Bright day! with thee the song
Of Independence rose;
Then Freedom, bold and strong,
Defied her mortal foes:
Armed into life and light she sprung,
Like Pallas born of Jove;
At Britain's feet the gauntlet flung,
And back her champion drove:
Young, and yet wise, she won her cause,
And war's red banner furled;
Then fixed the reign of equal laws,
And awed a wondering world.

Bright day! with thee our sires
Proclaimed Columbia free:
Light with auspicious fires
This holiest jubilee!
'Mid clouds of war thy sun arose,

I saw the fair one pass away,
In her earliest beauty's bright array,
In the glow of hope and the flush of pride,
And the innocent joy of a virgin bride,
When her heart, yet pure as the fallen snow,
Gave loose to its feelings' fullest flow,
And her cheek, as rich as the crimson flower
That opens in India's sunny bower,
Was hung with curls that danced and flew,
As the wind of the morning lightly blew,
And swelled the sail of the bark that bore
The bride from that loved and lovely shore.
O, thus in her maiden beauty gay

White and pure by the Northern Sea in the Arctic day it lies,
Fairer far than St Petersburg, and greater in Finnish eyes:
By snow-drift and floe-drift where the distant bergs are grand,
And the ice blink and the northern lights like a frozen fairyland;
And still they cleave to the Swedish church, the Norsemen of the Norse,
In, not a collection of greasy huts — but the city of Helsingfors.

Big and blonde, and with flaxen hair, and a grin for his downs and ups,
And a womanish seeming affection, unknown to an Englishman, in his cups,

Can the rose of summer fade,
The bright and blooming rose?
Shall winter sweep the glade,
Where its tender beauty blows?
There is perfume in the air,
And it steals from the opening flower;
But the winds shall rudely tear
The treasures of field and bower.

They fade, — how soon they fade,
The flowers of earth and sky!
Was all that beauty made,
To smile a moment and die?
O, will not the colors stay,
That glow in the west at even,
And the hues of the rising day
Be ever the charm of heaven?

My place is in the quiet vale,
The chosen haunt of simple thought;
I seek not fortune's flattering gale,
I better love the peaceful lot.

I leave the world of noise and show,
To wander by my native brook;
I ask, in life's unruffled flow,
No treasure but my friend and book.

These better suit the tranquil home,
Where the clear water murmurs by;
And if I wish awhile to roam,
I have an ocean in the sky.

Fancy can charm and feeling bless
With sweeter hours than fashion knows;
There is no calmer quietness,

The men who camp with Danger
Are mostly quiet men:
And one may use a rifle,
And one may use a pen,
And one may strap a camera
In deserts to his bike;
But men who sleep with Danger
Are pretty much alike.

To men in places pleasant
Or in the barren West
There's Danger ever present —
A half unheeded guest.
But, thoughtful for the stranger,
The timid or the weak —
The men who camp with Danger
Keep watch but do not speak.

The men who go with Danger
Are mostly dreamy-eyed,
Upon the swooping fo'c's'le,

Sent in a Letter to the same Lady from Newbury, upon the Author's discovering that he had lost a Lock of Hair out of his Watch, presented to him in order to have a Ring made at Bath .

Ill fated Bard! what think you Fair?
I've lost your jetty Lock of Hair;
The Watch , unmindful of his Charge ,
Has let his Pris'ner 'scape at large;
Indulge me with a second Slip,
And if I make another Trip,
May G AINSBRO'S Pencil do you right,
And hang me up a dreadful Sight ;
May " Walk in, Master, " be the Cry,
To ev'ry Oaf that passes by;

All Nature smiles; the glorious rising Sun
Swift from the " dappl'd East " prepares to run
His daily Course; — but what, alas! to me
Is smiling Nature, or a Sun of Glee? —
All Pleasure's banish'd, thus bereft of thee.

He painted a face on the studio door
And a jest on the window pane —
Those strong, brown hands that shall paint no more —
And I'll never go there again.
They'll clean the window and colour the wall,
And they'll paint the face away;
For they raised the rent when my money was spent.
And I gave up the key to-day.

The Waratah sails and she cannot sink —
She sails in the Indian Sea;

In honours high advance, on silver hil ,
O noble Purbeck , 'tis the Muses will,
Heavens have confirm'd it, and it so shall be,
(Ne're to be chang'd) that they have seated thee.

Vertue in thee abounding, like a mine,
Injoynes no further that we go, true coyne
Lives here, I mean your vertues truly white,
Like unto Silver ; nay it is the right:
Ever may you who such true wealth possesse,
Rightly yet covet more, without excesse,
Standing on silver hil , your happines.