The ills that unborn innocents must bear,
When doomed to come to earth--
Bethought--and gave thee birth
To charm the poison from affliction there;
And from his source eternal, bade thee draw.

He gave thee power, inferior to his own
But in control o'er matter. 'Mid the crash
Of earthquake, war, and storm,
Is seen thy radiant form
Thou com'st at midnight on the lightning's flash,
And ope'st to those thou lov'st new scenes and worlds unknown.

And still, as wild barbarians fiercely break
The graceful column and the marble dome--
Where arts too long have lain
Debased at pleasure's fain,
And bleeding justice called on wrath to come,
'Mid ruins heaped around, thou bidst thy votarists wake.

Methinks I see thee on the broken shrine
Of some fall'n temple--where the grass waves high
With many a flowret wild;
While some lone, pensive, child
Looks on the sculpture with a wondering eye
Whose kindling fires betray that he is chosen thine. [FN#1]


[FN#1] Genius, perhaps, has often, nay generally, been awakened and
the whole future bent of the mind thus strongly operated upon,