Samuel Kettell, ed. Specimens of American Poetry. 1829.
By Ode to MeditationWilliam Moore Smith (1759–1821)
O
Within some far sequester’d cell,
Unknown to Folly’s noisy train,
Untrod by Riot’s step profane,
Meek Meditation! silent maid,
To thee my votive verse be paid;
To thee, whose mildly pleasing power
Could check wild youth’s impetuous flight,
And in affection’s gloomy night
Could soothe the “torturing hour,”
To thee the strains belong;
But say, what powerful spell,
What magic force of song
Can lure thy solemn steps, to my uncultured bower
With thee thy Plato oft would stray;
By the brilliant star of morn
That saw thee bend o’er Solon’s urn;
By all the tears you shed
When Numa bow’d his languid head;
By the mild joys that in thy breast would swell,
When Antonine, by grateful realms adored,
Majestic Rome’s immortal lord,
Would leave the toils, the pomp of state,
The crimson splendors of the victor’s car,
The painful pleasures of the great,
The shouts of triumph, and the din of war,
In Tiber’s hallowed groves with thee to dwell.
Exists the taste for ancient lore,
For from oppression’s scourge the muses fled;
And Tiber’s willow’d banks along
Where Maro pour’d the classic song,
Grim superstition stalks with giant tread.
The magic spell, the potent word;—
A spell to charm thy sober ear,
A name to thee, to freedom dear!—
By the soft sigh that stole o’er Schuylkill’s wave,
When he around whose urn
Dejected nations mourn,
Immortal Franklin sunk into the grave;
By his thoughts, by thee inspired;
By his works by worlds admired;
By the tears by science shed,
O’er the patriot’s dying head;
By the voice of purest fame
That gave to time his deathless name,
By these, and every powerful spell,
Oh! come meek nymph, with me to dwell.
Wreaths of oak from Runnymead,
Where the British barons bold
Taught their king in days of old,
To tremble at insulted Freedom’s frown,
And venerate the rights her children deem’d their own.
For he, like them, intrepid rose
Against insulted Freedom’s foes,
Fix’d the firm barrier ’gainst oppression’s plan,
And dared assert the sacred rights of man!
To deck her champion’s ever honor’d shrine,
The victor’s laurel shall be seen
In folds of never-dying green;
The muses too, shall bring
Each flow’ret of the spring,
Wet with the beamy tears of morn;
And there with all her tresses torn,
What time meek twilight’s parting ray
Sinks lingering in nights dun embrace,
Pale-eyed Philosophy shall stray
In hopes his awful form to trace,
Hovering on some pregnant cloud,
From whence, while thunders burst aloud,
From whence, while through the trembling air
In lurid streams the lightnings glare,
His rod her head she ’ll wave around,
And lead the harmless terrors to the ground.
Thy sober, pensive bosom please,
We ’ll seek the dark embrowning wood
That frowns o’er broad Ohio’s flood,
And while amid the gloom of night
No twinkling star attracts the sight;
And while beneath, the sullen tide
Shall in majestic silence glide,
We ’ll listen to the notes of wo,
By echo borne from plains below,
Where Genius droops his laurel’d head,
And Honor mourns a Clymer dead.
Has oft been stain’d with streams of gore,
Ah! never did a meeker tear
Impearl thy banks from Virtue’s eye;
Ah! never did thy breezes bear
A purer breath than Clymer’s sigh.
Ye plains that saw sedition wave
Her impious banners to the wind,
With you the youth has found his grave,
To you is virtue’s friend consign’d;
Yet still, as each succeeding race
Through time to fate shall pass away,
Ah! never shall your sods embrace
A dearer pledge than Clymer’s clay.
Shall Pity’s softest tears be shed,
There Friendship’s sacred form shall come
To strow with flowers his Clymer’s tomb,
And while the queen of night shall shroud
Her beams behind some threatening cloud;
And while the western mountain’s brow
The star of eve shall sink below;
And while the consecrated ground
Mute Melancholy stalks around,
There, Meditation, shalt thou find
A scene to suit thy sober mind,
There Fancy’s hand shall form the cell
In which thou long shalt love to dwell,
And undisturbed by wild sedition’s tread,
Muse o’er the virtues of the silent dead.