12 The Traveller at the Source of the. Nile. (Jury, 
The rapture of a conqueror’s mood 
Rush’d burning through his frame,— 
: The depths of that grecn solitude 
. Its torrents could not tame; 
Though stillness lav, with eve’s last smile— 
Round those far fountains of the Nile. 
Night came with stars :—across his soul 4 
There swept a sudden change, 
E’en at the pilgrim’s glorious goal 
A shadow dark and strange 
Breathed from the thought, so swift to fall 
O’er triumph’s hour—and is this all 2* 
No more than this !—what seem’d it now 
First by that spring to stand ? 
A thousand streams of lovelier flow 
Bathed his own mountain land ! 
Whence far o’er waste and ocean track, 
Their wild sweet voices called him back. 
They called him back to many a glade, 
His childhood’s haunt of play, 
Where brightly through the beechen shade 
Their waters glanced away ; 
They called him, with their sounding waves, 
Back to his fathers’ hills and graves. 
But darkly mingling with the thought 
Of eaeh familiar scene, 
Rose up a fearful vision, fraught 
With all that lay between ; 
The Arab’s lance, the desert’s gloom; 
The whirling sands, the red simoom ! 
Where was the glow of power and pride ? 
The spirit born to roam ? 
His altered heart within him died 
With yearnings for his home! 
All vainly struggling to repress 
That gush of painful tenderness. 
He wept—the stars of Afric’s heaven 
Behold his bursting tears, 
F’en on that spot where fate had given 
The meed of toiling years ! 
—Oh, happiness! how far we flee 
Thine own sweet paths in search of thee! 
F. H. 
* A remarkable description of feelings thus fluctuating from triumph to despon- 
dency, is given in Bruce’s Abyssinian Travels. The buoyant exultation of his spirits 
on asriving at the source of the Nile, was almost immediately succeeded by a gloom, 
which he thus pourtrays: “I was, at that very moment, in possession of what had 
for many years been the principal object of my ambition and wishes; indifference, 
which, from the usual infirmity of human nature, follows, at least for a time, complete 
enjoyment, had taken place of it. The marsh and the fountains of the Nile, upon 
comparison with the rise of many of our rivers, became now a trifling object in my 
sight. I remembered that magnificent scene in my own native country, where the 
Tweed, Clyde, and Annan, rise in one hill. I began in my sorrow, to treat the 
inquiry about the source of the Nile as a violent effort of a distempered fancy.” 
) 
