VI.

We watch’d her childhood from its earliest hour, From every word and look blest omens caught; While that young mind developed all its power, And rose to energies of loftiest thought. On her was fix’d the patriot’s ardent eye-- One hope still bloom’d, one vista still was fair; And when the tempest swept the troubled sky, She was our dayspring--all was cloudless _there_; And oh! how lovely broke on England’s gaze, E’en through the mist and storm, the fight of distant days.