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When Genius lends thee all his living light,
Where the full beams of intellect unite,
When Love illumes thee with his varying ray,
Where trembling Hope and tearful Rapture play;
Or Pity's melting cloud thy beam subdues,
Tempering its lustre with a veil of dews;
Still does thy power, whose all-commanding spell
Can pierce the mazes of the soul so well;
Bid some new feeling to existence start,
From its deep slumbers in the inmost heart.
And oh! when thought, in ecstasy sublime,
That soars triumphant o'er the bounds of time,
Fires thy keen glance with inspiration's blaze,
The light of heaven, the hope of nobler days,
(As glorious dreams, for utterance far too high,
Flash through the mist of dim mortality;)
Who does not own, that through thy lightning beams,
A flame unquenchable, unearthly, streams?
That pure, though captive effluence of the sky,
The vestal-ray, the spark that cannot die!
