Oh, sire of storms! whose savage ear The Lapland drum delights to hear, When Frenzy with her blood-shot eye Implores thy dreadful deity. Fast descending as thou art, Say, hath mortal invocation, Spells to touch thy stony heart? Then sullen Winter hear my prayer, And gently rule the ruin'd year; Nor chill the wand'rer's bosom bare, Nor freeze the wretch's falling tear; To shuddering want's unmantled bed, Thy horror-breathing agues cease to lead, And gently on the orphan head Of innocence descend. But chiefly spare, O king of clouds! The sailor on his airy shrouds; When wrecks and beacons strew the steep, And spectres walk along the deep. Milder yet thy snowy breezes Pour on yonder tented shores, Where the Rhine's broad billow freezes, Or the dark-brown Danube roars. Oh winds of winter! list ye there To many a deep and dying groan; Or start, ye demons of the midnight air, At shrieks and thunders louder than your own. Alas! ev'n your unhallow'd breath May spare the victim, fallen low; But man will ask no truce to death,— No bounds to human woes. This ode was written in Germany, at the close of 1800, before the conclusion of hostilities, THE SOLDIER'S DREAM. OUR bugles sang truce-for the night-cloud had low'r'd, And the centinel stars set their watch in the sky; And thousands had sunk on the ground overpow'r'd, The weary to sleep, and the wounded to die. When reposing that night on my pallet of straw, By the wolf-scaring faggot that guarded the slain; At the dead of the night a sweet vision I saw, And thrice ere the morning I dreamt it again. Methought from the battle-field's dreadful array, Far, far I had roam'd on a desolate track : 'Twas autumn-and sunshine arose on the way To the home of my fathers, that welcom❜d me back. I flew to the pleasant fields travers'd so oft In life's morning march, when my bosom was young; I heard my own mountain-goats bleating aloft, And knew the sweet strain that the corn-reapers sung. |