WRITTEN WHEN THE MIND WAS OPPRESSED.

WANDERING amid the horrors of the night,
 Musing, my sighs mix with the whistling wind,
 Dim watery shadows shroud my feeble sight,
 And deep reflection fills my labouring mind. 

Alone, amid the deadly midnight glooms,
 I hear the winds rush wildly through the waste,
 My strengthen'd soul its various powers assumes,
 While painful feelings agitate my breast. 

 "Alas!" I thought, "Where tends this toil of life,
" Unhappy, vain, delusive, frail, and short,
 "Envelop'd 'mid disease, death, sin, and strife,
" As if weak man was his Creator's sport? " 

Beneath the thunder on the desert strand,
 I listen to the solemn ocean's roar,
 Aw'd by the powerful elements I stand,
 And 'mid their fierce convulsions Heaven adore. 

But the more fatal storms which rage within
 With stronger fears my youthful mind dismay;
 Follies and passions, which engender sin,
 Assail the soul, and on the reason prey. 

To Nature's sweet enchantments wak'd from nought,
 Chaos impenetrably dark behind,
 Early possess'd of consciousness and thought,
 Impell'd by passions of a new-born mind. 

Borne on by hope, our youthful transports fly;
 Absolute pain alone we deem an ill,
 Unknowing that those dreary voids are nigh
 Which restless apathy alone may fill. 

We dream not, that, as blooms each flower or tree,
 We blossom, shoot, improve, but to decay,
 Some new-felt pleasure springs from all we see,
 Till rapid time doth Nature's truths display. 

Yet 'midst this beauteous world our sweeten'd state
 Would smile, when sooth'd by friendship's kindly breath;
 But a drear darkness terminates our fate,
 And every human bosom starts from death.