From dreams I wake to real woe,
While winds from every quarter blow,
And urge the beating rain;
Ill leave my pillow, steepd in tears,
And try to dissipate my cares
With my sweet lyre again.

Ah! where is fancy's magic power,
That us'd to charm each dreary hour,
And gild the darkest Storm?
Ev'n in the howling of the wind,
Soft plaintive murmurs she cou'd find,
Breath'd by some airy form!

Oft has she borne me on her wing,
To climes that know eternal spring,
To sweet Arcadian vales;
To where the vi'lets fragrant breath,
Perfumes unseen the desart heath,
With aromatic gales.

To groves whose dark embrowning shades,
Skirted with ever-verdant meads,
And woodbine mantled round;
With streams, whose velvet margins bear,
The blushing rose, and lilly fair,
Spontaneous on the ground.

But now no more her presence chears;
Her wand no soft enchantment rears,
To sooth my heart-felt pain:
How loud the tempests horrid roar,
I see the wrecks on every shore,
And hear the dying strain!

My mind congenial with the gloom,
That hides fair nature's brightest bloom,
Welcomes contending storms;
Sad emblem of the griefs that prey,
And waste my widowed heart away,
In retrospective forms.