VERSES

SUPPOSED TO BE WRITTEN BY ALEXANDER

SELKIRK

DURING HIS SOLITARY ABODE ON THE ISLAND OF

JUAN FERNANDEZ.

I AM monarch of all I survey,

My right there is none to dispute,
From the centre all round to the sea,

I am lord of the fowl and the brute.

O Solitude! where are the charms

That sages have seen in thy face?
Better dwell in the midst of alarms,
Than reign in this horrible place.

I am out of humanity's reach,

I must finish my journey alone,
Never hear the sweet music of speech,
I start at the sound of my own.
The beasts that roam over the plain,
My form with indifference see;
They are so unacquainted with man,
Their tameness is shocking to me.

Society, friendship, and love,

Divinely bestowed upon man,
Oh, had I the wings of a dove,

How soon would I taste you again!

My sorrows I then might assuage

In the ways of religion and truth,

Might learn from the wisdom of age,
And be cheered by the sallies of youth.

N

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ΤΟ

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Religion! what treasure untold
Resides in that heavenly word!
More precious than silver and gold,
Or all that this earth can afford.
But the sound of the church-going bell
These valleys and rocks never heard,
Never sighed at the sound of a knell,

Or smiled when a Sabbath appeared.

Ye winds, that have made me your sport,
Convey to this desolate shore

Some cordial endearing report

Of a land I shall visit no more.

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Compared with the speed of its flight, The tempest itself lags behind,

And the swift-winged arrows of light.
When I think of own native land,

In a moment I seem to be there ;
But alas recollection at hand
Soon hurries me back to despair.

But the sea-fowl is gone to her nest,

The beast is laid down in his lair, Even here is a season of rest,

And I to my cabin repair.

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There's mercy in every place,

And mercy, encouraging thought!

Gives even affliction a grace,

And reconciles man to his lot.

55

YARDLEY OAK.

At my

birth

SURVIVOR Sole, and hardly such, of all
That once lived here, thy brethren!
(Since which I number threescore winters past)
A shattered veteran, hollow-trunked perhaps,
As now, and with excoriate forks deform,
Relics of ages! Could a mind, imbued
With truth from Heaven, created thing adore,
I might with reverence kneel and worship thee.
It seems idolatry with some excuse,
When our forefather Druids in their oaks
Imagined sanctity. The conscience, yet
Unpurified by an authentic act

Of amnesty, the meed of blood divine,
Loved not the light, but, gloomy, into gloom
Of thickest shades, like Adam after taste
Of fruit proscribed, as to a refuge, fled.

Thou wast a bauble once, a cup and ball
Which babes might play with; and the thievish jay,
Seeking her food, with ease might have purloined
The auburn nut that held thee, swallowing down
Thy yet close-folded latitude of boughs,
And all thine embryo vastness, at a gulp.
But fate thy growth decreed; autumnal rains
Beneath thy parent tree mellowed the soil,
Designed thy cradle; and a skipping deer,

IO

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With pointed hoof dibbling the glebe, prepared
The soft receptacle, in which, secure,

Thy rudiments should sleep the winter through.
So fancy dreams. Disprove it, if ye can,
Ye reasoners broad awake, whose busy search
Of argument, employed too oft amiss,

Sifts half the pleasures of short life away!

Thou fell'st mature; and in the loamy clod
Swelling with vegetative force instinct

Didst burst thine egg, as theirs the fabled Twins,
Now stars; two lobes, protruding, paired exact;
A leaf succeeded, and another leaf,

And, all the elements thy puny growth

Fostering propitious, thou becamest a twig.

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Who lived when thou wast such? Oh, couldst thou

speak,

As in Dodona once thy kindred trees

Oracular, I would not curious ask

The future, best unknown, but, at thy mouth
Inquisitive, the less ambiguous past.

By thee I might correct, erroneous oft,

The clock of history, facts and events
Timing more punctual, unrecorded facts
Recovering, and misstated setting right—

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Desperate attempt, till trees shall speak again!

Time made thee what thou wast, king of the woods;

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And Time hath made thee what thou art—a cave
For owls to roost in. Once thy spreading boughs
O'erhung the champaign; and the numerous flocks
That grazed it stood beneath that ample cope
Uncrowded, yet safe-sheltered from the storm.
No flock frequents thee now.

Thy popularity, and art become

Thou hast outlived

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(Unless verse rescue thee awhile) a thing Forgotten, as the foliage of thy youth.

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While thus through all the stages thou hast pushed
Of treeship-first a seedling, hid in grass;
Then twig; then sapling; and, as century rolled
Slow after century, a giant-bulk

Of girth enormous, with moss-cushioned root
Upheaved above the soil, and sides embossed
With prominent wens globose; till at the last
The rottenness, which Time is charged to inflict
On other mighty ones, found also thee.

What exhibitions various hath the world
Witnessed, of mutability in all

That we account most durable below!

Change is the diet on which all subsist,
Created changeable, and change at last
Destroys them.

Skies uncertain, now the heat

Transmitting cloudless, and the solar beam.

Now quenching in a boundless sea of clouds,-
Calm and alternate storm, moisture and drought,
Invigorate by turns the springs of life

In all that live, plant, animal, and man,

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And in conclusion mar them.

Nature's threads,

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Fine passing thought, e'en in her coarsest works,

Delight in agitation, yet sustain

The force that agitates not unimpaired;

But worn by frequent impulse, to the cause

Of their best tone their dissolution owe.

Thought cannot spend itself, comparing still

The great and little of thy lot, thy growth
From almost nullity into a state

Of matchless grandeur, and declension thence,
Slow, into such magnificent decay.