INTRODUCTION

TO

THE POEM.

WHILE jarring interests wake the world to arms,

And fright the peaceful vale with dire alarms,
While ALBION bids th' avenging thunder roll
Along her vassal Deep from pole to pole;

Sick of the scene, where War with ruthless hand
Spreads desolation o'er the bleeding land;
Sick of the tumult, where the trumpet's breath
Bids ruin smile, and drowns the groan of Death;
'Tis mine, retired beneath this cavern hoar
That stands all lonely on the sea-beat shore,
Far other themes of deep distress to sing
Than ever trembled from the vocal string;
A scene from dumb Oblivion to restore,
To Fame unknown, and new to Epic lore:
Where hostile elements conflicting rise,
And lawless Surges swell against the skies,

A

Till Hope expires, and Peril and Dismay
Wave their black ensigns on the watery way.
Immortal train! who guide the maze of song,
To whom all Science, Arts, and Arms belong,
Who bid the Trumpet of eternal Fame
Exalt the Warrior's and the Poet's name,
Or in lamenting elegies express

The varied pang of exquisite distress;

If e'er with trembling hope I.fondly strayed
In life's fair morn beneath your hallowed shade,
To hear the sweetly-mournful lute complain,
And melt the heart with ecstacy of pain,

Or listen to the enchanting voice of Love,
While all Elysium warbled through the grove;
Oh! by the hollow blast that moans around,
That sweeps the wild harp with a plaintive sound;
By the long Surge that foams through yonder cave,
Whose vaults remurmur to the roaring wave;
With living colours give my Verse to glow,

The sad Memorial of a Tale of Woe!

The fate, in lively sorrow, to deplore

Of Wanderers shipwrecked on a leeward shore.

Alas! neglected by the sacred Nine,
Their Suppliant feels no genial ray divine;
Ah! will they leave Pieria's happy shore,

To plough the Tide where wintery tempests roar?
Or shall a Youth approach their hallowed fane,
Stranger to Phoebus, and the tuneful train?
Far from the Muses' academic grove,

'Twas his the vast and trackless Deep to rove;
Alternate change of climates has he known,
And felt the fierce extremes of either zone;
Where polar skies congeal th' eternal snow,
Or equinoctial suns for ever glow,

Smote by the freezing, or the scorching blast,
'A Ship-Boy on the high and giddy mast,'
From regions where Peruvian billows roar,
To the bleak coasts of savage Labrador;
From where Damascus, pride of Asian plains,
Stoops her proud neck beneath tyrannic chains,
To where the Isthmus, laved by adverse tides,
Atlantic and Pacific seas divides:

But while he measured o'er the painful race
In Fortune's wild illimitable chace,