She dresses Nature in her brightest form,
She hears with rapture the descending storm,
She lists the chiming of the falling stream,
Which lulls to sleep and wakes the airy dream;
Enwrapt with solitude she loves to tread

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O'er rugged hills, or where the green-woods spread;
To hear the songsters of the lonely grove,

Breathe their sweet strains of gladness and of love:
She loves the darkness of an aged wood,
The ceaseless uproar of the restive flood,
The sullen grandeur of the mountain's brow
Which throws a shadow on the vales below.
She loves to wander when the moon's soft ray,
Treads on the footsteps of departing day,
When heavy sadness hangs upon the gale,

And twilight deepens o'er the dusky vale,.... 170
By haunted waters, or some ruin'd tower,
Which stands the shock of Time's destroying power,
'Where the dim owl directs his dusky flight,

And pours his sorrows on the ear of Night.

The

song of bards and Wisdom's ancient page, Which brave the blasts of each succeeding age;

With fond delight she studies and admires,

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And glows and kindles at their sacred fires,
She treads on air, she rises on the wind,
And with them leaves the lagging world behind.
When solitude o'erhangs the tardy hour,
She finds within herself a social power.

There hovering forms meet her enchanted sight,
And dreams attend the slumbers of the night;
The lonely heath to her is fairy ground,
She bids Armida's garden smile around;
Her vast designs in solitude she forms,
She hears a spirit* in the desert-storms.
....If thus her joys above the world's dim eye
Roll like the planet in the trackless sky,
If her's are joys which dull souls never know
She bleeds the subject of severer woe.
On life's sad journey she is doom'd to bear
The sweetest pleasure and the keenest care.

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* The Greeks considered a grove as the sacred retreat of meditation, and early superstition supposed that a deity dwelt amid the shades of solitude.

She feels each wound, and every nerve and vein
Thrills to the pressure of neglect and pain.
High are her thoughts, her hopes and her desires,
Higher than thrones her bounding soul aspires,
She looks for gifts she never can obtain,

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And grieves to find her fondest visions vain.
She looks on sorrow with a melting eye,
And breathes for man the sympathising sigh.
Unfeeling world why sufferest thou, to roam
Without protection and without an home,
In cheerless shades, unpitied and alone,
Genius....entitled to thy golden throne?
Whence flow that lore and intellectual light
Which cheer thy regions and infuse delight?
Whence, but from yon lone fugitive who roves,
And tells her sorrows to the sadful groves,
Whence, but from Genius whose inspiring lays,
Too oft thy malice and thy scorn repays?
....As late I roam'd the Hudson's banks along,
What time the night-bird pour'd his gloomy song:
What time the moon threw her ascending beam
O'er Night's dark bosom and the wizard stream;

I

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