Eternal dawn, what possible hue

Could lend its tint to your rainbow sky?

Pray bear this lay that strives in vain

To paint yon heavens ever so high –

A cloud that imbibes seas of love,

Oceans of poesy instil its pores;

It scatters in verse immortal hymns

That animate vigour in future’s spores –

A pioneer rock that outstands the shore,

Washed and sprayed with spuming brine,

Unwearied of life, confronting the vast

Infinite waters of the Muses’ shrine –

A lute that chants heroic rhymes,

Inscribed in Calliope’s tablet of yore,

Inspired by Erato, its strings dispel

The breath that buoyed the Skylark’s soar –

A beacon that hazards Polyhymnia’s caves,

Eager to explore her mystic art,

Pervading the tragic gloom, to soothe

Melpomene’s mournful heart –

Where to begin, and where to end

These unmellowed metres measured in rhyme?

For these fragments fail ’fore a soul so rare

With a heart so vast, and a mind sublime.