But such! ah! such is not my theme—
Illumined by a grosser fire
Than that which some will truly deem
Befitting well the patriot’s lyre.
And yet how could I pass thee by—
Thou of the fearless soul and eye?—
Thou who hast watched my boyhood’s hours
Amid thy sacred rocks and rills,
Where liberty with glory towers
Unshaken on her thousand hills!
Genius of freedom! let me stand
With thee upon my native land;
Still let me hear thy thunder-voice
Bid every child of thine rejoice;
Still let me see on yonder mast
The banner of the heart unfurl’d—
The playmate of the ocean-blast,
The hope or terror of the world.
And when the minstrel’s form is cold,
His brightest meed of praise shall be,
As o’er his grave yon starry fold
By wind and tempest is unroll’d,
“Freedom! thy minstrel sang of thee!”
——
’Tis dark around! yet darker still
Within that melancholy clime,
Where tireless, sleepless vulture-ill
Sits blackly brooding over crime;
The tempest has a deeper moan;
The night-wind has a wilder tone;
The thunder glares his troubled eye
Amid the hollows of the sky;
And sheeted lightnings swiftly stream
From yonder cloud’s tremendous rack,
And then with swifter stride they seem
In pallid horror hurrying back.
Groans in the dark tide of the air:
Groans in the withered space around:
Groans in the tempest’s sickly glare:
Groans struggling under ground!
And look! Lo! blacker clouds are swelling
Around the thunder’s opened dwelling,
Which with a Vulcan-torch illumes
This realm of everlasting glooms;
Set in the distance—see it stand
Above that melancholy land—
Wild, gloomy, solitary, grand!
Heckla of spirits—placed afar,
The lamp of ghastly heath and rill,
As if like some malignant star
’Twould make them all more ghastly still.