Page:The works of Anna Laetitia Barbauld volume 1.djvu/179

Forced from my native seats and sacred home,
Friendless, alone, through Scythian wilds to roam;
With trembling knees o'er unknown hills I go,
Stiff with blue ice and heaped with drifted snow.
Pale suns there strike their feeble rays in vain,
Which faintly glance against the marble plain:
Red Ister there, which madly lashed the shore,
His idle urn sealed up, forgets to roar :
Stern Winter in eternal triumph reigns,
Shuts up the bounteous year and starves the plains.
My failing eyes the weary waste explore,
The savage mountains and the dreary shore,
And vainly look for scenes of old delight;—
No loved familiar objects meet my sight;
No long-remembered streams nor conscious bowers
Wake the gay memory of youthful hours.
I fondly hoped, content with learned ease,
To walk amidst cotemporary trees;
In every scene some favourite spot to trace,
And meet in all some kind domestic face;