Impromptu

Our self-inscrib’d name, as the scroll were a treasure, When strangers request, in their fanciful pleasure, It flatters the hope that our bark may be scudding From this corporal climate of beef and of pudding, To the high shrine of Fame, where posterity know men, And we deem such request a right prosperous omen. But gales inauspicious oft blow from that region, And for one who attains it they blow back a legion; Then in spite of CLARK’S wish, and his brother’s kind record, Whose rays from that shrine my pale streamers have checker’d, Its winds will too probably soon blow from leeward, And sink in oblivion’s cold waves ANNA SEWARD.