2.
Fortune! take back these cultur'd lands,
Take back this name of splendid sound!
I hate the touch of servile hands,
I hate the slaves that cringe around:
Place me among the rocks I love,
Which sound to Ocean's wildest roar;
I ask but this—again to rove
Through scenes my youth hath known before.
3.
Few are my years, and yet I feel
The World was ne'er design'd for me:
Ah! why do dark'ning shades conceal
The hour when man must cease to be?
Once I beheld a splendid dream,
A visionary scene of bliss;
Truth!—wherefore did thy hated beam
Awake me to a world like this?
4.
I lov'd—but those I lov'd are gone;
Had friends—my early friends are fled:
How cheerless feels the heart alone,
When all its former hopes are dead!
Though gay companions, o'er the bowl
Dispel awhile the sense of ill;
Though Pleasure stirs the maddening soul,
The heart—the heart—is lonely still.
