Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Oh! Thou whose eye of smiling love,
Outshines the cheerful eye of day,
Whose bosom no rude tempests move,
Whose form no pencil can pourtray;
So bright thine eye, thy form so fair,
Beauty herself seems station'd there.

II

Hail, Charity! meek tender maid,
Adorn'd with Virtue's modest crown;
And wont, in simplest garb array'd,
To beam with lustre, all thine own;—
Still let thy breast with rapture glow,
But spare a sigh for human woe.

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III

Softer thy breath, than gales that play,
Where Summer-flowers their odours fling;
Nor is so sweet the breath of May,
With all the choir of tuneful Spring.
The smile that on thy cheek is seen,
Bespeaks a paradise within.

IV

Oh! still thy fostering wing outspread;
—Distress near thee shall shelter find—
And, like yon sun, thine influence shed
Through the vast race of human kind.
And let thine open hand impart
Rich emblems of a generous heart.

V

And not so warm in Mithra's praise ,
The Persian, crown'd with conquest, glows,
When call'd the choral song to raise,
For sabres sheath'd, and vanquish'd foes,

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As nations, kindling with thy ray,
Shall upward spring to new-born day.

VI

Then shall the fury-passions sleep!
And Conquest quench her thirsty sword;
No captive Fair in silence weep,
Nor laurels grace her tyrant-lord;
No face shall wear the form of woe:
The only wreath the olive bough.

Part of this hymn has been published before in the Monthly Magazine.

Mithra is worshipped, as the source of light, the sun, by the Persians and Indians. An allusion is here made to a fine hymn at the end of Maurice's Second Volume of Indian Antiquities.