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No native bard the patient harp hath ta'en, 



But left to minstrels of a foreign strand 



To sing the beauteous scenes of nature's loveliest land. 



Tis true no fairies haunt our verdant meads, 



No grinning imps deform our blazing hearth ; 



Beneath the Kelpie's fang no traveler bleeds, 



Nor gory vampire taints our holy earth, 



No spectres stalk to frighten harmless mirth. 



Nor tortured demon howls adown the gale ; 



Fair reason checks these monsters in their birth 



Yet have we lay of love and horrid tale 



Would dim the manliest eye, and make the bravest pale. 



Romantic Wyoming ! could none be found 



Of all that rove thy Eden groves among, 



To wake a native harp's untutored sound, 



And give thy tale of woe the voice of song? 



Oh ! if description's cold and nerveless tongue 



From stranger harps such hallowed strains could call, 



How doubly sweet the descant wild had rung, 



From one who, lingering round thy ruined wall, 



Had plucked thy mourning flowers and wept thy timeless fall. 



The Huron chief, escaped from foemen nigh, 



His frail bark launches on Niagara's tides, 



" Pride in his port, defiance in his eye," 



Singing his song of death the warrior glides; 



In vain they yell along the river sides, 



In vain the arrow from its sheaf is torn, 



Calm to his doom the willing victim rides, 



And, till adown the roaring torrent borne, 



Mocks them with gesture proud, and laughs their rage to scorn. 



But if the charms of daisied hill and vale, 



And rolling flood, and towering rock sublime, 



If warrior deed or peasant's lowly tale 



Of love or woe should fail to wake the rhyme, 



If to the wildest heights of song you climb, 



(Tho' some who know you less, might cry, beware!) 



Onward ! I say — your strains shall conquer time ; 



Give your bright genius wing, and hope to share 



Imagination's worlds — the ocean, earth, and air. 



When we read this stirring advice to the American muse, we 

 think what Drake might have done had he lived a few years 



