Choice Specimens of American Literature, and Literary Reader · Chapter 249=321.= Pleasures of Imagination
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Is my lonely pittance past? Fleeting good too light to last? Lifts my friend the latch no more? Fancy, thou canst all restore; Thou canst, with thy airy shell, To a palace raise my cell.
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With thee to guide my steps, I'll creep In some old haunted nook to sleep, Lulled by the dreary night-bird's scream, That flits along the wizard stream, And there, till morning 'gins appear, The tales of troubled spirits hear.
Sweet's the dawn's ambiguous light, Quiet pause 'tween day and night, When afar the mellow horn Chides the tardy gaited morn, And asleep is yet the gale On sea-beat mount, and rivered vale. But the morn, though sweet and fair; Sweeter is when thou art there; Hymning stars successive fade, Fairies hurtle through the shade, Lovelorn flowers I weeping see, If the scene is touched by thee.
* * * * * Thus through life with thee I'll glide, Happy still what'er betide, And while plodding sots complain Of ceaseless toil and slender gain, Every passing hour shall be Worth a golden age to me.
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=Robert Treat Paine, 1773-1811.= (Manual, p. 512.)
From "The Ruling Passion."