Grows sweeter as thy laurell'd locks grow gray;
To whom the years but added graces bring,
As wintry stars outshine the skies of spring:
At birth baptiz'd in Art's Pierian fount,
Four score and sev'n thy sunlit summers count
Yet that kind Muse, by whom thy lyre was strung,
Pleased with her work, hath kept thee ever young!
Thine Attic garland, gay with many a flow'r,
Gains a fresh bloom with ev'ry song-blest hour:
In the fair dawn the tender buds unclose;
The noontide sees the richer full-blown rose;
Maturer blossoms deck the vesper scene,
And blend sedately with th' unfading green;
But rarest flow'r of all in mortal sight,
Is the proud cereus of queenly night:
All these, Aonian bard, thou canst combine,
As thy glad hours with endless radiance shine.
How fine thy fancy, whose swift glance can spy
The subtlest beauties that in nature lie;
Whose dulcet lute can sing with moving skill
The ancient lays of stream and grove and hill:
Trace from primeval dust the verdant earth,
And sound once more the chant of Nature's birth.
To thee each rock an awesome tale imparts,
While foaming torrents bare their mighty hearts;
Forgotten glaciers, melted on the plain,
For thee their frigid journeys live again:
From ocean cave to snow-clad mountain spire,
The world is thine to praise with lyric fire!
Nor with less art canst thou in numbers tell
Of those who on its varied surface dwell:
Beneath thy brush the living Indian forms,
And wand'ring tribes defy the northern storms;
The rural home, the long-concluded fray,
The honest customs of another day,
The innocence of youth, the thoughts of age,
The visions of the singer and the sage,
The mourner's teardrop and the jester's smile,
The lore of far Hibernia's story'd isle;
These all are thine, yet through thy wizard pow'rs
They are not thine alone, but thine and ours!
But whilst the Muse, with fond maternal claim,
Seeks to enrobe thee in poetic fame,
The gods of prose a rival action press,
And bid thee wear a philosophic dress.
Thy facile pen the realm of thought explores,
And leads us on to unfamiliar shores;
Displays the mighty West's alluring zone,
And those grim heights that feet have never known;
Cleaves the clear ether, and expounds the blue
Where countless stars distract the questing view;
Nor deigns to pause till pois'd on that vast brink
Beyond whose depths no man may know or think.
Poet and Sage! But lest a point be miss'd,
Let none forget the valiant Moralist!
All praise to thee, whose potent pen and purse
Have served the right, and fought the Bacchic curse;
Silenus, newly sober, finds in thee
The staunchest friend of his morality,
And old Anacreon his red brow untwines,
To whom the years but added graces bring,
As wintry stars outshine the skies of spring:
At birth baptiz'd in Art's Pierian fount,
Four score and sev'n thy sunlit summers count
Yet that kind Muse, by whom thy lyre was strung,
Pleased with her work, hath kept thee ever young!
Thine Attic garland, gay with many a flow'r,
Gains a fresh bloom with ev'ry song-blest hour:
In the fair dawn the tender buds unclose;
The noontide sees the richer full-blown rose;
Maturer blossoms deck the vesper scene,
And blend sedately with th' unfading green;
But rarest flow'r of all in mortal sight,
Is the proud cereus of queenly night:
All these, Aonian bard, thou canst combine,
As thy glad hours with endless radiance shine.
How fine thy fancy, whose swift glance can spy
The subtlest beauties that in nature lie;
Whose dulcet lute can sing with moving skill
The ancient lays of stream and grove and hill:
Trace from primeval dust the verdant earth,
And sound once more the chant of Nature's birth.
To thee each rock an awesome tale imparts,
While foaming torrents bare their mighty hearts;
Forgotten glaciers, melted on the plain,
For thee their frigid journeys live again:
From ocean cave to snow-clad mountain spire,
The world is thine to praise with lyric fire!
Nor with less art canst thou in numbers tell
Of those who on its varied surface dwell:
Beneath thy brush the living Indian forms,
And wand'ring tribes defy the northern storms;
The rural home, the long-concluded fray,
The honest customs of another day,
The innocence of youth, the thoughts of age,
The visions of the singer and the sage,
The mourner's teardrop and the jester's smile,
The lore of far Hibernia's story'd isle;
These all are thine, yet through thy wizard pow'rs
They are not thine alone, but thine and ours!
But whilst the Muse, with fond maternal claim,
Seeks to enrobe thee in poetic fame,
The gods of prose a rival action press,
And bid thee wear a philosophic dress.
Thy facile pen the realm of thought explores,
And leads us on to unfamiliar shores;
Displays the mighty West's alluring zone,
And those grim heights that feet have never known;
Cleaves the clear ether, and expounds the blue
Where countless stars distract the questing view;
Nor deigns to pause till pois'd on that vast brink
Beyond whose depths no man may know or think.
Poet and Sage! But lest a point be miss'd,
Let none forget the valiant Moralist!
All praise to thee, whose potent pen and purse
Have served the right, and fought the Bacchic curse;
Silenus, newly sober, finds in thee
The staunchest friend of his morality,
And old Anacreon his red brow untwines,
62
