hill gloom, fierce conscience pours
His fiery arrows in resistless showers.
But, as accumulated guilt oppress'd
With stronger obstacles his hardening breast,
Faint and more faint the dread awakenings grew,
And their subsiding terrors soon withdrew.
Like traces on the mountain's giant form
Imprinted by the finger of the storm,
They vanish'd; fierce atrocity return'd
Triumphant, and the galling shackles spurn'd.

Him closely following, with a thoughtful pace
And slow, the young Ernestus took his place;
Like Bernheim, graced with an illustrious birth,
But hapless Sweden was his native earth.
His father sunk by death's untimely doom,
His youthful mother followed to the tomb,
And to a honour'd friend's paternal care
Bequeath'd her only hope, her infant heir.
With wary steps had Harfagar pass'd o'er
The world's wide scene, and learn'd its various lore;
And, with religion's pole-star for his guide,
Serenely voyaged life's tempestuous tide.
Yet in Ernestus' mind his skilful sense
Observ'd no dawn of future excellence;
He found no early graces to adorn
Of springing life the inauspicious morn;
No prompt benevolence, no sacred flow
Of purest feeling taught his heart to glow;
But virtue's native influence was in him,
A wintry sun-beam, not extinct, but dim.
Yet Harfagar with kind attention tried
To rouse the warmth her hidden beams supplied;
And, wheresoe'er his penetrating eye
One bud of distant promise could descry,
There all his toil was bent, to fix the root
Unmoved, and spread secure the growing shoot.
He watch'd the rising blossoms as they grew,
Preserv'd with constant care their lively hue,
Spread o'er each flow'ret a protecting veil
To shelter it from trial's rougher gale,
And clear'd, with strenuous and unceasing toil,
From each insidious weed th' improving soil.
His patient diligence had won at length
A partial triumph over nature's strength:
Tho' unsuppress'd th' internal weakness still
With frequent bias pois'd the wavering will,
Still losing ground, it seem'd to die away,
Like nightly storms before advancing day:
When thrice seven rolling years matured his age,
And call'd him forth to life's eventful stage.

'Twas now the time, when all the northern land
Was sinking under Christiern's ruthless hand;