Ah! had they come to light when nature
Was a wonder-loving, story-telling child!--
The misty morn of ages had gone by,
The dreamy childhood of the race was past,
And in its tame and reasoning manhood,
In the daylight broad, and noon-day of all time,
_This_ world hath sprung. The poetry of _truth_,
None other, shall her shining lakes, and woods,
And ocean-streams, and hoary mountains wear.
Perchance that other day of poesy,
Unsung of prophets, that upon the lands
Shall dawn yet, thence shall spring. The self-same mind
That on the night of ages once, for us
Those deathless clusters flung, the self-same mind,
With all its ancient elements of might,
Among us now its ancient glory hides;
But, from its smothered power, and buried wealth,
A golden future sparkles, decked from deeper founts,
A new and lovelier firmament,
A thousand realms of song undreamed of now,
That shall make Romance a forgotten world,
And the young heaven of Antiquity,
With all its starry groups, a gathered scroll.
_Mor_. Ay, Andre, you were born a poet, and have mistaken your art.
Prythee excuse me, who am but a poor soldier, for marring so fine a
rhapsody with any thing so sublunary; but, methinks, for an enemy's
quarters, yonder fort shows as peaceable a front of stone and mortar as
one could ask for.
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