LOVER'S PETITION.
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ood Heart, that ownest all!I ask a modest boon and small:Not of lands and towns the gift,--Too large a load for me to lift,--But for one proper creature,Which geographic eye,Sweeping the map of Western earth,Or the Atlantic coast, from MaineTo Powhatan's domain,Could not descry.Is't much to ask in all thy huge creation,So trivial a part,--A solitary heart? Yet count me not of spirit mean,Or mine a mean demand,For 't is the concentrationAnd worth of all the land,The sister of the sea,The daughter of the strand,Composed of air and light,And of the swart earth-might.So little to thy poet's prayerThy large bounty well can spare.And yet I think, if she were gone,The world were better left alone.
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