Hope, Fortune, Love, smiled brightly on thy birth, Thine hour of death is all Affliction's own! It is our task to suffer-and our fate To learn that mighty lesson, soon or late. The season's glory fades-the vintage-lay As Death hath made them with his blighting touch! The summer's breath came o'er them-and they died! Softly it came, to give luxuriance birth, Called forth young Nature in her festal pride, But bore to them their summons from the earth! No sculptured urn, nor verse thy virtues telling, But o'er that humble cypress-shaded dwelling The dew-drops glisten, and the wild-flowers wave— Emblems more meet, in transient light and bloom, For thee, who thus didst pass in brightness to the tomb! Sebast. With what young life and fragrance in its breath My native air salutes me! from the groves And thy majestic tide thus foaming on Fair stream, my Tajo! youth with all its glow And pride of feeling through my soul and frame Past their bright shores flow joyously. Sweet land, Of the lone desert? Time and toil must needs Have changed our mien; but this, our blessed land, Wears, amidst all its quiet loveliness, A hue of desolation, and the calm, The solitude and silence which pervade Earth, air, and ocean, seem belonging less When it hath looked not thus. Sebast. Aye, now thy soul Is in the past! Oh no, it looked not thus When the morn smiled upon our thousand sails, With all its hues of glory, seems to burst The stately barks, the arming, the array, Swayed by the sea-breeze till their motion shewed |