When the ear deems its murmur past;
Thus various, my romantic theme
Flits, winds, or sinks, a morning dream. 
Yet pleased, our eye pursues the trace 15
Of Light and Shade’s inconstant race;
Pleased, views the rivulet afar,
Weaving its maze irregular;
And pleased, we listen as the breeze
Heaves its wild sigh through Autumn trees; 20
Then, wild as cloud, or stream, or gale,
Flow on, flow unconfined, my Tale!

Need I to thee, dear Erskine, tell
I love the license all too well,
In sounds now lowly, and now strong, 25
To raise the desultory song? 
Oft, when ’mid such capricious chime,
Some transient fit of lofty rhyme
To thy kind judgment seem’d excuse
For many an error of the muse, 30
Oft hast thou said, ’If, still misspent,
Thine hours to poetry are lent,
Go, and to tame thy wandering course,
Quaff from the fountain at the source;
Approach those masters, o’er whose tomb 35
Immortal laurels ever bloom: 
Instructive of the feebler bard,
Still from the grave their voice is heard;
From them, and from the paths they show’d,
Choose honour’d guide and practised road; 40
Nor ramble on through brake and maze,
With harpers rude of barbarous days.

’Or deem’st thou not our later time
Yields topic meet for classic rhyme? 
Hast thou no elegiac verse 45
For Brunswick’s venerable hearse? 
What! not a line, a tear, a sigh,
When valour bleeds for liberty?—­
Oh, hero of that glorious time,
When, with unrivall’d light sublime,—­ 50
Though martial Austria, and though all
The might of Russia, and the Gaul,
Though banded Europe stood her foes—­
The star of Brandenburgh arose! 
Thou couldst not live to see her beam 55
For ever quench’d in Jena’s stream. 
Lamented Chief!—­it was not given
To thee to change the doom of Heaven,
And crush that dragon in its birth,
Predestined scourge of guilty earth. 60
Lamented Chief!—­not thine the power,
To save in that presumptuous hour,
When Prussia hurried to the field,
And snatch’d the spear, but left the shield! 
Valour and skill ’twas thine to try, 65
And, tried in vain, ’twas thine to die. 
Ill had it seem’d thy silver hair
The last, the bitterest pang to share,
For princedoms reft, and scutcheons riven,
And birthrights to usurpers given; 70
Thy land’s, thy children’s wrongs to feel,
And witness woes thou could’st not heal! 
On thee relenting Heaven bestows
For honour’d life an honour’d close;
And when revolves, in time’s sure change, 75
The hour of Germany’s revenge,
When, breathing fury for her sake,
Some new Arminius shall awake,
Her champion, ere he strike, shall come
To whet his sword on Brunswick’s tomb, 80