That the enamoured keel, with whispering play,
Through liquid herbage seemed to steal its way!
Never did weary bark more sweetly glide,
Or rest its anchor in a lovelier tide!
Along the margin, many a brilliant dome,
White as the palace of a Lapland gnome,
Brightened the wave; in every myrtle grove,
Secluded bashful, like a shrine of love,
Some elfin mansion sparkled through the shade;
And, while the foliage interposing played,
Wreathing the structure into various grace,
Fancy would love, in many a form, to trace
The flowery capital, the shaft, the porch,
And dream of temples, till her kindling torch
Lighted me back to all the glorious days
Of Attic genius; and I seemed to gaze
On marble, from the rich Pentelic mount,
Gracing the umbrage of some Naiad's fount.

*

Sweet airy being! + who, in brighter hours,
Lived on the perfume of these honeyed bowers,
In velvet buds, at evening, loved to lie,
And win with music every rose's sigh!
Though weak the magic of my humble strain
To charm your spirit from its orb again,
Yet oh! for her beneath whose smile I sing,
For her (whose pencil, if your rainbow wing
Were dimmed or ruffled by a wintry sky,
Could smooth its feather and relume its dye,)
A moment wander from your starry sphere,
And if the lime-tree grove that once was dear,
The sunny wave, the bower, the breezy hill,
The sparkling grotto, can delight you still,
Oh! take their fairest tint, their softest light,
Weave all their beauty into dreams of night,
And, while the lovely artist slumbering lies,
Shed the warm picture o'er her mental eyes;
Borrow for sleep her own creative spells,

And brightly show what song but faintly tells!

* This is an allusion which, to the few who are fanciful enough to indulge in it, renders the scenery of Bermuda particularly interesting. In the short but beautiful twilight of their spring evenings, the white cottages scattered over the islands, and but partially seen through the trees that surround them, assume often the appearance of little Grecian temples, and fancy may embellish the poor fisherman's hut with columns which the pencil of Claude might imitate. I had one favourite object of this kind in my walks, which the hospitality of its owner robbed me of by asking me to visit him. He was a plain good man, and received me well and warmly; but I never could turn his house into a Grecian temple again.

Ariel. Among the many charms which Bermuda has for a poetic eye, we cannot for an instant forget that it is the scene of Shakspeare's "Tempest," and that here he conjured up the "delicate Ariel," who alone is worth the whole heaven of ancient mythology.

THE GENIUS OF HARMONY.

AN IRREGULAR ODE.

Ad harmoniam canere mundum.

Cicero. de Nat. Deor. lib. iii.

THERE lies a shell beneath the waves,
In many a hollow winding wreathed,
Such as of old

Echoed the breath that warbling sea-maids breathed;
This magic shell

From the white bosom of a Siren fell,

As once she wandered by the tide that laves
Sicilia's sands of gold.

It bears,

Upon its shining side, the mystic notes

Of those entrancing airs

The genii of the deep were wont to swell,

When heaven's eternal orbs their midnight music rolled!

Oh! seek it, wheresoe'er it floats;

And, if the power

Of thrilling numbers to thy soul be dear,
Go, bring the bright shell to my bower,
And I will fold thee in such downy dreams
As lap the spirit of the seventh sphere,

When Luna's distant tone falls faintly on his ear!
And thou shalt own

That, through the circle of creation's zone,
Where matter darkles or where spirit beams;
From the pellucid tides that whirl
The planets through their maze of song,
To the small rill that weeps along
Murmuring o'er beds of pearl;

From the rich sigh

Of the sun's arrow through an evening sky,
To the faint breath the tuneful osier yields
On Afric's burning fields;

Oh! thou shalt own this universe divine
Is mine!

That I respire in all and all in me,
One mighty mingled soul of boundless harmony!

Welcome, welcome, mystic shell!
Many a star has ceased to burn,
Many a tear has Saturn's urn

O'er the cold bosom of the ocean wept,
Since thy aërial spell

Hath in the waters slept !

I fly,

With the bright treasure, to my choral sky,
Where she who waked its early swell,

1

The Siren, with a foot of fire,

Walks o'er the great string of my Orphic Lyre,
Or guides around the burning pole

The winged chariot of some blissful soul !
While thou,

O son of earth! what dreams shall rise for thee!
Beneath Hispania's sun

Thou'lt see a streamlet run

Which I have warmed with dews of melody;
Listen!-when the night-wind dies

Down the still current, like a harp it sighs!
A liquid chord is every wave that flows,
An airy plectrum every breeze that blows!

There, by that wondrous stream,

Go, lay thy languid brow,

And I will send thee such a godlike dream, Such-mortal! mortal! hast thou heard of him Who, many a night, with his primordial lyre, Sat on the chill Pangæan mount,

And, looking to the orient dim,

Watched the first flowing of that sacred fount
From which his soul had drunk its fire!
Oh! think what visions, in that lonely hour,
Stole o'er his musing breast!
What pious ecstacy

Wafted his prayer to that eternal Power
Whose seal upon this world impressed
The various forms of bright divinity?

Or dost thou know what dreams I wove
'Mid the deep horror of that silent bower
Where the rapt Samian slept his holy slumber?
When, free

From every earthly chain,

From wreaths of pleasure and from bonds of pain,
His spirit flew through fields above,

Drank at the source of Nature's fontal number,
And saw, in mystic choir, around him move
The stars of song, Heaven's burning minstrelsy!
Such dreams, so heavenly bright,
I swear

By the great diadem that twines my hair,
And by the seven gems that sparkle there,
Mingling their beams

In a soft iris of harmonious light,

O mortal! such shall be thy radiant dreams!

TO GEORGE MORGAN, ESQ.,

OF NORFOLK, VIRGINIA.*

From Bermuda, January, 1804.

Κεινη δ' ήνεμοεσσα και άτροπος, οἷα θ ̓ ἁλιπληξ,
Αίθυιης και μαλλον επιδρομος ήεπερ ίπποις,
Ποντώ ἐνεστηρικται.

Callimach. Hymn. in Del. v. 11

OH what a tempest whirled us hither!+
Winds whose savage breath could wither
All the light and languid flowers
That bloom in Epicurus' bowers!

Yet think not, George, that fancy's charm
Forsook me in this rude alarm.

When close they reefed the timid sail,
When, every plank complaining loud,
We laboured in the midnight gale,

And e'en our haughty main-mast bowed!
The muse, in that unlovely hour,
Benignly brought her soothing power,
And, midst the war of waves and wind,
In songs elysian lapped my mind!
She opened, with her golden key,

The casket where my memory lays
Those little gems of poesy

Which time has saved from ancient days!
Take one of these, to Lais sung;

I wrote it while my hammock swung,
As one might write a dissertation
Upon suspended animation!"

SWEETLY you kiss, my Lais dear!
But, while you kiss, I feel a tear,
Bitter as those when lovers part,
In mystery from your eyelid start!
Sadly you lean your head to mine,
And round my neck in silence twine,

* This gentleman is attached to the British consulate at Norfolk. His talents are worthy of a much higher sphere; but the excellent dispositions of the family with whom he resides, and the cordial repose he enjoys amongst some of the kindest hearts in the world, should be almost enough to atone to him for the worst caprices of fortune. The consul himself, Colonel Hamilton, is one among the very few instances of a man ardently loyal to his king, and yet beloved by the Americans. His house is the very temple of hospitality; and I sincerely pity the heart of that stranger who, warm from the welcome of such a board, and with the taste of such Madeira still upon his lips, "col dolce in bocca," could sit down to write a libel on his host in the true spirit of a modern philosophist.-See the Travels of the Duc de la Rochefoucault Liancourt, vol. ii.

We were seven days on our passage from Norfolk to Bermuda, during three of which we were forced to lay-to in a gale of wind.

1

Your hair along my bosom spread,
All humid with the tears you shed!
Have I not kissed those lids of snow?
Yet still, my love, like founts they flow,
Bathing our cheeks, whene'er they meet-
Why is it thus? do tell me, sweet!
Ah, Lais! are my bodings right?
Am I to lose you? is to-night

Our last- -go, false to heaven and me!
Your very tears are treachery.

Such, while in air I floating hung,

Such was the strain, Morgante mio!

The muse and I together sung,

With Boreas to make out the trio.

But, bless the little fairy isle!
How sweetly, after all our ills,
We saw the dewy morning smile
Serenely o'er its fragrant hills!
And felt the pure, elastic flow
Of airs that round this Eden blow,
With honey freshness, caught by stealth,
Warm from the very lips of health!

Oh! could you view the scenery dear
That now beneath my window lies,
You'd think that Nature lavished here

Her purest wave, her softest skies,
To make a heaven for love to sigh in,
For bards to live and saints to die in!
Close to my wooded bank below,

In glassy calm the waters sleep,
And to the sun-beam proudly show
The coral rocks they love to steep!

The fainting breeze of morning fails,
The drowsy boat moves slowly past,
And I can almost touch its sails

That languish idly round the mast.
The sun has now profusely given
The flashes of a noontide heaven,
And, as the wave reflects his beams,
Another heaven its surface seems!
Blue light and clouds of silvery tears
So pictured o'er the waters lie
That every languid bark appears
To fleet along a burning sky!