Classic Poem

AN ODE .

How varied lies the chequered scene! —
D UNMIAT capt with snow;
While humbler smiles, in vernal green,
The sun-gilt vale below:
Gay Spring her cheering task performs,
Regardless of the wintry storms
That sweep proud Ochil's lofty side;
And, sheltered from the mountain gale,
Secure, smooth glides the winding sail
Down Forth's meandering tide.
Alas! how like the chequered state
Of man's contrasted lot!
The storms that whirl round Grandeur's gate;
The Peasant's sheltered cot;
Disdainful Pride, with wintry brow;
Rough Labour, jocund at his plough,
Still cheered by health's unclouded beam;
While, safe from luxury's whelming tide,
Peace, hope, and resignation, glide
Down life's untroubled stream.
To meditation's musing mind
Still moral pictures rise:
Ambition, dashed by fortune's wind,
When tow'ring to the skies;
Exalted beauty, doomed to move
In spheres unwarmed by genial love,
Tost by the storms of sordid strife! —
While, nurtured in some vale obscure,
The humbler fair one blooms secure,
The mistress and the wife!

But late, in strength and beauty's prime,
The tow'ring Plane arose;

Proud, o'er Strevlina's height sublime
It waved its mantling boughs!
What time mild evening gilds her star,
The trav'ller spied it from afar,
And, raptured, wondered where it grew. —
Fond fancy placed its magic height
Mid regions streaked with golden light
Through heaven's ethereal blue!

Embosomed in the bank below,
That courts the southern breeze,
The humbler Hawthorn's doomed to blow
Mid kindred shrubs and trees;
Obscured, its balmy sweets diffuse,
Unmarked, save by the moral muse,
That nightly breathes the rich perfume! —
How vain is Grandeur's splendid show! —
Ambition, mark! — the Plane laid low!
The Hawthorn left to bloom.