A fairer face of Nature to discern;
Nor of the Bards that swept the British lyre
Shall fade one laurel, or one note expire. 
Then, loved Joanna, to admiring eyes
Thy storied groups in scenic pomp shall rise;
Their high soul’d strains and Shakespear’s noble rage
Shall with alternate passion shake the stage. 
Some youthful Basil from thy moral lay [9]
With stricter hand his fond desires shall sway;
Some Ethwald, as the fleeting shadows pass,
Start at his likeness in the mystic glass;
The tragic Muse resume her just controul,
With pity and with terror purge the soul,
While wide o’er transatlantic realms thy name
Shall live in light, and gather all its fame.

Where wanders Fancy down the lapse of years
Shedding o’er imaged woes untimely tears? 
Fond moody Power! as hopes—­as fears prevail,
She longs, or dreads, to lift the awful veil,
On visions of delight now loves to dwell,
Now hears the shriek of woe or Freedom’s knell: 
Perhaps, she says, long ages past away, [10]
And set in western waves our closing day,
Night, Gothic night, again may shade the plains
Where Power is seated, and where Science reigns;
England, the seat of arts, be only known
By the gray ruin and the mouldering stone;
That Time may tear the garland from her brow,
And Europe sit in dust, as Asia now.

Yet then the ingenuous youth whom Fancy fires
With pictured glories of illustrious sires,
With duteous zeal their pilgrimage shall take
From the blue mountains, or Ontario’s lake,
With fond adoring steps to press the sod
By statesmen, sages, poets, heroes trod;
On Isis’ banks to draw inspiring air, [11]
From Runnymede to send the patriot’s prayer;
In pensive thought, where Cam’s slow waters wind,
To meet those shades that ruled the realms of mind;
In silent halls to sculptured marbles bow,
And hang fresh wreaths round Newton’s awful brow. 
Oft shall they seek some peasant’s homely shed,
Who toils, unconscious of the mighty dead,
To ask where Avon’s winding waters stray,
And thence a knot of wild flowers bear away;
Anxious enquire where Clarkson, friend of man,
Or all-accomplished Jones his race began;
If of the modest mansion aught remains
Where Heaven and Nature prompted Cowper’s strains;
Where Roscoe, to whose patriot breast belong [12]
The Roman virtue and the Tuscan song,
Led Ceres to the black and barren moor
Where Ceres never gained a wreath before[1]: 
With curious search their pilgrim steps shall rove
By many a ruined tower and proud alcove,
Shall listen for those strains that soothed of yore
Thy rock, stern Skiddaw, and thy fall, Lodore;
Feast with Dun Edin’s classic brow their sight,
And visit “Melross by the pale moonlight.”