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Aloft to heav'n remoteft Kilda lifts,

5 Last of the fea-girt Hebrides, that guard, In filial train, Britannia's parent coaft. Thrice happy land! tho' freezing on the verge Of Arctick skies, yet blameless still of arts That polish to deprave each softer clime, With simple nature, simple virtue, bless'd ! Beyond Ambition's walk, where never War Uprear'd his fanguine standard, nor unsheath'd, For wealth or pow'r, the defolating fword; Where Luxury, foft Syren, who around

15 To thousand nations deals her nectar'd cup Of pleasing bane, that soothes at once and kills, Is yet a name unknown; but calm content, That lives to reason, ancient faith, that binds The plain community of guileless hearts In love and union, innocence of ill, Their guardian genius ; these the pow'rs that rule This little world, to all it's fons secure, Man's happiest life; the soul serene and sound From paffion's rage, the body from disease, Red on each cheek behold the role of health, Firm in each finew Vigour's pliant spring, By temp'rance brac'd to peril and to pain, Amid the floods they ftem, or on the steep Of upright rocks their straining steps surmount, For food or paftime ; these light up their morn, And close their eve in slumber sweetly deep, Beneath the north, within the circling swell Of ocean's raging sound ; but laft and best, What Av'rice, what Ambition, shall not know,

35 True Liberty is theirs, the heav'n-sent guest, Who in the cave, or on th' uncultur'd wild, With Independence dwells and peace of mind, In youth, in age, their sun that never sets. Daughter of Heav'n and Nature, deign thy aid,

Spontaneous

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Spontancous Muse! O, whether from the depth
Of ev'ning forest, brown with broadeft fhade,
Or from the brow sublime of vernal Alp
As morning dawns, or from the vale at noon,
By some soft stream that sides with liquid foot
Thro' bow'ry groves, where Inspiration fits
And listens to thy lore, auspicious come!
O’er these wild waves, o'er this unharbour'd shore,
Thy wing high-hovering spread, and to the gale,
The Boreal spirit breathing lib’ral round
From echoing hill to hill, the lyre attune
With answ'ring cadence free, as best beseems
The tragick theme my plaintive verse unfolds.

Here good Aurelius--and a scene more wild
The world around, or deeper solitude,
Adiction could not find-Aurelius here,
(By fate unequal and the crime of war
Expellid his native home, the facred vale
That saw him bless’d, now wretched and unknown !)
Wore out the slow remains of setting life
In bitterness of thought; and with the surge,
And with the founding storm, his murmur'd moan
Would often mix-Oft as remembrance fad
Th' unhappy past recallid, a faithful wife,
Whom love first chofe, whom reason long endear'd,
His foul's companion and his fofter friend,
With one fair daughter, in her rosy prime,
Her dawn of op’ning charms, defenceless left
Within a tyrant's grasp! his foe profess’d,
By civil madness, by intemp'rate zeal
For diff'ring rites, imbitter'd into hate
And cruelty remorseless ! -Thus he liv'd,
If this was life! to load the blast with sighs,
Hung o'er it's edge, to swell the flood with tears,
At midnight hour; for midnight frequent heard
The lonely mourner, defolate of heart,

бо

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Pour all the husband, all the father forth
In unavailing anguith, stretch'd along
The naked beach, or fiv'ring on the cliff,
Smote with the wint’ry pole in bitter storm,

80 Hail, snow, and show'r, dark-drifting round his head!

Such were his hours, till time, the wretch's friend,
Life's great physician, skill'd alone to close,
Where forrow long has wak'd, the weeping eye,
And from the brain, with baleful vapours black,
Each sullen spectre chase, his balm at length,
Lenient of pain, thro' every fever'd pulse
With gentleit hand infus’d. A pensive calmn
Arose, but unaflur'd, as after winds
Of rufling wing the sea subsiding flow

go
Still trembles from the storm. Now Reason first
Her throne resuming, bid Devotion raise
To heav’u his eye, and thro' the turbid mists,
By sense dark-drawn between, adoring own,
Sole arbiter of fate, one Cause Supreme,
All-just, All-wise, who bids what still is best
In cloud or sunshine ; whose feverest hand
Wounds but to heal, and chaftens to amend.

Thus in his bosom, ev'ry weak excess, The rage of grief, the fellnefs of revenge,

100 To healthful measure temper'd and reduc'd By Virtue's hand, and in her bright’ning beam' Each error clear'd away, as fen-born fogs Before th' ascending fun; thro' faith he lives Beyond Time's bounded continent, the walks

JOR Of Sin and Death : anticipating heav'n In pious hope, he seems already there, Safe on her facred hore; and fees beyond, In radiant view, the world of light and love, Where Peace delights to dwell; where one fair morn 110 Still orient smiles, and one diffusivę spring, That fears no storm, and shall no winter know,

Th' im

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Th’immortal year empurples. 'If a figh
Yet murmurs from his breast, 'tis for the pangs
Those deareft names, a wife, a child, must feel,
Still fuff'ring in his fate; 'tis for a foe,
Who, deaf himself to mercy, may of Heav'n
That mercy, when most wanted, ak in vain.

The sun, now station'd with the lucid Twins,
O’er ev'ry southern clime had pour'd profuse
The rofy year, and in each pleasing hue
That
greens

the leaf, or thro' the blossom glows
With florid light, his faireft month array'd;
While Zephyr, while the silver-footed dews,
Her soft attendants, wide o'er field and grove
Fresh spirit breathe, and shed perfuming balm :
Nor here, in this chill region, on the brow
Of winter's waste dominion, is unfelt
The

ray ethereal, or unhail'd the rise
Of her mild reign. From warbling vale and hill,
With wild thyme flow'ring, betony and balm,
Blue lavender, and carmel's spicy root *,
Song, fragrance, health, ambrosiate ev'ry breeze.

But high above, the season full exerts
It's vernant force in yonder peopled rocks,
To whose wild solitude, from worlds unknown,
The birds of passage transmigrating come,
Unnumber'd colonies of foreign wing,
At Nature's fummons, their aerial state
Annual to found, and in bold voyage steer
O’er this wide ocean, thro' yon pathless ky,
One certain flight to one appointed shore,
By Heav'n's directive spirit here to raise
Their temporary realm, and form secure,

• The root of this plant, otherwise named argatilis sylvaticus, is aromatick, and by the natives reckoned cordial to the stomach. See Mar. tiu's Weftern isies of Scotland, puido.

Where

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Where food awaits them copious from the wave,
And shelter from the rock, their nuptial leagues ;
Each tribe apart, and all on talks of love,
To hatch the pregnant egg, to rear and guard
Their helpless infants, piously intent.

Led by the day abroad, with lonely step,
And ruminating sweet and bitter thought,
Aurelius, from the western bay, his eye
Now rais'd to this amusive scene in air,
With wonder mark'd; now cast with level ray
Wide o'er the moving wilderness of waves,
From pole to pole thro' boundless space diffus’d,
Magnificently dreadful! where at large
Leviathan, with each inferior name
Of sea-born kinds, ten thousand thousand tribes,
Finds endless range for pasture and for sport.
Amaz'd he

gazes, and adoring owns
The Hand Almighty, who it's channell'd bed
Immeasurable sunk, and pour'd abroad,
Fenc'd with eternal mounds the fluid sphere,
With ev'ry wind to waft large commerce on,
Join pole to pole, consociate sever'd worlds,
And link in bonds of intercourse and love
Earth's universal family. Now rose
Sweet ev’ning's folemn hour : the fun declin'd
Hung golden o'er this nether firmament,
Whofe broad cerulean mirror, calmly bright,
Gave back his beamy visage to the ky
With splendour undiminish'd, and each cloud,
White, azure, purple, glowing round his throne
In fair aerial landscape. Here, alone,
On earth’s remotest verge Aurelius breath'd
The healthful gale, and felt the smiling scene
With awe-mix'd pleasure mufing as he hung
In filence o'er the billows huth'd beneath;
When, lo! a sound amid the wave-worn rocks,

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Deaf.