“Now Night, advancing up th’etherial plain,
    Drew slowly her broad veil o’er land and main. 
    With falling tears I bathed the sacred ground,
    And thro’ the viewless darkness gazed around: 
    But air’s blank waste deceived my ardent sight;
    The hills were dark, the rivers roll’d in night. 
    Yet swift imagination, uncontroll’d,
    Ranged o’er the scene, and tinged it all with gold. 
    ‘And here,’ I cried, ’amid this piny grove,
    In winter’s morn my lonely steps shall rove;
    And there, beneath yon’ poplar’s silver shade,
    At summer noon my weary limbs be laid. 
    Yon azure stream, that parts the fruitful scene,
    Shall see my cottage on its banks of green,
    Long-cherish’d friends shall charm each livelong day,
    And jocund children, more beloved than they: 
    My sun thro’ ambient clouds shall set more fair,
    And thirty years of grief be lost in air. 
    Oh, happy long-lost land! once more receive
    Thy time-worn Exile, and his cares relieve!’

      “The gathered mists roll’d slowly from the lawn,
    And fading stars announced the silent dawn: 
    A hill, that tower’d above the bounded heath,
    I climb’d, and gazed upon the scene beneath. 
    The beams of morning woke no living eye
    Amid this vast and cheerless vacancy: 
    They only pour’d their ineffectual light
    On a bleak prospect, better hid in night! 
    Where’er I look’d, outstretch’d in long survey,
    A huge unmeasured waste of ruins lay. 
    War’s fiery steps had mark’d the beauteous scene,
    And mingled ravage show’d where death had been,
    The fallen cottage, and the mouldering tower—­
    A dreary monument of wrathful power! 
    The stream that once, diffused in lucid pride,
    Saw towers, and woods, and hamlets, on its side,
    Now choked with weeds, in mossy fragments lost,
    Dragg’d a slow current o’er the mournful coast. 
    My friends, my foes, were fled—­not one of all
    Remain’d, to see his country’s hapless fall! 
    O’er the wild plain the useless zephyrs blow,
    And wasted suns unprofitably glow. 
    This ancient forest now remain’d alone:—­
    Beneath its shade I sat me down to moan;
    Resign’d to dumb despair, without a tear, }
    Prostrate I lay, or slowly wander’d, here, }
    And, wandering, thought upon the things that were:  }
    ’Till crowding thoughts a sudden lustre flung,
    And my wild heart with desperate hope was strung.

      “Hence, vain regrets! unmanly tears, away! 
    ’Tis time to close my melancholy day. 
    Smiling with peace, or brilliant with delight,
    Eternity lies open to my sight. 
    I go, a fearless soul, unstain’d by crimes,
    To seek the rest denied in earthly climes.