Silent and fear'd by all-not oft he talks Conquest and fame: but Britons rarely swerve From law, however stern, which tends their strength to nerve. XX. Blow swiftly blow, thou keel-compelling gale! The flapping sail haul'd down to halt for logs like these! XXI. The moon is up; by Heaven, a lovely eve! Long streams of light o'er dancing waves expand ; Such be our fate when we return to land! Wakes the brisk harmony that sailors love; Or to some well-known measure featly move, Thoughtless, as if on shore they still were free to rove. Alike beheld beneath pale Hecate's blaze : Distinct, though darkening with her waning phase; From mountain-cliff to coast descending sombre down. XXIII. 'Tis night, when Meditation bids us feel We once have loved, though love is at an end : Death hath but little left him to destroy! Ah! happy years! once more who would not be a boy? XXIV. Thus bending o'er the vessel's laving side, To gaze on Dian's wave-reflected sphere, The soul forgets her schemes of hope and pride, A thought, and claims the homage of a tear; XXV. To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell, To slowly trace the forest's shady scene, Where things that own not man's dominion dwell, This is not solitude; 'tis but to hold Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unroll'd. XXVI. But midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men, To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess, And roam along, the world's tired denizen, With none who bless us, none whom we can bless ; XXVII. More blest the life of godly eremite, Watching at eve upon the giant height, Which looks o'er waves so blue, skies so serene, That he who there at such an hour hath been Will wistful linger on that hallow'd spot ; M Then slowly tear him from the 'witching scene, Sigh forth one wish that such had been his lot, Then turn to hate a world he had almost forgot. XXVIII. Pass we the long, unvarying course, the track Pass we the joys and sorrows sailors find, As breezes rise and fall and billows swell, Till on some jocund morn- -lo, land! and all is well: |