Scenes of my birth, and careless childhood hours.
Ye smiling hills, and spacious fertile vales!
Where oft I wander’d, plucking vernal flowers,
And revell’d in the odour-breathing gales;
Should fickle Fate, with talismanic wand,
Bear me afar where either India glows,
Or fix my dwelling on the Polar land,
Where Nature wears her ever-during snows;
Still shall your charms my fondest themes adorn,
When placid evening paints the western sky,
And when Hyperion wakes the blushing Morn,
To rear his gorgeous sapphire throne on high.
For, to the guileless heart, where’er we roam,
No scenes delight us like our much-lov’d Home.
A man so humble, with such acquirements as have been here exemplified,
and so unfortunate as to have derived little from their exercise but
pain and disappointment, may be imagined to have penned the following
address in distress and despondency:--