She whispers round, her words are in the air,
But lost, unheard, they linger freezing there,[2]
Without one breath of soul, divinely strong,
One ray of mind to thaw them into song.
Yet, yet forgive me, oh ye sacred few,
Whom late by Delaware's green banks I knew;
Whom, known and loved through many a social eve,
'Twas bliss to live with, and 'twas pain to leave.[3]
Not with more joy the lonely exile scanned
The writing traced upon the desert's sand,
Where his lone heart but little hoped to find
One trace of life, one stamp of human kind,
Than did I hail the pure, the enlightened zeal,
The strength to reason and the warmth to feel,
The manly polish and the illumined taste,
Which,--mid the melancholy, heartless waste
My foot has traversed,--oh you sacred few!
I found by Delaware's green banks with you.
Long may you loathe the Gallic dross that runs
Through your fair country and corrupts its sons;
Long love the arts, the glories which adorn
Those fields of freedom, where your sires were born.
Oh! if America can yet be great,
If neither chained by choice, nor doomed by fate
To the mob-mania which imbrutes her now,
She yet can raise the crowned, yet civic brow
Of single majesty,--can add the grace
Of Rank's rich capital to Freedom's base,
Nor fear the mighty shaft will feebler prove
For the fair ornament that flowers above;--
If yet released from all that pedant throng,
So vain of error and so pledged to wrong,
Who hourly teach her, like themselves, to hide
Weakness in vaunt and barrenness in pride,
She yet can rise, can wreathe the Attic charms
Of soft refinement round the pomp of arms,
And see her poets flash the fires of song,
To light her warriors' thunderbolts along;--
It is to you, to souls that favoring heaven
Has made like yours, the glorious task is given:--
Oh! but for _such_, Columbia's days were done;
Rank without ripeness, quickened without sun,
Crude at the surface, rotten at the core,
Her fruits would fall, before her spring were o'er.
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