Volume 7: Poems
Edited by Michael Cohen and Alexandra Socarides

DEVOTION. AN EPISTLE.

To Calista

Thee, my Acasto, with her rarest gifts
Has fortune crown'd; to thee the bliss belongs
Which only Wisdom, of celestial birth,
Brings in her train; Wisdom, the daughter fair
Of God, all-wise and good, his eldest born,
Native of highest heaven, sojourner here
On earth with thee; for thee Devotion mild
Hath nightly visited; the noisy world
Aloof or slumbering, Heaven's all-seeing eye
Only awake; thy secret chamber she
Is used to visit oft; to raise thy hopes
And raptures to a pure seraphic height.
    The Muse, whom hymns devout and heavenly strains,
Meet for inspired lips and hallow'd ears,
Only delights; she whose resounding song
The world primeval heard, and those who dwelt
In bright abodes, ere the primeval world
Arose from chaos; her benign regards
On thee hath shed, and upward led thy steps
To brighter worlds, where to thy eyes is given
Freedom to range abroad, and amplitude
The wide survey to comprehend, and send
Their steadfast glance to bounds where nature stands
Check'd by the dreary void, or mount to heights
Above all height, and inaccessible
By all of earthly kin, to all but thee,
And those of lot as happy, whom the voice
Divine, the herald of supernal grace,
Hath called; to whom the spirit devout and pure
Imparts her fiery energies, and gives
Infernal foes to vanquish, and to drag
In triumph at their chariot wheels, and raise
Illustrious trophies, sacred to the fame
Earn'd in hard conflict with the host of ills
That throng this mortal scene.

from American Register 3 (1808), 567-568