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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