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THE POST OF HONOR.
5
That "virtue only makes our bliss below,
And all our knowledge is ourselves to know,"
We read at school, in unforgotten lines,
Where sterling sense in sparkling couplets shines;
My theme to-night thy glittering muse demands,
Who touched life's follies with unsparing hands,
Or thine, Urania, skilled to sweep the lyre4
With all Pope's freedom, and with Campbell's fire.
And all our knowledge is ourselves to know,"
We read at school, in unforgotten lines,
Where sterling sense in sparkling couplets shines;
My theme to-night thy glittering muse demands,
Who touched life's follies with unsparing hands,
Or thine, Urania, skilled to sweep the lyre4
With all Pope's freedom, and with Campbell's fire.
Star of the heart! the eagle's sunward plume!
Wild meteor, dancing in the midnight gloom,
Ambition's goal, that oft delusive dream,
The Post of Honor, is my chosen theme.
Its ampler range eludes my hurrying sight,
I can but hover, others may alight;—
Though far and wide the gleaming standard flies,
Wings clipt like mine can dare no upper skies.
But, though I come not with presuming hand
To scatter precepts, like a housewife's sand,—
Wild meteor, dancing in the midnight gloom,
Ambition's goal, that oft delusive dream,
The Post of Honor, is my chosen theme.
Its ampler range eludes my hurrying sight,
I can but hover, others may alight;—
Though far and wide the gleaming standard flies,
Wings clipt like mine can dare no upper skies.
But, though I come not with presuming hand
To scatter precepts, like a housewife's sand,—
