WHILE you, my Friend, from lowring wintery plains, Now pale with snows, now black with drizzling rains, From leafless woodlands, and dishonor'd bowers Mantled by gloomy mists, or lash'd by showers Of hollow moan, while not a struggling beam Steals from the Sun to play on Isis' stream; While from these scenes by England's winter spread Swift to the cheerful hearth your steps are led, Pleas'd from the threatening tempest to retire And join the circle round the social fire; In other clime through sun-bask'd scenes I stray, As the fair landscape leads my thoughtful way, As upland path, oft winding bids me rove Where orange bowers invite, or olive grove, No sullen phantoms brooding o'er my breast, The genial influence of the clime I taste; Yet still regardful of my native shore, In every scene, my roaming eyes explore,
Whate'er its aspect, still, by memory brought, My fading country rushes on my thought. ___24
While now perhaps the classic page you turn, And warm'd with honest indignation burn, 'Till hopeless, sicklied by the climate's gloom, Your generous fears call forth Britannia's doom, What hostile spears her sacred lawns invade, By friends deserted, by her chiefs betray'd, Low fall'n and vanquish'd!-I, with mind serene As Lisboa's sky, yet pensive as the scene Around, and pensive seems the scene to me, From other ills my country's fate foresee.
Not from the hands that wield Iberia's spear,
Not from the hands that Gaul's proud thunders bear, Nor those that turn on Albion's breast the sword Beat down of late by Albion when it gored Their own, who impious doom their parent's fall Beneath the world's great foe th' insidious Gaul; Yes, not from these the immedicable wound Of Albion Other is the bane profound Destined alone to touch her mortal part; Herself is sick and poisoned at the heart. 4
O'er Tago's banks where'er I roll mine eyes, The gallant deeds of antient days arise ; The scenes the Lusian Muses fond display'd Before me oft, as oft at eve I stray'd
By Isis' hallowed stream.
Where Gama march'd his death-devoted band, While Lisboa awed with horror saw him spread The daring sails that first to India led ; And oft Almada's castled steep inspires The pensive Muse's visionary fires; Almada Hill to English Memory dear, While shades of English heroes wander here!
To ancient English valor sacred still Remains, and ever shall, Almada Hill;
The hill and lawns to English valor given
What time the Arab Moons from Spain were driven,
Before the banners of the Cross subdued,
When Lisboa's towers were bathed in Moorish blood By Gloster's lance.-Romantic days that yield
Of gallant deeds a wide luxuriant field
Dear to the Muse that loves the fairy plains Where ancient honor wild and ardent reigns.
Where high o'er Tago's flood Almada lowers, Amid the solemn pomp of mouldering towers Supinely seated, wide and far around My eye delighted wanders. Here the bound Of fair Europa o'er the Ocean rears Its western edge; where dimly disappears The Atlantic wave, the slow descending day Mild beaming pours serene the gentle ray Of Lusitania's winter, silvering o'er
The tower-like summits of the mountain shore ;
Dappling the lofty cliffs that coldly throw Their sable horrors o'er the vales below. Far round the stately-shoulder'd river bends Its giant arms, and sea-like wide extends Its midland bays, with fertile islands crown'd, And lawns for English valor still renown'd: Given to Cornwallia's gallant sons of yore, Cornwallia's name the smiling pastures bore ; 0 And still their Lord his English lineage boasts From Rolland famous in the Croisade Hosts. Where sea-ward narrower rolls the shining tide Through hills by hills embosom'd on each side, Monastic walls in every glen arise
In coldest white fair glistening to the skies Amid the brown-brow'd rocks; and, far as sight, Proud domes and villages array'd in white Climb o'er the steeps, and thro' the dusky green Of olive groves, and orange bowers between, o Speckled with glowing red, unnumber'd gleam- And Lisboa towering o'er the lordly stream Her marble palaces and temples spreads Wildly magnific o'er the loaded heads Of bending hills, along whose high-piled base The port capacious, in a moon'd embrace, Throws her mast-forest, waving on the gale The vanes of every shore that hoists the sail.
Here while the Sun from Europe's breast retires, Let Fancy, roaming as the scene inspires, -100
Pursue the present and the past restore,
And Nature's purpose in her steps explore.
Nor you, my Friend, admiring Rome, disdain Th' Iberian fields and Lusitanian Spain. While Italy, obscured in tawdry blaze, A motley, modern character displays, And languid trims her long exhausted store; Iberia's fields with rich and genuine ore Of ancient manners woo the traveller's eye; And scenes untraced in every landscape lie. Here every various dale with lessons fraught Calls to the wanderer's visionary thought What mighty deeds the lofty hills of Spain Of old have witness'd-From the evening main Her mountain tops the Tyrian pilots saw
In lightnings wrapt, and thrill'd with sacred awe Thro' Greece the tales of Gorgons, Hydras spread, And Geryon dreadful with the triple head; The stream of Lethe, and the dread abodes Of forms gigantic, and infernal gods.
But soon, by fearless lust of gold impell'd,
They mined the mountain, and explored the field; 'Till Rome and Carthage, fierce for empire, strove, As for their prey two famish'd birds of Jove.
The rapid Durius then and Boetis' flood
Were dyed with Roman and with Punic blood, While oft the lengthening plains and mountain sides Seem'd moving on, slow rolling tides on tides,
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