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Could'st thou not guard the seed, thus sown,
From storms and blighting dews;

While the world's wealth around was strown,
Gemm'd with her thousand hues?
Woes me! thy soil but proved its grave,

Or spurned it on the rolling wave.

Yet, nursed by heav'n, it cannot die,

Tho' on the waters borne ;

It blooms beneath a northern sky,

In fields of waving corn;

And Albion's shore the birth-right finds,
Thou had'st-but scatter'dst to the winds.

Thou wert a mart of nations then,

When Rome the sceptre sway'd;

And wealth of earth, and vows of men,
Upon thy shrines were laid:

Fill'd was thy horn with corn and wine-
The glory of a world was thine!

But since thou scorn'dst thy Lord to greet,
Thy earth-born treasures fail;
The rippling waters kiss thy feet,

But bear no snow-white sail;
Thy wealth-thy beauty-thy renown,
Are with the seeds of blessing gone.

All things have pluck'd thy power-the sea
Hath laughed thy works to scorn;
While nature holds her revelry

'Mid Jove's proud fane forlorn ; And on the ruins of thy pride,

The cells of woe and want abide.

God winks at ignorance, nor withholds
His outward mercies' store-

But when he heav'nly gifts unfolds,
And bids men sin no more,

Who spurn the boon,-the grace withstand,
Loose judgments o'er a guilty land!

Sad lot! to lose all Man had given,
Nor know what God can give ;
Flung from the earth, to win not heaven,
Dead, with a name to live;

While beams the Sun, to sleep in night,
Nor feel his warmth, nor own his light!

Yet thus it is-who spurn His sheep
Wake up His burning ire;

Who sow the wind must ever reap

The whirlwind as their hire.

Is this thy gain, Puteoli?

So lost! Who would not weep for thee!

THE TEMPLES OF PESTUM.

SONNET.

LONE wrecks of ages gone! whose very roar
Hath died i' th' distance-ye have known no change
But touch of years, while all around is strange,
Save the wild waves that sweep yon bending shore !
How have ye charmed Time, that he no more
Should seek your ruin, nor the gentle Earth
Estrange from your rude forms the love she bore,
When with wreath'd flowers she garlanded your birth?
What would ye-tarrying here, when all are fled;-
Your matted altars left, the lizards' play;
Sucking the dews of death among the dead,

Clinging to earth, and wrestling with decay?
Sham'd of your heathen gods-ye will not die,

Till man redress foul wrong, and plant Christ's cross on high.

THE PONTINE MARSHES.

CURSED IS THE GROUND FOR THY SAKE.-GEN. III. 17.

Lo! signs of morn o'er heaven's face! Come, strain like stag-hound in the chase, For with disease we run the race

These shoals among―

As, speeding near the mountain's base,
We course along.

What means the earth-so slow to wake, Her covering from her shoulders shake, While sun-beams on her slumbers break? Will she not own

Him, who from nought her being spake, As King alone?

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