ADDRESS TO A STEAM VESSEL.

FREIGHTED with passengers of every sort,
 A motley throng, thou leavest the busy port:
 Thy long and ample deck, — where scattered lie,
 Baskets and cloaks and shawls of crimson dye;
 Where dogs and children through the crowd are straying,
 And on his bench apart the fiddler playing,
 While matron dames to tresseled seats repair, —
 Seems, on the glassy waves, a floating fair. 

Its dark form on the sky's pale azure cast,
 Towers from this clustering group thy pillared mast;
 The dense smoke, issuing from its narrow vent,
 Is to the air in curly volumes sent,
 Which coiling and uncoiling on the wind,
 Trails, like a writhing serpent, far behind. 
Beneath, as each merged wheel its motion plies,
 On either side the white-churned waters rise,
 And newly parted from the noisy fray,
 Track with light ridgy foam thy recent way,
 Then far diverged, in many a lustrous line
 On the still-moving distant surface shine. 

Thou holdest thy course in independent pride;
 No leave askest thou of either wind or tide. 
To whate'er point the breeze inconstant veer,
 Still doth thy careless helmsman onward steer;
 As if the stroke of some magician's wand
 Had lent thee power the ocean to command. 
What is this power which thus within thee lurks,
 And all unseen, like a masked giant works? 
Even that which gentle dames at morning tea,
 From silver urn ascending, daily see
 With tressy wreathings borne upon the air
 Like loosened ringlets of a lady's hair;
 Or rising from th' enamelled cup beneath,
 With the soft fragrance of an infant's breath:
 That which within the peasant's humble cot
 Comes from the uncovered mouth of savoury pot,
 As his kind mate prepares his noonday fare,
 Which cur and cat and rosy urchins share;
 That which, all silvered by the moon's pale beam
 Precedes the mighty Geyser's up-cast stream,
 What time, with bellowing din, exploded forth,
 It decks the midnight of the frozen north,
 While travellers from their skin-spread couches rise
 To gaze upon the sight with wondering eyes. 

Thou hast to those "in populous city pent"
 Glimpses of wild and beauteous nature lent,
 A bright remembrance ne'er to be destroyed,
 That proves to them a treasure long enjoyed,
 And for this scope to beings erst confined,
 I fain would hail thee with a grateful mind. 
They who had nought of verdant freshness seen,
 But suburb orchards choked with colworts green,
 Now, seated at their ease, may glide along,
 Loch Lomond's fair and fairy Isles among;
 Where bushy promontories fondly peep
 At their own beauty in the nether deep,
 O'er drooping birch and rowen red that lave
 Their fragrant branches in the glassy wave:
 They who on higher objects scarce have counted
 Than church-spire with its gilded vane surmounted,
 May view within their near, distinctive ken
 The rocky summits of the lofty Ben;
 Or see his purple shoulders darkly lower
 Through the dim drapery of a summer shower. 
Where, spread in broad and fair expanse, the Clyde
 Mingles his waters with the briny tide,
 Along the lesser Cumra's rocky shore,
 With moss and crusted lichens fleckered o'er,
 He who but warfare held with thievish cat,
 Or from his cupboard chaced a hungry rat,
 The city cobbler, — scares the wild sea-mew
 In its mid-flight with loud and shrill halloo;
 Or valiantly with fearful threatening shakes
 His lank and greasy head at Kittywakes. 
The eyes that have no fairer outline seen,
 Than chimneyed walls with slated roofs between,
 Which hard and harshly edge the smoky sky,
 May Aron's softly-visioned peaks descry,
 Coping with graceful state her steepy sides
 O'er which the cloud's broad shadow swiftly glides,
 And interlacing slopes that gently merge
 Into the pearly mist of ocean's verge. 
Eyes which admired that work of sordid skill,
 The storied structure of a cotton mill,
 May wondering now behold the unnumbered host
 Of marshalled pillars on fair Ireland's coast,
 Phalanx on phalanx ranged with sidelong bend
 Or broken ranks that to the main descend,
 Like Pharaoh's army on the Red Sea shore,
 Who deep and deeper sunk, to rise no more. 

Yet ne'ertheless, whate'er we owe to thee,
 Rover at will on river, lake, and sea,
 As profit's bait or pleasure's lure engage,
 Offspring of Watt, that philosophic sage,
 Who in the heraldry of science ranks
 With those to whom men owe high meed of thanks
 For genius usefully employed, whose fame
 Shall still be linked with Davy's splendid name! 
Dearer to fancy, to the eye more fair
 Are the light skiffs, that to the breezy air
 Unfurl their swelling sails of snowy hue
 Upon the moving lap of ocean blue:
 As the proud swan on summer lake displays,
 With plumage brightening in the morning rays,
 Her fair pavilion of erected wings,
 They change and veer and turn like living things. 

With ample store of shrouding, sails and mast
 To brave with manly skill the winter blast
 Of every clime, — in vessels rigged like these
 Did great Columbus cross the western seas,
 And to the stinted thoughts of man revealed
 What yet the course of ages had concealed:
 In such as these, on high adventure bent
 Round the vast world Magellan's comrades went. 
To such as these are hardy seamen found
 As with the ties of kindred feeling bound,
 Boasting, while cans of cheering grog they sip,
 The varied fortunes of "our gallant ship:"
 The offspring these of bold sagacious man,
 Ere yet the reign of lettered lore began. 

In very truth, compared to these, thou art
 A daily labourer, a mechanic swart,
 In working weeds arrayed of homely grey,
 Opposed to gentle nymph or lady gay,
 To whose free robes the graceful right is given
 To play and dally with the winds of heaven. 
Beholding thee, the great of other days
 And modern men with all their altered ways,
 Across my mind with hasty transit gleam,
 Like fleeting shadows of a feverish dream:
 Fitful I gaze, with adverse humours teased,
 Half sad, half proud, half angry, and half pleased.