Original MS. Introduction to The Pleasures of Hope

Seven lingering moons have crossed the starry line
Since Beauty’s form or Nature’s face divine
Had power the sombre of my soul to turn,
Had power to wake my strings and bid them burn.

The charm dissolves! What Genius bade me go
To search the unfathomed mine of human woe.
The wrongs of man to man, of clime to clime.
Since Nature yoked the fiery steeds of time;
The tales of death, since cold on Eden’s plain
The beauteous mother clasped her Abel slain;
Ambition’s guilt, since Carthage wept her doom;
The Patriot’s fate, since Brutus fell with Rome?

The charm dissolves! My kindling fancy dreams
Of brighter forms inspired by gentler themes:
Joy and her rosy flowers attract my view.
And Mirth can please, and Music charm anew;
And Hope, the harbinger of golden hours.
The light of life, the fire of Fancy’s powers,
Returns! Again I lift my trembling gaze.
And bless the smiling guest of other days!

So when the Northern in the lonely gloom.
Where Hekla’s fires the polar night illume,
Hails the glad summer to his Lulean shores.
And, bowed to earth, his circling suns adores.

So when Cimmerian darkness wakes the dead.
And hideous Nightmare haunts the curtained bed,
And scowls her wild eye on the maddening brain,
What speechless horrors thrill the slumbering swain
When shapeless fiends inhale his tortured breath.
Immure him living in the vaults of death.
Or lead him lonely through the charnelled aisles.
The roaring floods, the dark and swampy vales.

When rocked by winds he wanders on the deep.
Climbs the tall spire, or scales the beetling steep.
His life-blood freezing to the central urn.
No voice can call for aid, no limb can turn,
Till eastern shoot the harbinger of day.
And Night and all her spectres fade away.

If then some wandering huntsman of the morn
Wind from the hill his murmuring bugle-horn.
The shrill sweet music wakes the slumberer’s ear.
And melts his blood, and bursts the bands of fear;
The vision fades — the shepherd lifts his eye
And views the lark that carols to the sky.