The blithe companions of his riper youth,

And one whose heart was love, whose soul was truth.
-When the quick-mingling pictures of that dream,

(Like broken scenery on a troubled stream,
Where sky and landscape, light and darkness, run
Through widening circles,) harmonized in one;
His father's cot appear'd, with vine-leaves drest,
And clusters pendent round the swallow's nest;
In front the little garden, at whose gate,
Amidst their progeny his parents sate,

He only absent;-but his mother's eye

Look'd through a tear; she reach'd him with a sigh:
Then in a moment vanish'd time and space,

And with a shout he rush'd to her embrace;
Round hills and dales the joyful tidings spread,
All ran to welcome TYRKER from the dead.

With bliss inebriate, in that giddy trance,

He led his waltzing partner through the dance;

And while he pluck'd the grapes that blush'd at hand,

Trod the rich wine-press in his native land,

Quaff'd the full flowing goblet, loosed his tongue,

And songs of vintage, harvest, battle sung.

At length his shipmates came; their laughter broke

The gay delusion; in alarm he 'woke;

Transport to silent melancholy changed;

At once from love, and joy, and hope estranged,
O'er his blank mind, with cold bereaving spell,
Came that heart-sickness, which no tongue can tell ;

-Felt when, in foreign climes, 'midst sounds unknown,

We hear the speech or music of our own,

Roused to delight from drear abstraction start,

And feel our country beating at our heart;

The rapture

of a moment!-in its birth

It perishes for ever from the earth;

And dumb, like shipwreck'd mariners, we stand,

Eying by turns the ocean and the land,

Breathless; -till tears the struggling thought release,

And the lorn spirit weeps itself to peace.

Wineland the glad discoverers call'd that shore,

And back the tidings of its riches bore;

But soon return'd with colonizing bands,

- Men that at home would sigh for unknown lands;

Men of all weathers, fit for every toil,

War, commerce, pastime, peace, adventure, spoil ;
Bold master-spirits, where they touch'd they gain'd
Ascendance; where they fix'd their foot they reign'd.
Both coasts they long inherited, though wide
Dissever'd; stemming to and fro the tide,
Free as the Syrian dove explores the sky,
Their helm their hope, their compass in their eye,
They found at will, where'er they pleased to roam,
The ports of strangers, or their northern home,
Still 'midst tempestuous seas and zones of ice,
Loved as their own, their unlost Paradise.

-Yet was their Paradise for ever lost:

War, famine, pestilence, the power of frost,

Their woes combining, wither'd from the earth
This late creation, like a timeless birth,

The fruit of age and weakness, forced to light,
Breathing awhile, - relapsing into night.

G

Ages had seen the vigourous race, that sprung

From Norway's stormy forelands, rock'd when young

In ocean's cradle, hardening as they rose

Like mountain-pines amidst perennial snows:

- Ages had seen these sturdiest sons of 'Time

Strike root and flourish in that ruffian clime,
Commerce with lovelier lands and wealthier hold,

Yet spurn the lures of luxury and gold,
Beneath the umbrage of the Gallic vine,

For moonlight snows and cavern-shelter pine,
Turn from Campanian fields a lofty eye

To gaze upon the glorious Alps, and sigh,

Remembering Greenland; more and more endear'd, As far and farther from its shores they steer'd;

Greenland their world, and all was strange beside;

Elsewhere they wander'd; here they lived and died. At length a swarthy tribe, without a name, Unknown the point of windward whence they came; The power by which stupendous gulphs they cross'd, Or compass'd wilds of everlasting frost,

Alike mysterious;-found their sudden way
To Greenland; pour'd along the western bay
Their straggling families; and seized the soil
For their domain, the ocean for their spoil.
Skraellings the Normans call'd these hordes in scorn,
That seem'd created on the spot, -though born

In trans-atlantic climes, and thither brought

By paths as covert as the birth of thought;

They were at once;-the swallow-tribes in spring
Thus daily multiply upon the wing,

As if the air, their element of flight,

Brought forth new broods from darkness every night;

Slipt from the secret hand of Providence,

They come we see not how, nor knów we whence. (ƒ)

A stunted, stern, uncouth, amphibious stock,

Hewn from the living marble of the rock,

Or sprung from mermaids, and in ocean's bed,
With orcs and seals, in sunless caverns bred,

(f) See Note (I.) of the Appendix.