
We rov'd together over sacred hills,
We drank together from Castalian rills;
Our cause, our hopes were one; nor envy blasted
The wreath we pluck'd, nor drugg'd the bowl we tasted.
If haply as my feeble song holds on
Its varied course—since first the lay begun,
More fire to bolder measures wake the strain,
Commenc'd in listlessness, the cause is plain—
Thou wert not near when first the chords I woo'd;
My heart retir'd in its own solitude,
Upon itself—itself to shun it woke
The idle rhyme, that into story broke—
But droop'd, until thy presence cheer'd the bard,
Thyself its inspiration and its guard.
