By this the moon had gained her height,
And reign’d the peerless queen of night,
In all her radiant majesty,
Amid a clear unclouded sky,
And seem’d as she’d an influence shed
O’er stars around, as if they’d dread
’Gainst her their puny lights to bear,
Or rather wishing to confer
On her the greatest honour, they
Had stoop’d obesience to her sway.
She, looking from her ebon throne,
Improvements view’d and smiled upon
The Bushman’s clearings, and the change
Wrought on the wilderness so strange,
For ages useless, now subdued,
Adorn’d with springing grain, which shewed
Fair promises, though stumps still stood
The ghosts of bygone ages rude,
Like tombstones which the dead deplore,—
So they the forest now no more.

My cottage, buried in the shade
Which the great spreading pine had made,
Through whose close crowded top a ray
Of moonshine scarce could find its way.
Dark as a dungeon where I stood,
Near to my door, in wondering mood,
With anxious face turned upward, as
I fain unriddle would the cause
Of some more ominous eclipse,
Ere times of science did elapse,
Than what was made by Pigeons bent
On holding farther parliament.