Enthusiasm and Other Poems
A different spirit animates his breast.

Their eager calculations, hopes, and fears,

Still flit before him, like dim shadows thrown

By April's passing clouds upon the stream,

A moment mirrored in its azure depths,

Till the next sunbeam turns them into light!—

Rashly confiding, still to be deceived,

Our youthful poet overleaps the bounds

Of probability. He walks this earth

Like an enfranchised spirit; and the storms,

That darken and convulse a guilty world,

Come like faint peals of thunder on his ear,

Or hoarser murmurs of the mighty deep,

Which heard in some dark forest's leafy shade

But add a solemn grandeur to the scene.—

[Pg 7]

The genial tide of thought still swiftly flows

Rejoicing onward, ere the icy breath

Of sorrow falls upon the sunny fount,

And chains the music of its dancing waves.—


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