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.