- Oft sees red lightning at the midnight-hour,
- When nod the watches, stream along the sky;
- Not innocent, as what the learned call
- The Boreal morn,1 which, through the azure air, [15]
- Flashes its tremulous rays, in painted streaks,
- While o’er night’s veil her lucid tresses flow:
- Nor quits the Muse her walk, immers’d in thought,
- How she the planter, haply, may advise;
- Till tardy morn unbar the gates of light, [20]
- And, opening on the main with sultry beam,
-
To burnish’d silver turns the blue-green wave.
- SAY, will my SHENSTONE lend a patient ear,
- And weep at woes unknown to Britain’s Isle?
- Yes, thou wilt weep; for pity chose thy breast, [25]
- With taste and science, for their soft abode:
- Yes, thou wilt weep: thine own distress thou bear’st
-
Undaunted; but another’s melts thy soul.
- "O WERE my pipe as soft, my dittied song"2
- As smooth as thine, my too too distant friend, [30]
- SHENSTONE; my soft pipe, and my dittied song
- Should hush the hurricanes tremendous roar,
- And from each evil guard the ripening Cane!