Page:The works of Anna Laetitia Barbauld volume 1.djvu/222

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TO MR. BARBAULD.


Thus canst thou, Rochemont, view this pictured chart,
And trace thy voyage to the promised shore;
Thus does thy faithful bosom beat with joy,
To think the tempest past, the wanderings o'er?

Canst thou recall the days when jealous Doubt,
When boding Fears thy anxious heart oppresst,
When Hope, our star, shone faintly through the gloom,
And the pale cheek betrayed the tortured breast?

And say;—the land through Fancy's glass descried,
The bright Elysian fields her pencil drew,—
Has time the dear ideas realized?
Or are her optics false, her tints untrue?

O say they are not!—Though life's ceaseless cares,
JLife's ceaseless toils demand thy golden hours,
Tell her glad heart whose hand these lines confess,
That Peace resides in Hymen's happy bowers.