VERSES SUPPOSED TO BE WRITTEN BY ALEXANDER SELKIRK DURING HIS SOLITARY ABODE ON THE ISLAND OF JUAN FERNANDEZ. I AM monarch of all I survey, My right there is none to dispute, I am lord of the fowl and the brute. O Solitude! where are the charms That sages have seen in thy face? I am out of humanity's reach, I must finish my journey alone, Society, friendship, and love, Divinely bestowed upon man, How soon would I taste you again! My sorrows I then might assuage In the ways of religion and truth, Might learn from the wisdom of age, N 5 ΤΟ 15 20 Religion! what treasure untold Or smiled when a Sabbath appeared. Ye winds, that have made me your sport, Some cordial endearing report Of a land I shall visit no more. 25 30 35 Compared with the speed of its flight, The tempest itself lags behind, And the swift-winged arrows of light. In a moment I seem to be there ; But the sea-fowl is gone to her nest, The beast is laid down in his lair, Even here is a season of rest, And I to my cabin repair. 45 50 There's mercy in every place, And mercy, encouraging thought! Gives even affliction a grace, And reconciles man to his lot. 55 YARDLEY OAK. At my birth SURVIVOR Sole, and hardly such, of all Of amnesty, the meed of blood divine, Thou wast a bauble once, a cup and ball IO 15 20 25 With pointed hoof dibbling the glebe, prepared Thy rudiments should sleep the winter through. Sifts half the pleasures of short life away! Thou fell'st mature; and in the loamy clod Didst burst thine egg, as theirs the fabled Twins, And, all the elements thy puny growth Fostering propitious, thou becamest a twig. 330 35 Who lived when thou wast such? Oh, couldst thou speak, As in Dodona once thy kindred trees Oracular, I would not curious ask The future, best unknown, but, at thy mouth By thee I might correct, erroneous oft, The clock of history, facts and events 40 45 Desperate attempt, till trees shall speak again! Time made thee what thou wast, king of the woods; 51 And Time hath made thee what thou art—a cave Thy popularity, and art become Thou hast outlived 55 (Unless verse rescue thee awhile) a thing Forgotten, as the foliage of thy youth. 61 While thus through all the stages thou hast pushed Of girth enormous, with moss-cushioned root What exhibitions various hath the world That we account most durable below! Change is the diet on which all subsist, Skies uncertain, now the heat Transmitting cloudless, and the solar beam. Now quenching in a boundless sea of clouds,- In all that live, plant, animal, and man, 65 70 75 And in conclusion mar them. Nature's threads, 80 Fine passing thought, e'en in her coarsest works, Delight in agitation, yet sustain The force that agitates not unimpaired; But worn by frequent impulse, to the cause Of their best tone their dissolution owe. Thought cannot spend itself, comparing still The great and little of thy lot, thy growth Of matchless grandeur, and declension thence, |