voices of the singers whose inspiration they think they share.

Looking at this poem as an expression of some aspects of the _ars
poetica_, with some passages which I can read even at this mature period
of life without blushing for them, it may stand as the most serious
representation of my early efforts. Intended as it was for public
delivery, many of its paragraphs may betray the fact by their somewhat
rhetorical and sonorous character.

SCENES of my youth! awake its slumbering fire!
Ye winds of Memory, sweep the silent lyre!
Ray of the past, if yet thou canst appear,
Break through the clouds of Fancy's waning year;
Chase from her breast the thin autumnal snow,
If leaf or blossom still is fresh below!

Long have I wandered; the returning tide
Brought back an exile to his cradle's side;
And as my bark her time-worn flag unrolled,
To greet the land-breeze with its faded fold,
So, in remembrance of my boyhood's time,
I lift these ensigns of neglected rhyme;
Oh, more than blest, that, all my wanderings through,
My anchor falls where first my pennons flew!

. . . . . . . . .

The morning light, which rains its quivering beams
Wide o'er the plains, the summits, and the streams,
In one broad blaze expands its golden glow