LIBERTY.
AN ODE.
Where the bold rock majestic towers on high,
Projecting to the sky;
Where the impetuous torrent's rapid course
Dashes with headlong force;
Where scenes less wild less awful meet the eye,
And cultur'd vales and cottages appear;
Where softer tints the mellow landscape dye,
More simply beautiful, more fondly dear;
There sportive Liberty delights to rove,
To rove unseen,
In the dell, or in the grove,
'Midst woodlands green.
And when placid eve advancing,
Faintly shadows all the ground;
Liberty with Hebe dancing,
Wanders through the meads around.
Fair wreaths of brightest flowers she loves to twine,
Moss-rose, and blue-bell wild;
The pink, the hyacinth with these combine,
And azure violet, nature's sweetest child!
When the moon beam silvery streaming,
Pierces through the myrtle shade;
Then her eye with pleasure beaming,
She trips along the sylvan glade.
She loves to sing in accents soft,
When the wood-lark soars aloft;
She loves to wake the sprightly horn,
In the dell, or in the grove,
Liberty delights to rove;
By the ruin'd moss-grown tower,
By the wood-land, or the bower;
On the summit thence to view,
The landscape clad in varied hue.
By the hedge-row on the lawn,
Sporting with the playful fawn;
Where the winding river flows,
And the pensile osier grows,
In the cool impervious grove,
Liberty delights to rove.