So very deaf, so blind a creature,
As Delia, ne'er was seen in nature.
Blind to each failing of a friend,
But ever ready to commend;
Yet not to failings blind alone,
Blind to each beauty of her own.
So very deaf, that if around
A thousand shrill-toned tongues should sound,
With scandal tipt, good names to tear,
A single word she would not hear;
Or, if, by chance, amidst a crowd,
Some antiquated maid, so loud,
Against a youthful fair should rail,
That deafness' self must hear the tale :
Her comprehension is so slow,
A single word she would not know;
Or did she know, so weak her brain,
That scandal's tale it can't contain.
Yet these are trifles, when compared
To things that all the town has heard,
For though so stupid, deaf and blind,
The greatest charge is left behind;
The faults of nature, I'd forgive,
But she's the greatest thief alive.
In earliest youth, the cunning chit
Had pilfer'd Hermes of his wit!
Within a deep embowering wood,
A hoary hermit's cottage stood;
There as Minerva once retired,
To seek the sage herself inspired,
While all around was wrapt in night,
Save the pale student's glimmering light,
She came with worse than burglar's tread,
And filch'd the helmet from her head!
She robb'd the Graces of their charms,
And off she ran with Cupid's arms.
She stole the queen of beauty's zone,
And made Diana's smiles her own;
Nor does she ever spend a day
But what she steals some heart away;
E'en while I write this hasty line,
I feel, I feel she's stealing mine.
Yes-stupid, deaf and blind's the creature,
And yet the greatest thief in nature.
WROTE a volume entitled Descriptive Poems, containing picturesque views of the state of New York. It was published at New York, in 1802.
THE morn now glittering on the sandy brows
Of Alba's sloping city, westward spreads
A canopy of azure o'er the woods
And smiling lakes. The Mohawk's Falls we seek;
And, turning to the rich and fragrant vales
That westward wind, approach the fractured steep,
In hoarse and silver fountains, where he pours
His urn amongst the far resounding rocks.
Let Science tell the mighty cause that erst
The mountain fabric's horizontal base
Upturning, gave the roaring waters vent
Along their lacerated bed, slate-paved,
And branching to the Hudson; while the muse,
With humbler views, the cataract admires,
In streams of foam, where, glancing down
The precipice, it widens to a gulf,
And amphitheatre of quarried rocks,
Their sylvan brows with spiral cedars set,
Or coppice crown'd; and issuing through the vale,
With pleasing murmur steals along the shrubs
And shadowy elms.-Here, where the Mohawk gazed,
And wonder'd at th' abode vortiginous
Of his tremendous father, in the rocks
And flood impassable, see Art pervades
E'en Nature's ruins, with aspiring hand
Stretch'd o'er the torrent's foam, the rifted banks
Uniting, with such works as Rome, when throned
On nations, wrought. Across a giddy pile
Of wood the horseman now pursues his way,
Succeeded by the length'ning herd and swains
In slow procession, while beneath them roars
The headlong river. Leaving now the Falls,
With all their grander lineaments, behind,
We pass along the peaceful Mohawk's shore,
And trace the vale where'er the fruitful stream,
Meandering from the west, the distant hills
Receding designate. In front a width
Of richest intervale, our champaign route,
Within the smiling scenes of husbandry,
Far westward leads. Beneath its willowy banks
The fertilizing stream glides down the vale,
Now intersecting in an equal course, and now
Inclining to the north; now south it laves
The sidelong hills' ascent; then winding off,
Sleeps, high embower'd, within the spreading growth
Of pensive elms that tower luxuriant o'er
The elders, and with hanging plane trees mix
Their graceful limbs and interwoven shade.
As frequent thus the silent stream escapes
The traveller's eye incurious, while it lurks
In silence by, hoarse murmurs wake his ear
At intervals, as o'er the rapid shoals
The obstructed water fluctuating shoots
Among the broken rocks. The antique fronts
We gain, wrapt in Batavian gloom of sheds
And intermingled trees, where Corlear first,
Advancing from the sandy desert, fix'd
His dwelling on the margin of the still
And sable river. Academic Peace
And Meditation now consign the spot
To future Science. Here the dusty road
Forsaking for the verdant turf, we scent
The fragrance of the evening, and survey
The shore, enamor'd of its pensive scenes,
Harmonious, tranquil, which thy genius, Claude,
Taught by the sober Fancies, had confess'd her own.
Amidst the shade suspended o'er the vale,
The mirror of the Mohawk's tide reflects
A varied tapestry: the vivid green
Of willows interwove-the plane tree's hoar
And dappled waist-the pensive, sombre elm,
Queen of the Flats, her hanging robes diffuse
And graceful. Fronting in perspective dim,
A range of mountain, from the Kaatskill's loins
Projected, in a promontory falls
Sublime in distant grandeur on the shore;
While through its horizontal firs, the west,
Still beaming with effulgence, dyes the stream
With ardent yellow. Night, contemplative,
27*
Now drops her veil. How pleasing 't is to trace,
Upon the map of Time, the varied scenes
Of this revolving world; some nearly lost
In dim Oblivion's haze-some living yet
Upon the tablet of the memory—
And some in letter'd annals of the past!
The Flats, that stretching west,
* yield their rich increase Of yellow harvests to the spacious barns,
* sustain'd a sullen growth of wood, And through the unchronicled domain of Day Lay in tranquility and solitude;
Till first the roving Huron glanced across,
Quick as his arrow that pursued the deer;
And, hailing in the lonely chace his devious mate,
With shoutings wild, beside Schoharie's brooks,
Or Canajohary's echoing cliffs,
First broke the silence of the wilderness.
The houseless pair, encamping then, unstripp'd
The beech's yellow stem, and cased their walls
Of clay, or matted boughs; purloining yet,
Unconscious of their distant arrow's wing,
The squirrel of his life, or pheasant, clothed
With dappled feathers to his heels. Then came
Some friend or kinsman, with his toiling wife,
Their quiver'd boys and dog; and huts soon join'd
To buts, had form'd society, and taught,
By stationary life's progressive arts,
Its hard-earn'd comforts. But eternal laws,
Employing man's own vengeance as the means
To bring abortion on his works, forbade.
Some hostile tribe, with carnage unappeased,
Lean, wandering, with invidious eyes beheld
Their haunts, and lurk'd in ambush near their huts;
Then fell on them defenceless; in a night
Up-rooted all their works, and half their race
Destroy'd. Th' industrious colonists were chased,
Unshelter'd, through the woods, and left behind
No relic but their scalps. The Mohawks next
And firm confederate friends, unused to war,
And studious of ignoble tillage, lash'd
By fierce oppressors from their homes, traced out
On Caughnawaga's meads, or 'neath Caroga's pines,
Their rude encampments. Hate and dark design,
Though stifled, kindling in their vengeful hearts
Infuriate love of arms. Their origin,
And whence their wild forefathers stray'd,
No annals tell; whether inclining toward
The peaceful ocean, where the sun at eve,
Upon the shining mountains lights his fires,
On Arathbuscaw's hungry shores, and where
The arctic circle girds the piny rocks
And lakes, in vast congeries round them spread;
Or southward from th' illimitable plain
Depastured by erratic buffaloes,
Where, hovering round the herds, th' Assinipoils
Upon their tongues and marrowy haunches feast.
Where'er the roving ancestors were born,
"T was here their spirited and martial sons
First sung the war-song-here on frequent spots
Which now the dwarfish oak and pine o'erspread,
And where the sumach scatters on the lap
Of autumn, azure-cheek'd, its pinnated
And scarlet leaves, once stood their huts; 't was here
Their arrows first they sharpen'd, to transfix
The Adirondac tyrants, seated round
The blanketed and tawny sachems smoked
In council, or the yelling bands, inspired
Like frantic Bacchanals, with fierce grimace,
And gesture fiend-like, beat the war dance: here,
By vengeance nursed, they raised a flame,
That, from the ocean to Machibon's gate,
Spread conflagration through the woods. The foe,
Unconscious of their strength, secure, remote,
And unsuspecting, till he heard the shrieks
Of savage fury, and the warriors bald,
Besmear'd with ochre, issued from their haunts,
Flinging their brandish'd tomahawks, with eyes
Red as the crouching panther's. None escaped,
Resisting or resistless, from their blows.
The aged sire struck lifeless on his seat;
The panting bosom gored, that press'd the babe
It nourish'd. Devastation swept o'er all
The scene, and stain'd the ruin'd stage with blood.
Rejoicing then, the victors to their vales,
Renown'd for empire, march'd with the acclaim
Of triumph: every proud and valiant hut
Was nail'd with bleeding scalps; and tribes remote
Gave tributary homage to the Wolf,
The Turtle and the Bear. The fosse still marks
Their castle's range, and in the lonely woods,
In hieroglyphics, still remain their boasts
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