Poetry Immortal

For fame life's meaner records vainly strive,
While, in fresh beauty, thy high dreams survive.
Still Vesta's temple throws its classic shade
O'er the bright foam of Tivoli's cascade,
And to one Venus still we bow the knee,
Divine as if just issued from the sea;
In fancy's trance, yet deem on nights serene
We hear the revels of the fairy queen,
That Dian's smile illumes the marble fane,
And Ceres whispers in the rustling grain,
That Ariel's music has not died away,
And in his shell still floats the Culprit Fay.
The sacred beings of poetic birth
Immortal live to consecrate the earth.
San Marco's pavement boasts no doge's tread,
And all its ancient pageantry has fled;
Yet, as we muse beneath some dim arcade,
The mind's true kindred glide from ruin's shade;
In every passing eye that sternly beams
We start to meet the Shylock of our dreams;
Each maiden form, where virgin grace is seen,
Crosses our path with Portia's noble mien;
While Desdemona, beauteous as of yore,
Yields us the smile that once entranced the Moor.
How Scotland's vales are peopled to the heart
By her bold minstrel's necromantic art!
Along this fern moved Jeannie's patient feet,
Where hangs yon mist rose Ellangowan's seat,
Here the sad bride first gave her love a tongue,
And there the chief's last shout of triumph rung;
Beside each stream, down every glen they throng,
The cherish'd offspring of creative song!
Long ere brave Nelson shook the Baltic shore,
The bard of Avon hallow'd Elsinore:
Perchance when moor'd the fleet, awaiting day,
To fix the battle's terrible array,
Some pensive hero, musing o'er the deep,
So soon to fold him in its dreamless sleep,
Heard the Dane's sad and self-communing tone
Blend with the water's melancholy moan,
Recall'd, with prayer and awe-suspended breath,
His wild and solemn questionings of death,
Or caught from land Ophelia's dying song,
Swept by the night-breeze plaintively along!