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POEMS
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT,
AN AMERICAN.
EDITED BY
WASHINGTON IRVING.
LONDON:
J. ANDREWS, 167, NEW BOND STREET.
M.DCCC.XXXIT.
LONDON:
J. MOYES, CASTI.E STREET, LEICESTEK SQUARE,
TO
SAMUEL ROGERS, ESQ.
MY DEAR SIR,
DURING an intimacy of some years stand
ing, I have uniformly remarked a liberal interest
on your part in the rising character and fortunes
of my country, and a kind disposition to promote
the success of American talent, whether engaged
in literature or the arts. I am induced, therefore,
as a tribute of gratitude, as well as a general
testimonial of respect and friendship, to lay before
you the present volume, in which, for the first
time, are collected together the fugitive pro
ductions of one of our living poets, whose writings
IV DEDICATION.
are deservedly popular throughout the United
States.
Many of these poems have appeared at various
times in periodical publications; and some of them,
I am aware, have met your eye, and received the
stamp of your approbation. They could scarcely
fail to do so, characterised as they are by a purity
of moral, an elevation and refinement of thought,
and a terseness and elegance of diction, congenial
to the bent of your own genius and to your cul
tivated taste. They appear to me to belong to the
best school of English poetry, and to be entitled to
rank among the highest of their class.
The British public has already expressed its
delight at the graphic descriptions of American
scenery and wild woodland characters, contained
in the works of our national novelist, Cooper.
The same keen eye and fresh feeling for nature,
the same indigenous style of thinking and local
peculiarity of imagery, which give such novelty
and interest to the pages of that gifted writer,
DEDICATION. V
will be found to characterise this volume, con
densed into a narrower compass and sublimated
into poetry.
The descriptive writings of Mr. Bryant are
essentially American. They transport us into the
depths of the solemn primeval forest — to the
shores of the lonely lake — the banks of the wild
nameless stream, or the brow of the rocky upland
rising like a promontory from amidst a wide
ocean of foliage ; while they shed around us the
glories of a climate fierce in its extremes, but
splendid in all its vicissitudes. His close observa
tion of the phenomena of nature, and the graphic
felicity of his details, prevent his descriptions from
ever becoming general and common-place ; while
he has the gift of shedding over them a pensive
grace that blends them all into harmony, and of
clothing them with moral associations that make
them speak to the heart. Neither, I am con
vinced, will it be the least of his merits in
your eyes, that his writings are imbued with
VI DEDICATION.
the independent spirit, and the buoyant aspira
tions incident to a youthful, a free, and a rising
country.
It is not my intention, however, to enter into
any critical comments on these poems, but merely
to introduce them, through your sanction, to the
British public. They must then depend for suc
cess on their own merits; though I cannot help
flattering myself that they will be received as
pure gems, which, though produced in a foreign
clime, are worthy of being carefully preserved in
the common treasury of the language.
I am, my dear Sir,
Ever most faithfully yours,
WASHINGTON IRVING.
London, March 1832.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
MOST of the following Poems have been already
printed. The longest, entitled " The Ages," was
published in 1821, in a thin volume, along with
about half a dozen others now included in this
collection. With a few exceptions, the remainder
have since appeared in different publications,
mostly of the periodical kind. The favour with
which the public have regarded them, and of
which their republication in various compilations
seemed to the author a proof, has induced him to
collect them into a volume. In preparing them
for the press, he has made such corrections as
occurred to him on subjecting them to a careful
revision. Sensible as he is that no author had
ever more cause of gratitude to his countrymen
for the indulgent estimate placed by them on his
Vlll AUTHOR S PREFACE.
literary attempts, he yet cannot let this volume go
forth to the public without a feeling of appre
hension, both that it may contain things which did
not deserve admission, and that the entire collec
tion may not be thought worthy of the generous
and partial judgment which has been passed upon
some of the separate poems.
New York, January, 1832.
CONTENTS.
DEDICATION iii
Author's Preface vii
The Ages 1
To the Past 16
Thanatopsis 19
The Lapse of Time 23
To the Evening Wind 26
Forest Hymn 28
The Old Man's Funeral 33
The Rivulet 35
The Damsel of Peru •> 39
Song of Pitcairn's Island 41
Rizpah 43
The Indian Girl's Lament 47
The Massacre at Scio 50
Version of a Fragment of Simonides 51
The Greek Partisan 53
Romero 55
Monument Mountain 58
The Murdered Traveller 64
Song of the Greek Amazon 66
The African Chief 68
" Soon as the glazed and gleaming Snow " 71
X CONTENTS.
PAGE
An Indian Story 72
The Hunter's Serenade 76
Song of Marion's Men 79
Song — " Dost thou idly ask to hear" 82
Love and Folly 84
Fatima and Raduan 86
The Death of Aliatar 89
The Alcayde of Molina 93
From the Spanish of Villegas 95
The Life of the Blessed 96
Mary Magdalen , 98
The Siesta 100
From the Spanish of Pedro de Castro y Anaya 102
Love in the Age of Chivalry 104
The Love of God 106
The Hurricane 107
March . , 110
Spring in Town 112
Summer Wind 115
Autumn Woods 117
A Winter Piece 120
" Oh, fairest of the rural Maids 1" 125
The Disinterred Warrior 126
The Greek Boy . , ....... 128
" Upon the Mountain's distant Head "..... 130
Sonnet— William Tell 131
To the River Arve 132
Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood 134
CONTENTS. XI
PAGE
" When the Firmament quivers with Daylight's young
Beam" 136
Scene on the Banks of the Hudson 138
The West Wind 140
To a Musquito 1 42
" I broke the Spell that held me long" *. . . 146
The Conjunction of Jupiter and Venus 147
June 151
The Two Graves 154
The New Moon 158
The Gladness of Nature 160
To the Fringed Gentian 162
" Innocent Child and snow-white Flower ! " 164
Sonnet — Midsummer 165
Sonnet — October 166
Sonnet — November 167
A Meditation on Rhode-Island Coal 168
An Indian at the Burying-place of his Fathers 173
Sonnet — To a Painter departing for Europe 177
Green River 178
To a Cloud 181
After a Tempest 183
The Burial-place, a Fragment 186
The Yellow Violet 189
" I cannot forget with what fervid Devotion" 191
Lines on revisiting the Country 193
Sonnet— Mutation 195
Hymn to the North Star 196
Xll CONTENTS.
PAGE
The Twenty-second of December , 198
Ode for an Agricultural Celebration 199
A Walk at Sunset 201
Hymn of the Waldenses 204
Song of the Stars 206
Hymn of the City 209
" No man knoweth his Sepulchre" 211
" Blessed are they that mourn" 212
The Skies 214
Sonnet— To 217
Death of the Flowers 218
Hymn to Death 220
To a Waterfowl 227
Notes ... 229
THE AGES, i >
WHEN to the common rest that crowns our days,
Called in the noon of life, the good man goes ;
Or full of years, and ripe in wisdom, lays
His silver temples in their last repose ;
When o'er the buds of youth the death-wind blows,
And blights the fairest ; when our bitterest tears
Stream, as the eyes of those that love us close,
We think on what they were, with many fears
Lest Goodness die with them, and leave the coming years.
ii.
And therefore, to our hearts, the days gone by, —
When lived the honoured sage whose death we wept,
And the soft virtues beamed from many an eye,
And beat in many a heart that long has slept, —
Like spots of earth where angel-feet have stept,
Are holy ; and high-dreaming bards have told
Of times when worth was crowned, and faith was kept,
Ere friendship grew a snare, or love waxed cold —
These pure and happy times — the golden days of old.
THE AGES,
III.
Peace to the just man's memory, — let it grow
Greener with ye$rs, and blossom through the flight
Of ages; JKthe.iXiimic canvass shew
• .,Hi&calixr$£ne?o)$nt features ; let the light
&treain oil *h'is deeds of love, that shunned the sight
Of all but Heaven, and, in the book of fame,
The glorious record of his virtues write,
And hold it up to men, and bid them claim
A palm like his, and catch from him the hallowed flame.
IV.
But oh, despair not of their fate who rise
To dwell upon the earth when we withdraw ;
Lo ! the same shaft by which the righteous dies,
Strikes through the wretch that scoffed at mercy's law,
And trode his brethren down, and felt no awe
Of Him who will avenge them. Stainless worth,
Such as the sternest age of virtue saw,
Ripens, meanwhile, till time shall call it forth
From the low modest shade, to light and bless the earth.
v.
Has Nature, in her calm majestic march,
Faltered with age at last? does the bright sun
Grow dim in heaven? or, in their far blue arch,
Sparkle the crowd of stars, when day is done,
THE AGES. {
Less brightly ? when the dew-lipped Spring comes on,
Breathes she with airs less soft, or scents the sky
With flowers less fair than when her reign begun ?
Does prodigal Autumn, to our age, deny
The plenty that once swelled beneath his sober eye ?
VI.
Look on this beautiful world, and read the truth
In her fair page ; see, every season brings
New change, to her, of everlasting youth,
Still the green soil with joyous living things,
Swarms ; the wide air is full of joyous wings ;
And myriads, still, are happy in the sleep
Of ocean's azure gulfs, and where he flings
The restless surge. Eternal Love doth keep
In his complacent arms the earth, the air, the deep.
VII.
Will, then, the merciful One, who stamped our race
With his own image, and who gave them sway
O'er earth and the glad dwellers on her face,
Now that our flourishing nations far away
Are spread, where'er the moist earth drinks the day,
Forget the ancient care that taught and nursed
His latest offspring ? will he quench the ray
Infused by his own forming smile at first,
And leave a work so fair all blighted and accursed ?
4 THE AGES.
VIII.
Oh, no ! a thousand cheerful omens give
Hope of yet happier days whose dawn is nigh.
He who has tamed the elements, shall not live
The slave of his own passions ; he whose eye
Unwinds the eternal dances of the sky,
And in the abyss of brightness dares to span
The sun's broad circle, rising yet more high,
In God's magnificent works his will shall scan —
And love and peace shall make their paradise with man.
IX.
Sit at the feet of History — through the night
Of years the steps of virtue she shall trace,
And shew the earlier ages, where her sight
Can pierce the eternal shadows o'er their face ; —
When, from the genial cradle of our race,
Went forth the tribes of men, their pleasant lot
To choose, where palm-groves cooled their dwelling-place,
Or freshening rivers ran ; and there forgot
The truth of heaven, and kneeled to gods that heard them
not.
x.
Then waited not the murderer for the night,
But smote his brother down in the bright day ;
And he who felt the wrong, and had the might,
His own avenger, girt himself to slay ;
THE AGES. 5
Beside the path the unburied carcass lay ;
The shepherd, by the fountains of the glen,
Fled, while the robber swept his flock away,
And slew his babes. The sick, untended then,
Languished in the damp shade, and died afar from men.
XI.
But misery brought in love — in passion's strife
Man gave his heart to mercy pleading long,
And sought out gentle deeds to gladden life ;
The weak, against the sons of spoil and wrong,
Banded, and watched their hamlets, and grew strong.
States rose, and in the shadow of their might
The timid rested. To the reverent throng,
Grave and time-wrinkled men, with locks all white,
Gave laws, and judged their strifes, and taught the way of
right.
XII.
Till bolder spirits seized the rule, and nailed
On men the yoke that man should never bear,
And drove them forth to battle : Lo ! unveiled
The scene of those stern ages ! What is there ?
A boundless sea of blood, and the wild air
Moans with the crimson surges that entomb
Cities and bannered armies ; forms that wear
The kingly circlet rise, amid the gloom,
O'er the dark wave, and straight are swallowed in its womb.
f) THE AGES.
XIII.
Those ages have no memory — but they left
A record in the desert — columns strown
On the waste sands, and statues fall'n and cleft,
Heaped like a host in battle overthrown ;
Vast ruins, where the mountain's ribs of stone
Were hewn into a city ; streets that spread
In the dark earth, where never breath has blown
Of heaven's sweet air, nor foot of man dares tread
The long and perilous ways — the Cities of the Dead ;
XIV.
And tombs of monarchs to the clouds up-piled :
They perished — but the eternal tombs remain —
And the black precipice, abrupt and wild,
Pierced by long toil and hollowed to a fane; —
Huge piers and frowning forms of gods sustain
The everlasting arches, dark and wide,
Like the night heaven when clouds are black with rain.
But idly skill was tasked, and strength was plied —
All was the work of slaves to swell a despot's pride.
... XV.
And virtue cannot dwell with slaves, nor reign
O'er those who cower to take a tyrant's yoke ;
She left the down-trod nations in disdain,
And flew to Greece, when liberty awoke,
THE AGES. 7
New-born, amid those beautiful vales, and broke
Sceptre and chain with her fair youthful hands,
As the rock shivers in the thunder stroke.
And lo ! in full-grown strength, an empire stands
Of leagued and rival states, the wonder of the lands.
XVI.
Oh, Greece! thy flourishing cities were a spoil
Unto each other ; thy hard hand oppressed
And crushed the helpless ; thou didst make thy soil
Drunk with the blood of those that loved thee -best ;
And thou didst drive, from thy unnatural breast,
Thy just and brave to die in distant climes :
Earth shuddered at thy deeds, and sighed for rest
From thine abominations ; after-times,
That yet shall read thy tale, will tremble at thy crimes.
XVII.
Yet there was that within thee which has saved
Thy glory, and redeemed thy blotted name ;
The story of thy better deeds, engraved
On fame's unmouldering pillar, puts to shame
Our chiller virtue ; the high art to tame
The whirlwind of thy passions was thine own ;
And the pure ray, that from thy bosom came,
Far over many a land and age has shone,
And mingles with the light that beams from God's own
throne.
8 THE AGES.
XVIII.
And Rome — thy sterner, younger sister, she
Who awed the world with her imperial frown —
Rome drew the spirit of her race from thee, —
The rival of thy shame and thy renown.
Yet her degenerate children sold the crown
Of earth's wide kingdoms to a line of slaves;
Guilt reigned, and wo with guilt, and plagues came down,
Till the North broke its flood-gates, and the waves
Whelmed the degraded race, and weltered o'er their graves.
XIX.
Vainly that ray of brightness from above,
That shone around the Galilean lake,
The light of hope, the leading star of love,
Struggled the darkness of that day to break ;
Even its own faithless guardians strove to slake,
In fogs of earth, the pure immortal flame ;
And priestly hands, for Jesus' blessed sake,
Were red with blood ; and charity became,
In that stern war of forms, a mockery and a name.
xx.
They triumphed, and less bloody rites were kept
Within the quiet of the convent cell ;
The well-fed inmates pattered prayer, and slept,
And sinned, and liked their easy penance well.
THE AGES. 9
Where pleasant was the spot for men to dwell,
Amid its fair broad lands the abbey lay,
Sheltering dark orgies that were shame to tell,
And .cowled and barefoot beggars swarmed the way,
All in their convent weeds, of black, and white, and gray.
XXI.
Oh, sweetly the returning Muses' strain
Swelled over that famed stream, whose gentle tide
In their bright lap the Etrurian vales detain —
Sweet, as when winter-storms have ceased to chide,
And all the new-leaved woods, resounding wide,
Send out wild hymns upon the scented air.
Lo ! to the smiling Arno's classic side
The emulous nations of the West repair,
And kindle their quenched urns, and drink fresh spirit there.
XXII.
Still, Heaven deferred the hour ordained to rend
From saintly rottenness the sacred stole ;
And cowl and worshipped shrine could still defend
The wretch with felon stains upon his soul ;
And crimes were set to sale, and hard his dole
Who could not bribe a passage to the skies ;
And vice beneath the mitre's kind control
Sinned gaily on, and grew to giant size,
Shielded by priestly power, and watched by priestly eyes.
10 THE AGES.
XXIII.
At last the earthquake came — the shock, that hurled
To dust, in many fragments dashed and strown,
The throne whose roots were in another world ,
And whose far-stretching shadow awed our own.
From many a proud monastic pile, o'erthrown,
Fear-struck, the hooded inmates rushed and fled ;
The web, that for a thousand years had grown
O'er prostrate Europe, in that day of dread
Crumbled and fell, as fire dissolves the flaxen thread.
XXIV.
The spirit of that day is still awake,
And spreads himself, and shall not sleep again ;
But through the idle mesh of power shall break,
Like billows o'er the Asian monarch's chain ;
Till men are filled with him, and feel how vain,
Instead of the pure heart and innocent hands,
Are all the proud and pompous modes to gain
The smile of Heaven ; — till a new age expands
Its white and holy wings above the peaceful lands.
XXV.
For look again on the past years ; — behold,
Flown, like the night-mare's hideous shapes, away
Full many a horrible worship, that, of old,
Held o'er the shuddering realms unquestioned sway :
THE AGES. 11
See crimes that feared not once the eye of day,
Rooted from men, without a name or place :
See nations blotted out from earth, to pay
The forfeit of deep guilt; — with glad embrace
The fair disburdened lands welcome a nobler race.
XXVI.
Thus error's monstrous shapes from earth are driven ;
They fade, they fly — but truth survives their flight;
Earth has no shades to quench that beam of heaven ;
Each ray, that shone, in early time, to light
The faltering footsteps in the path of right —
Each gleam of clearer brightness, shed to aid
In man's maturer day his bolder sight —
All blended, like the rainbow's radiant braid,
Pour yet, and still shall pour, the blaze that cannot fade.
XXVII.
Late, from this western shore, that morning chased
The deep and ancient night, that threw its shroud
O'er the green land of groves, the beautiful waste,
Nurse of full streams, and lifter-up of proud
Sky-mingling mountains that o'erlook the cloud.
Erewhile, where yon gay spires their brightness rear,
Trees waved, and the brown hunter's shouts were loud
Amid the forest; and the bounding deer
Fled at the glancing plume, and the gaunt wolf yelled near.
12 THE AGES.
XXVIII.
And where his willing waves yon bright blue bay
Sends up, to kiss his decorated brim,
And cradles in his soft embrace the gay
Young group of grassy islands born of him,
And, crowding nigh, or in the distance dim,
Lifts the white throng of sails, that bear or bring
The commerce of the world ; — with tawny limb,
And belt and beads in sunlight glistening,
The savage urged his skiff like wild bird on the wing.
XXIX.
Then, all this youthful paradise around,
And all the broad and boundless mainland, lay
Cooled by the interminable wood, that frowned
O'er mount and vale, where never summer-ray
Glanced, till the strong tornado broke his way
Through the gray giants of the sylvan wild ;
Yet many a sheltered glade, with blossoms gay,
Beneath the showery sky and sunshine mild,
Within the shaggy arms of that dark forest smiled.
XXX.
There stood the Indian hamlet — there the lake
Spread its blue sheet that flashed with many an oar,
Where the brown otter plunged him from the brake
And the deer drank ; as the light gale flew o'er,
THE AGES. 13
The twinkling maize-field rustled on the shore ;
And while that spot, so wild, and lone, and fair,
A look of glad and innocent beauty wore,
And peace was on the earth and in the air,
The warrior lit the pile, and bound his captive there :
XXXI.
Not unavenged. The foeman, from the wood,
Beheld the deed ; and when the midnight shade
Was stillest, gorged his battle-axe with blood.
All died — the wailing babe, the shrieking maid —
And in the flood of fire that scathed the glade,
The roofs went down ; but deep the silence grew,
When on the dewy woods the day-beam played ;
No more the cabin smokes rose wreathed and blue,
And ever by their lake lay moored the light canoe.
XXXII.
Look now abroad — another race has filled
These populous borders — wide the wood recedes,
And towns shoot up, and fertile realms are tilled ;
The land is full of harvests and green meads ;
Streams numberless, that many a fountain feeds,
Shine, disembowered, and give to sun and breeze
Their virgin waters ; the full region leads
New colonies forth, that toward the western seas
Spread, like a rapid flame among the autumnal trees.
14 THE AGES.
XXXIII.
Here the free spirit of mankind, at length,
Throws its last fetters off; and who shall place
A limit to the giant's unchained strength,
Or curb his swiftness in the forward race ?
Far, like the comet's way through infinite space,
Stretches the long untravelled path of light
Into the depths of ages : we may trace,
Distant, the brightening glory of its flight,
Till the receding rays are lost to human sight.
XXXIV.
Europe is given a prey to sterner fates,
And writhes in shackles ; strong the arms that chain
To earth her struggling multitude of states ; —
She too is strong, and might not chafe in vain
Against them, but shake off the vampire train
That batten on her blood, and break their net.
Yes, she shall look on brighter days, and gain
The meed of worthier deeds : the moment set
To rescue and raise up draws near — but is not yet.
xxxv.
But thou, my country, thou shalt never fall
But with thy children — thy maternal care,
Thy lavish love, thy blessing showered on all ;
These are thy fetters — seas and stormy air
THE AGES. 15
Are the wide barrier of thy borders, where,
Among thy gallant sons, that guard thee well,
Thou laughst at enemies : who shall then declare
The date of thy deep-founded strength, or tell
How happy, in thy lap, the sons of men shall dwell?
TO THE PAST.
THOU unrelenting Past !
Strong are the barriers round thy dark domain,
And fetters, sure and fast,
Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign.
Far in thy realm withdrawn
Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom,
And glorious ages gone
Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb.
Childhood, with all its mirth,
Youth, Manhood, Age, that draws us to the ground,
And last, man's life on earth,
Glide to thy dim dominions, and are bound.
Thou hast my better years,
Thou hast my earlier friends — the good, the kind,
Yielded to thee with tears —
The venerable form — the exalted mind.
TO THE PAST. 17
My spirit yearns to bring
The lost ones back — yearns with desire intense,
And struggles hard to wring
Thy bolts apart, and pluck thy captives thence.
In vain; — thy gates deny
All passage, save to those who hence depart ;
Nor to the streaming eye
Thou givest them back, nor to the broken heart.
In thy abysses hide
Beauty and excellence unknown — to thee
Earth's wonder and her pride
Are gathered, as the waters to the sea.
Labours of good to man,
Unpublished charity, unbroken faith, —
Love that 'midst grief began,
And grew with years, and faltered not in death.
Full many a mighty name
Lurks in thy depths, unuttered, unrevered —
With thee are silent fame,
Forgotten arts, and wisdom disappeared.
Thine for a space are they —
Yet shalt thou yield thy treasures up at last ; —
c
13 TO THE PAST.
Thy gates shall yet give way,
Thy bolts shall fall, inexorable Past!
All that of good and fair
Has gone into thy womb from earliest time,
Shall then come forth, to wear
The glory and the beauty of its prime.
They have not perished — no !
Kind words — remembered voices, once so sweet
Smiles, radiant long ago —
And features, the great soul's apparent seat—
All shall come back — each tie
Of pure affection shall be knit again ;
Alone shall Evil die,
And Sorrow dwell a prisoner in thy reign.
And then shall I behold
Him by whose kind paternal side I sprung,
And her who, still and cold,
Fills the next grave — the beautiful and young.
THANATOPSIS.
To him who, in the love of Nature, holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language : for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty ; and she glides
Into his darker musings with a mild
And gentle sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder and grow sick at heart —
Go forth under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings ; while from all around —
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air —
Comes a still voice. Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course ; nor yet in the cold ground,
20 THANATOPSIS.
Where thy pale form was laid with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again ;
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix for ever with the elements —
To be a brother to the insensible rock
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould ;
Yet not to thy eternal resting-place
Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world — with kings,
The powerful of the earth, the wise, the good —
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past —
All in one mighty sepulchre ! The hills,
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun — the vales,
Stretching in pensive quietness between —
The venerable woods — rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green ; and, poured round all,
Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste —
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man ! The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
THANATOPSJS.
Are shining on the sad abodes of death
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings
Of morning, and the Barcan desert pierce,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregan, and hears no sound
Save his own dashings ; yet the dead are there,
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep — the dead reign there alone.
So shalt thou rest. And what if thou shalt fall
Unheeded by the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure ? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of Care
Plod en, and each one as before will chase
His favourite phantom ; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glide away, the sons of men —
The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron, and maid,
And the sweet babe, and the gray-headed man —
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side
By those who in their turn shall follow them.
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
22 THANATOPSIS.
The innumerable caravan that moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon ; but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
THE LAPSE OF TIME.
LAMENT who will, in fruitless tears,
The speed with which our moments fly,
I sigh not over vanished years,
But watch the years that hasten by.
Look, how they come! — a mingled crowd
Of bright and dark, but rapid days ;
Beneath them, like a summer cloud,
The wide world changes as I gaze.
What ! grieve that time has brought so soon
The sober age of manhood on ?
As idly might I weep, at noon,
To see the blush of morning gone.
Could I forego the hopes that glow
In prospect, like Elysian isles,
And let the charming future go,
With all her promises and smiles ?
THE LAPSE OF TIME.
The future ! — cruel were the power
Whose doom would tear thee from my heart ;
Thou sweetener of the present hour !
We cannot — no — we will not part.
Oh, leave me still the rapid flight
That makes the changing seasons gay,
The grateful speed that brings the night,
The swift and glad return of day —
The months that touch, with added grace,
This little prattler at my knee,
In whose arch eye and speaking face
New meaning every hour I see —
The years, that o'er each sister land
Shall lift the country of my birth,
And nurse her strength, till she shall stand
The pride and pattern of the earth ;
Till younger commonwealths for aid
Shall cling about her ample robe,
And from her frown shall shrink afraid
The crowned oppressors of the globe !
True, Time will seam and blanch my brow :
Well ; I shall sit with aged men,
THE LAPSE OF TIME. 25
And my good glass will tell me how
A grisly beard becomes me then.
And should no foul dishonour lie
Upon my head when I am gray,
Love yet shall watch my fading eye,
And smooth the path of my decay.
Then haste thee, Time — 'tis kindness all
That speeds thy winged feet so fast ;
Thy pleasures stay not till they pall,
And all thy pains are quickly past.
Thou fliest and bear'st away our woes ;
And as thy shadowy train depart,
The memory of sorrow grows
A lighter burden on the heart.
TO THE EVENING WIND.
SPIRIT that breathest through my lattice — thou
That cool'st the twilight of the sultry day —
Gratefully flows thy freshness round my brow.
Thou hast been out upon the deep at play,
Riding all day the wild blue wave till now,
Roughening their crests, and scattering high their spray,
And swelling the white sail. I welcome thee
To the scorched land, thou wanderer of the sea !
Nor I alone: a thousand bosoms round
Inhale thee in the fulness of delight,
And languid forms rise up, and pulses bound
Livelier, at coming of the wind of night ;
And, languishing to hear thy grateful sound,
Lies the vast inland, stretched beyond the sight.
Go forth into the gathering shade — go forth)
God's blessing breathed upon the fainting earth !
TO THE EVENING WIND.
Go, rock the little wood-bird in his nest,
Curl the still waters, bright with stars, and rouse
The wide old wood from his majestic rest,
Summoning from the innumerable boughs
The strange, deep harmonies that haunt his breast :
Pleasant shall be thy way where meekly bows
The shutting flower, and darkling waters pass,
And 'twixt the o'ershadowing branches and the grass.
The faint old man shall lean his silver head
To feel thee ; thou shalt kiss the child asleep,
And dry the moistened curls that overspread
His temples, while his breathing grows more deep ;
And they who stand about the sick man's bed
Shall joy to listen to thy distant sweep,
And softly part his curtains to allow
Thy visit, grateful to his burning brow.
Go ; but the circle of eternal change,
Which is the life of nature, shall restore,
With sounds and scents from all thy mighty range,
Thee to thy birth-place of the deep once more ;
Sweet odours in the sea-air, sweet and strange,
Shall tell the home-sick mariner of the shore ;
And, listening to thy murmur, he shall deem
He hears the rustling leaf and running stream.
FOREST HYMN.
THE groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned
To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave,
And spread the roof above them — ere he framed
The lofty vault, to gather and roll back
The sound of anthems — in the darkling wood,
Amidst the cool and silence, he knelt down,
And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks
And supplication. For his simple heart
Might not resist the sacred influences
Which, from the stilly twilight of the place,
And from the gray old trunks that high in heaven
Mingled their mossy boughs, and from the sound
Of the invisible breath that swayed at once
All their green tops, stole over him, and bowed
His spirit with the thought of boundless power
And inaccessible majesty. Ah ! why
Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect
God's ancient sanctuaries, and adore
Only among the crowd, and under roofs
That our frail hands have raised ? Let me, at least,
FOREST HYMN- 29
Here, in the shadow of this aged wood,
Offer one hymn — thrice happy if it find
Acceptance in his ear.
Father! thy hand
Hath reared these venerable columns, thou
Didst weave this verdant roof. Thou didst look down
Upon the naked earth, and forthwith rose
All these fair ranks of trees. They in thy sun
Budded, and shook their green leaves in thy breeze,
And shot towards heaven. The century-living crow,
Whose birth was in their tops, grew old and died
Among their branches, till at last they stood,
As now they stand, massive and tall and dark,
Fit shrine for humble worshipper to hold
Communion with his Maker. Here are seen
No traces of man's pomp or pride ; no silks
Rustle, nor jewels shine, nor envious eyes
Encounter ; no fantastic carvings shew
The boast of our vain race to change the form
Of thy fair works. But thou art here — thou fillst
The solitude. Thou art in the soft winds
That run along the summit of these trees
In music ; thou art in the cooler breath,
That from the inmost darkness of the place
Comes, scarcely felt ; the barky trunks, the ground,
The fresh moist ground, are all instinct with thee.
30 FOREST HYMN.
Here is continual worship. Nature, here,
In the tranquillity that thou dost love,
Enjoys thy presence. Noiselessly around,
From perch to perch, the solitary bird
Passes ; and yon clear spring, that 'midst its herbs
Wells softly forth, and visits the strong roots
Of half the mighty forest, tells no tale
Of all the good it does. Thou hast not left
Thyself without a witness, in these shades,
Of thy perfections. Grandeur, strength, and grace,
Are here to speak of thee. This mighty oak —
By whose immovable stem I stand, and seem
Almost annihilated — not a prince,
In all that proud old world beyond the deep,
E'er wore his crown as loftily as he
Wears the green coronal of leaves with which
Thy hand has graced him. Nestled at his root
Is beauty, such as blooms not in the glare
Of the broad sun. That delicate forest-flower,
With scented breath, and look so like a smile,
Seems, as it issues from the shapeless mould,
An emanation of the indwelling Life,
A visible token of the upholding Love,
That are the soul of this wide universe.
My heart is awed within me, when I think
Of the great miracle that still goes on
FOREST HYMN. 31
In silence round me — the perpetual work
Of thy creation, finished, yet renewed
For ever. Written on thy works I read
The lesson of thy own eternity.
Lo ! all grow old and die ; but see, again,
How on the faltering footsteps of decay
Youth presses — ever gay and beautiful youth,
In all its beautiful forms. These lofty trees
Wave not less proudly that their ancestors
Moulder beneath them. Oh, there is not lost
One of earth's charms : upon her bosom yet,
After the flight of untold centuries,
The freshness of her far beginning lies,
And yet shall lie. Life mocks the idle hate
Of his arch enemy, Death — yea, seats himself
Upon the sepulchre, and blooms, and smiles,
And of the triumphs of his ghastly foe
Makes his own nourishment. For he came forth
From thine own bosom, and shall have no end.
There have been holy men who hid themselves
Deep in the woody wilderness, and gave
Their lives to thought and prayer, till they outlived
The generation born with them, nor seemed
Less aged than the hoary trees and rocks
Around them ; — and there have been holy men
Who deemed it were not well to pass life thus.
32 FOREST HYMN.
But let me often to these solitudes
Retire, and in thy presence reassure
My feeble virtue. Here its enemies,
The passions, at thy plainer footsteps shrink
And tremble, and are still. Oh, God ! when thou
Dost scare the world with tempests, set on fire
The heavens with falling thunderbolts, or fill
With all the waters of the firmament
The swift dark whirlwind that uproots the woods
And drowns the villages ; when at thy call
Uprises the great deep, and throws himself
Upon the continent, and overwhelms
Its cities — who forgets not, at the sight
Of these tremendous tokens of thy power,
His pride, and lays his strifes and follies by ?
Oh, from these sterner aspects of thy face
Spare me and mine, nor let us need the wrath
Of the mad unchained elements to teach
Who rules them. Be it ours to meditate
In these calm shades thy milder majesty,
And to the beautiful order of thy works
Learn to conform the order of our lives !
THE OLD MAN'S FUNERAL.
I SAW an aged man upon his bier ;
His hair was thin and white, and on his brow
A record of the cares of many a year —
Cares that were ended and forgotten now.
And there was sadness round, and faces bowed,
And woman's tears fell fast, and children wailed aloud.
Then rose another hoary man, and said,
In faltering accents, to that weeping train,
Why mourn ye that our aged friend is dead ?
Ye are not sad to see the gathered grain,
Nor when their mellow fruit the orchards cast,
Nor when the yellow woods shake down the ripened mast.
Ye sigh not when the sun, his course fulfilled —
His glorious course, rejoicing earth and sky,
In the soft evening, when the winds are stilled,
Sinks where his islands of refreshment lie,
And leaves the smile of his departure spread
O'er the warm-coloured heaven and ruddy mountain-head.
D
34 THE OLD MAN'S FUNERAL.
Why weep ye then for him, who, having won
The bound of man's appointed years, at last,
Life's blessings all enjoyed, life's labours done,
Serenely to his final rest has past ;
While the soft memory of his virtues yet
Lingers, like twilight hues when the bright sun is set ?
His youth was innocence ; his riper age
Marked with some act of goodness every day ;
And watched by eyes that loved him, calm and sage,
Faded his late declining years away.
Cheerful he gave his being up, and went
To share the holy rest that waits a life well spent.
That life was happy : every day he gave
Thanks for the fair existence that was his ;
For a sick fancy made him not her slave,
To mock him with her phantom miseries.
No chronic tortures racked his aged limb,
For luxury and sloth had nourished none for him.
And I am glad that he has lived thus long,
And glad that he has gone to his reward ;
Nor deem that kindly Nature did him wrong,
Softly to disengage the vital cord.
When his weak hand grew palsied, and his eye
Dark with the mists of age, it was his time to die.
THE RIVULET.
THIS little rill, that from the springs
Of yonder grove its current brings,
Plays on the slope awhile, and then
Goes prattling into groves again,
Oft to its warbling waters drew
My little feet, when life was new.
When woods in early green were drest,
And from the chambers of the west
The warmer breezes, travelling out,
Breathed the new scent of flowers about,
My truant steps from home would stray,
Upon its grassy side to play,
List the brown thrasher's vernal hymn,
And crop the violet on its brim,
With blooming cheek and open brow,
As young and gay, sweet rill, as thou.
And when the days of boyhood came,
And I had grown in love with fame,
Duly I sought thy banks, and tried
My first rude numbers by thy side.
THE RIVULET.
Words cannot tell how bright and gay
The scenes of life before me lay.
Then, glorious hopes, that now to speak
Would bring the blood into my cheek,
Passed o'er me ; and I wrote on high
A name I deemed should never die.
Years change thee not. Upon yon hill
The tall old maples, verdant still,
Yet tell, in grandeur of decay,
How swift the years have passed away,
Since first, a child, and half afraid,
I wandered in the forest shade.
Thou, ever joyous rivulet,
Dost dimple, leap, and prattle yet ;
And sporting with the sands that pave
The windings of thy silver wave,
And dancing to thy own wild chime,
Thou laughest at the lapse of time.
The same sweet sounds are in my ear
My early childhood loved to hear ;
As pure thy limpid waters run,
As bright they sparkle to the sun ;
As fresh and thick the bending ranks
Of herbs that line thy oozy banks ;
The violet there, in soft May dew,
Comes up, as modest and as blue ;
THE RIVULET. 37
As green, amid thy current's stress,
Floats the scarce-rooted water cress ;
And the brown ground-bird in thy glen
Still chirps as merrily as then.
Thou changest not — but I am changed,
Since first thy pleasant banks I ranged ;
And the grave stranger, come to see
The play-place of his infancy,
Has scarce a single trace of him
Who sported once upon thy brim.
The visions of my youth are past —
Too bright, too beautiful to last.
I've tried the world — it wears no more
The colouring of romance it wore.
Yet well has Nature kept the truth
She promised to my earliest youth ;
The radiant beauty shed abroad
On all the glorious works of God,
Shews freshly to my sobered eye
Each charm it wore in days gone by.
A few brief years shall pass away,
And I, all trembling, weak, and gray,
Bowed to the earth, which waits to fold
My ashes in the embracing mould,
38 THE RIVULET.
(If haply the dark will of fate
Indulge my life so long a date)
May come for the last time to look
Upon my childhood's favourite brook.
Then dimly on my eye shall gleam
The sparkle of thy dancing stream,
And faintly on my ear shall fall
Thy prattling current's merry call ;
Yet shalt thou flow as glad and bright
As when thou metst my infant sight.
And I shall sleep — and on thy side,
As ages after ages glide,
Children their early sports shall try,
And pass to hoary age and die.
But thou, unchanged from year to year,
Gaily shalt play and glitter here ;
Amid young flowers and tender grass
Thy endless infancy shall pass ;
And, singing down thy narrow glen,
Shalt mock the fading race of men.
THE DAMSEL OF PERU.
WHERE olive leaves were twinkling in every wind that blew,
There sat beneath the pleasant shade a damsel of Peru,
Betwixt the slender boughs, as they opened to the air,
Came glimpses of her ivory neck and of her glossy hair ;
And sweetly rang her silver voice within that shady nook,
As from the shrubby glen is heard the sound of hidden
brook.
Tis a song of love and valour, in the noble Spanish tongue.
That once upon the sunny plains of Old Castile was sung;
When, from their mountain holds, on the Moorish rout
below,
Had rushed the Christians like a flood, and swept away
the foe.
Awhile that melody is still, and then breaks forth anew
A wilder rhyme, a livelier note, of freedom and Peru.
A white hand parts the branches, a lovely face looks forth,
And bright dark eyes gaze steadfastly and sadly towards
the north.
40 THE DAMSEL OF PERU.
Thou lookst in vain, sweet maiden, the sharpest sight
would fail
To spy a sign of human life abroad in all the vale ;
For the noon is coming on, and the sunbeams fiercely beat,
And the silent hills and forest-tops seem reeling in the heat.
That white hand is withdrawn, that fair sad face is gone,
But the music of that silver voice is flowing sweetly on,
Not as of late, in cheerful tones, but mournfully and low ;
A ballad of a tender maid heart-broken long ago —
Of him who died in battle, the youthful and the brave,
And her who died of sorrow upon his early grave.
But see, along that mountain's slope, a fiery horseman ride ;
Mark his torn plume, his tarnished belt, the sabre at his side.
His spurs are buried rowel deep, he rides with loosened rein,
There's blood upon his charger's flank and foam upon his
mane,
He speeds towards the olive-grove, along that shaded hill —
God shield the helpless maiden there, if he should mean
her ill !
And suddenly that song has ceased, and suddenly I hear
A shriek sent up amid the shade, a shriek — but not of fear.
For tender accents follow, and tenderer pauses speak
The overflow of gladness, when words are all too weak :
" I lay my good sword at thy feet, for now Peru is free,
" And I am come to dwell beside the olive-grove with thee."
A SONG OF PITCAIRN'S ISLAND.
COME, take our boy, and we will go
Before our cabin door ;
The winds shall bring us, as they blow,
The murmurs of the shore ;
And we will kiss his young blue eyes,
And I will sing him, as he lies,
Songs that were made of yore :
I'll sing, in his delighted ear,
The island-lays thou lov'st to hear.
And thou, while stammering I repeat,
Thy country's tongue shalt teach ;
'Tis not so soft, but far more sweet
Than my own native speech ;
For thou no other tongue didst know,
When, scarcely twenty moons ago,
Upon Tahite's beach,
Thou cam'st to woo me to be thine,
With many a speaking look and sign.
A SONG OF PITCAIRN'S ISLAND.
I knew thy meaning — thou didst praise
My eyes, my locks of jet;
Ah ! well for me they won thy gaze, —
But thine were fairer yet !
I'm glad to see my infant wear
Thy soft blue eyes and sunny hair,
And when my sight is met
By his white brow and blooming cheek,
I feel a joy I cannot speak.
Come, talk of Europe's maids with me,
Whose necks and cheeks, they tell,
Outshine the beauty of the sea,
White foam and crimson shell.
I'll shape like theirs my simple dress,
And bind like them each jetty tress,
A sight to please thee well ;
And for my dusky brow will braid
A bonnet like an English maid.
Come, for the soft, low sunlight calls —
We lose the pleasant hours ;
Tis lovelier than these cottage walls —
That seat among the flowers.
And I will learn of thee a prayer
To Him who gave a home so fair,
A lot so blest as ours —
The God who made for thee and me
This sweet lone isle amid the sea.
RIZPAH.
" And he delivered them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and
they hanged them in the hill before the Lord ; and they fell all seven
together, and were put to death in the days of harvest, in the first
days, in the beginning of barley -harvest.
" And Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, took sackcloth, and spread
it for her upon the rock, from the beginning of harvest until water
dropped upon them out of heaven, and suffered neither the birds of
the air to rest on them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night."
2 SAMUEL, xxi. 9, 10.
HEAR what the desolate Rizpah said,
As on Gibeah's rocks she watched the dead.
The sons of Michal before her lay,
And her own fair children, dearer than they :
By a death of shame they all had died,
And were stretched on the bare rock, side by side.
And Rizpah, once the loveliest of all
That bloomed and smiled in the court of Saul,
All wasted with watching and famine now,
And scorched by the sun her haggard brow,
44 RIZPAH.
Sat, mournfully guarding their corpses there.
And murmured a strange and solemn air ;
The low, heart-broken, and wailing strain
Of a mother that mourns her children slain.
I have made the crags my home, and spread
On their desert backs my sackcloth bed ;
I have eaten the bitter herb of the rocks,
And drank the midnight dew in my locks ;
I have wept till I could not weep, and the pain
Of my burning eyeballs went to my brain.
Seven blackened corpses before me lie
In the blaze of the sun and the winds of the sky.
I have watched them through the burning day,
And driven the vulture and raven away ;
And the cormorant wheeled in circles round,
Yet feared to alight on the guarded ground ;
And, when the shadows of twilight came,
I have seen the hyena's eyes of flame,
And heard at my side his stealthy tread,
But aye at my shout the savage fled ;
And I threw the lighted brand, to fright
The jackal and wolf that yelled in the night.
Ye were foully murdered, my hapless sons,
By the hands of wicked and cruel ones ;
Ye fell, in your fresh and blooming prime,
All innocent, for your father's crime.
RIZPAH. 45
He sinned — but he paid the price of his guilt
When his blood by a nameless hand was spilt ;
When he strove with the heathen host in vain,
And fell with the flower of his people slain,
And the sceptre his children's hands should sway
From his injured lineage passed away.
But I hoped that the cottage roof would be
A safe retreat for my sons and me ;
And that while they ripened to manhood fast,
They should wean my thoughts from the woes of the past.
And my bosom swelled with a mother's pride,
As they stood in their beauty and strength by my side,
Tall, like their sire, with the princely grace
Of his stately form, and the bloom of his face.
Oh, what an hour for a mother's heart,
When the pitiless ruffians tore us apart !
When I clasped their knees, and wept and prayed,
And struggled and shrieked to Heaven for aid,
And clung to my sons with desperate strength,
Till the murderers loosed my hold at length,
And bore me, breathless and faint, aside
In their iron arms, while my children died.
They died — and the mother that gave them birth
Is forbid to cover their bones with earth.
46 RIZPAH.
The barley-harvest was nodding white,
When my children died on the rocky height,
And the reapers were singing on hill and plain,
When I came to my task of sorrow and pain.
But now the season of rain is nigh,
The sun is dim in the thickening sky,
And the clouds in sullen darkness rest,
When he hides his light at the doors of the west.
I hear the howl of the wind that brings
The long drear storm on its heavy wings ;
But the howling wind and the driving rain
Will beat on my houseless head in vain :
I shall stay, from my murdered sons to scare
The beasts of the desert and fowls of air.
THE INDIAN GIRL'S LAMENT.
AN Indian girl was sitting where
Her lover, slain in battle, slept ;
Her maiden veil, her own black hair,
Came down o'er eyes that wept ;
And wildly, in her woodland tongue,
This sad and simple lay she sung :
I've pulled away the shrubs that grew
Too close above thy sleeping head,
And broke the forest boughs that threw
Their shadows o'er thy bed,
That, shining from the sweet south-west,
The sunbeams might rejoice thy rest.
It was a weary, weary road
That led thee to the pleasant coast,
Where thou, in his serene abode,
Hast met thy father's ghost ;
Where everlasting autumn lies
On yellow woods and sunny skies.
48 THE INDIAN GIRI/S LAMENT.
Twas I the broidered mocsen made,
That shod thee for that distant land ;
'Twas I thy bow and arrows laid
Beside thy still cold hand —
Thy bow in many a battle bent,
Thy arrows never vainly sent.
With wampum belts I crossed thy breast,
And wrapped thee in the bison's hide,
And laid the food that pleased thee best
In plenty by thy side,
And decked thee bravely, as became
A warrior^ of illustrious name.
Thou'rt happy now, for thou hast past
The long dark journey of the grave,
And in the land of light, at last,
Hast joined the good and brave —
Amid the flushed and balmy air,
The bravest and the loveliest there.
\
Yet oft, thine own dear Indian maid,
Even there, thy thoughts will earthward stray —
To her who sits where thou wert laid,
And weeps the hours away,
Yet almost can her grief forget
To think that thou dost love her yet.
THE INDIAN G1RI/S LAMENT. 4Q
And thou, by one of those still lakes
That in a shining cluster lie,
On which the south wind scarcely breaks
The image of the sky,
A bower for thee and me hast made
Beneath the many-coloured shade.
And thou dost wait and watch to meet
My spirit sent to join the blest,
And, wondering what detains my feet
From the bright land of rest,
Dost seem, in every sound, to hear
The rustling of my footsteps near.
THE MASSACRE AT SCIO.
WEEP not for Scio's children slain ;
Their blood, by Turkish falchions shed,
Sends not its cry to Heaven in vain
For vengeance on the murderer's head.
Though high the warm red torrent ran
Between the flames that lit the sky,
Yet, for each drop, an armed man
Shall rise, to free the land, or die.
And for each corpse that in the sea
Was thrown, to feast the scaly herds,
A hundred of the foe shall be
A banquet for the mountain birds.
Stern rites and sad shall Greece ordain
To keep that day, along her shore,
Till the last link of slavery's chain
Is shivered, to be worn no more.
VERSION OF A FRAGMENT OF SIMONIDES,
THE night-winds howled — the billows dashed
Against the tossing chest ;
And Danae to her broken heart
Her slumbering infant prest.
My little child — in tears she said —
To wake and weep is mine ;
But thou canst sleep — thou dost not know
Thy mother's lot, and thine.
The moon is up, the moonbeams smile —
They tremble on the main ;
But dark within my floating cell,
To me they smile in vain.
Thy folded mantle wraps thee warm,
Thy curling locks are dry ;
Thou dost not hear the shrieking gust,
Nor breakers booming high.
VERSION OF A FRAGMENT.
Yet thou, didst thou but know thy fate,
Wouldst melt my tears to see ;
And I, methinks, should weep the less,
Wouldst thou but weep with me.
Yet, dear one, sleep, and sleep, ye winds
That vex the restless brine —
When shall these eyes, my babe, be sealed
As peacefully as thine !
THE GREEK PARTISAN.
OUR free flag is dancing
In the free mountain air,
And burnished arms are glancing,
And warriors gathering there ;
And fearless is the little train
Whose gallant bosoms shield it —
The blood that warms their hearts shall stain
That banner, ere they yield it-
Each dark eye is fixed on earth,
And brief each solemn greeting ;
There is no look or sound of mirth,
Where those stern men are meeting.
They go to the slaughter,
To strike the sudden blow,
And pour on earth, like water,
The best blood of the foe ;
54 THE GREEK PARTISAN.
To rush on them from rock and height,
And clear the narrow valley,
Or fire their camp at dead of nig-ht,
And fly before they rally.
Chains are round our country prest,
And cowards have betrayed her,
And we must make her bleeding breast
The grave of the invader.
Not till from her fetters
We raise up Greece again,
And write, in bloody letters,
That tyranny is slain, —
Oh, not till then the smile shall steal
Across those darkened faces,
Nor one of all those warriors feel
His children's dear embraces.
Reap we not the ripened wheat,
Till yonder hosts are flying,
And all their bravest at our feet
Like autumn sheaves are lying.
ROiME RO.
WHEN freedom from the land of Spain
By Spain's degenerate sons was driven,
Who gave their willing limbs again
To wear the chain so lately riven,
Romero broke the sword he wore :
Go, faithful brand, the warrior said,
Go, undishonoured ; never more
The blood of man shall make thee red —
I grieve for that already shed ;
And I am sick at heart to know
That faithful friend and noble foe
Have only bled to make more strong
The yoke that Spain has worn so long.
Wear it who will, in abject fear —
I wear it not who have been free ;
The perjured Ferdinand shall hear
No oath of loyalty from me.
Then, hunted by the hounds of power,
Romero chose a safe retreat,
Where bleak Nevada's summits tower
Above the beauty at their feet.
56 ROMERO.
There once, when on his cabin lay
The crimson light of setting day,
When even on the mountain's breast
The chainless winds were all at rest,
And he could hear the river's flow
From the calm paradise below —
Warmed with his former fires again,
He framed this rude but solemn strain.
Here will I make my home ; for here at least I see,
Upon this wild Sierra's side, the steps of Liberty ;
Where the locust chirps unscared beneath the unpruned
lime,
And the merry bee doth hide from man the spoil of the
mountain thyme ;
Where the pure winds come and go, and the wild vine
gads at will,
An outcast from the haunts of men she dwells with Nature
still.
ii.
I see the valleys, Spain ! where thy mighty rivers run,
And the hills that lift thy harvests and vineyards to the sun,
And the flocks that drink thy brooks and sprinkle all the
green,
Where lie thy plains, with sheep-walks seamed, and olive
shades between ; —
ROMERO. 57
I see thy fig-trees bask, with the fair pomegranate near,
And the fragrance of thy lemon-groves can almost reach
me here.
in-
Fair, fair — but fallen Spain ! 'tis with a swelling heart
That I think on all thou mightst have been, and look at
what thou art ; —
But the strife is over now, and all the good and brave
That would have raised thee up, are gone to exile or the
grave.
Thy fleeces are for monks, thy grapes for the convent feast,
And the wealth of all thy harvest-fields for the pampered
lord and priest.
IV.
But I shall see the day — it will come before I die —
t shall see it in my silver hairs, and with an age-dimmed eye,
When the spirit of the land to liberty shall bound,
As yonder fountain leaps away from the darkness of the
ground ;
And to my mountain-cell the voices of the free
Shall rise, as from the beaten shore the thunders of the sea.
MONUMENT MOUNTAIN.
THOU who wouldst see the lovely and the wild
Mingled in harmony on Nature's face,
Ascend our rocky mountains. Let thy foot
Fail not with weariness, for on their tops
The beauty and the majesty of earth
Spread wide beneath, shall make thee to forget
The steep and toilsome way. There, as thou stand'st,
The haunts of men below thee, and around
The mountain summits, thy expanding heart
Shall feel a kindred with that loftier world
To which thou art translated, and partake
The enlargement of thy vision. Thou shalt look
Upon the green and rolling forest-tops,
And down into the secrets of the glens
And streams, that with their bordering thickets strive
To hide their windings. Thou shalt gaze, at once,
Here on white villages and tilth and herds
And swarming roads, and' there on solitudes
That only hear the torrent and the wind
MONUMENT MOUNTAIN. 59
And eagle's shriek. There is a precipice
That seems a fragment of some mighty wall,
Built by the hand that fashioned the old world
To separate its nations, and thrown down
When the flood drowned them. To the north, a path
Conducts you up the narrow battlement.
Steep is the western side, shaggy and wild
With mossy trees, and pinnacles of flint,
And many a hanging crag. But, to the east,
Sheer to the vale go down the bare old cliffs —
Huge pillars, that in middle heaven upbear
Their weather-beaten capitals — here dark
With the thick moss of centuries, and there
Of chalky whiteness where the thunderbolt
Has splintered them. It is a fearful thing
To stand upon the beetling verge, and see
Where storm and lightning from that huge gray wall
Have tumbled down vast blocks, and at the base
Dashed them in fragments ; and to lay thine ear
Over the dizzy depth, and hear the sound
Of winds, that struggle with the woods below,
Come up like ocean murmurs. But the scene
Is lovely round : a beautiful river there
Wanders amid the fresh and fertile meads,
The paradise he made unto himself,
Mining the soil for ages. On each side
The fields swell upward to the hills ; — beyond,
60 MONUMENT MOUNTAIN.
Above the hills, in the blue distance, rise
The mighty columns with which earth props heaven.
There is a tale about these gray old rocks —
A sad tradition of unhappy love
And sorrows borne and ended long ago,
When over these fair vales the savage sought
His game in the thick woods. There was a maid —
The fairest of the Indian maids — bright-eyed,
With wealth of raven tresses, a light form,
And a gay heart. About her cabin -door
The wide old woods resounded with her song
And fairy laughter all the summer day.
She loved her cousin ; — such a love was deemed,
By the morality of those stern tribes,
Incestuous ; and she struggled hard and long
Against her love, and reasoned with her heart
As simple Indian maiden might — in vain.
Then her eye lost its lustre, and her step
Its lightness ; and the gray old men that passed
Her dwelling wondered that they heard no more
The accustomed song and laugh of her whose looks
Were like the cheerful smile of spring, they said,
Upon the winter of their age. She went
To weep where no eye saw, and was not found
When all the merry girls were met to dance,
And all the hunters of the tribe were out ;
MONUMENT MOUNTAIN. 61
Nor when they gathered from the rustling husk
The shining ear ; nor when, by the river side,
They pulled the grape, and startled the wild shades
With sounds of mirth. The keen-eyed Indian dames
Would whisper to each other, as they saw
Her wasting form, and say, " The girl will die."
One day, into the bosom of a friend,
A playmate of her young and innocent years,
She poured her griefs. Thou knowst, and thou alone,
She said — for I have told thee — all my love
And guilt and sorrow. I am sick of life.
All night I weep in darkness ; and the morn
Glares on me, as upon a thing accurst,
That has no business on the earth. I hate
The pastimes and the pleasant toils that once
I loved; — the cheerful voices of my friends
Have an unnatural horror in mine ear.
In dreams, my mother, from the land of souls,
Calls me and chides me. All that look on me •
Do seem to know my shame ; — I cannot bear
Their eyes ; — I cannot from my heart root out
The love that wrings it so,. and I must die.
It was a summer morning, and they went
To this old precipice. About the cliffs
Lay garlands, ears of maize, arid shaggy skins
Of wolf and bear, the offerings of the tribe
Here made to the Great Spirit ; for they deemed
MONUMENT MOUNTAIN.
Like worshippers of the elder time, that God
Doth walk on the high places, and affect
The earth-o'erlooking mountains. She had on
The ornaments with which her father loved
To deck the beauty of his bright-eyed girl,
And bade her wear when stranger warriors came
To be his guests. Here the friends sat them down,
And sang, all day, old songs of love and death,
And decked the poor wan victim's hair with flowers,
And prayed that safe and swift might be her way
To the calm world of sunshine, where no grief
Makes the heart heavy and the eyelids red.
Beautiful lay the region of her tribe
Below her — waters resting in the embrace
Of the wide forest, and maize-planted glades
Opening amid the leafy wilderness.
She gazed upon it long, and at the sight
Of her own village peeping through the trees,
And her own dwelling, and the cabin roof
Of him she loved with an unlawful love,
And came to die for, a warm gush of tears
Ran from her eyes. But when the sun grew low
And the hill-shadows long, she threw herself
From the steep rock and perished. There was scooped,
Upon the mountain's southern slope, a grave,
And there they laid her, in the very garb
With which the maiden decked herself for death,
MONUMENT MOUNTAIN. I
With the same withering wild flowers in her hair.
And o'er the mould that covered her the tribe
Built up a simple monument, a cone
Of small loose stones. Thenceforward, all who passed,
Hunter, and dame, and virgin, laid a stone
In silence on the pile. It stands there yet ;
And Indians from the distant West, that come
To visit where their fathers' bones are laid,
Yet tell the sorrowful tale ; and to this day
The mountain where the hapless maiden died
Is called the Mountain of the Monument.
THE MURDERED TRAVELLER.
WHEN Spring to woods and wastes around
Brought bloom and joy again,
The murdered traveller's bones were found
Far down a narrow glen.
The fragrant birch above him hung
Her tassels in the sky,
And many a vernal blossom sprung
And nodded careless by.
The red-bird warbled, as he wrought
His hanging nest o'erhead,
And fearless, near the fatal spot
Her young the partridge led.
But there was weeping far away ;
And gentle eyes, for him,
With watching many an anxious day,
Were sorrowful and dim.
THE MURDERED TRAVELLER. 65
They little knew, who loved him so,
The fearful death he met,
When shouting o'er the desert snow,
Unarmed, and hard beset ;
Nor how, when round the frosty pole
The northern dawn was red,
The mountain-wolf and wild cat stole
To banquet on the dead ;
Nor how, when strangers found his bones,
They dressed the hasty bier,
And marked the grave with nameless stones,
Unmoistened by a tear.
But long they looked, and feared, and wept,
Within his distant home ;
And dreamed, and started as they slept,
For joy that he was come.
So long they looked — but never spied
His welcome step again,
Nor knew the fearful death he died
Far down that narrow glen.
SONG OF THE GREEK AMAZON,
I BUCKLE to my slender side
The pistol and the cimeter,
And in my maiden flower and pride
Am come to share the tasks of war.
And yonder stands my fiery steed,
That paws the ground and neighs to go,
My charger of the Arab breed, —
I took him from the routed foe.
My mirror is the mountain spring,
At which I dress my ruffled hair ;
My dimmed and dusty arms I bring,
And wash away the blood-stain there.
Why should I guard from wind and sun
This cheek, whose virgin rose is fled,
It was for one — oh! only one —
I kept its bloom, and he is dead.
THE GREEK AMAZON. 67
But they who slew him — unaware
Of coward murderers lurking nigh —
And left him to the fowls of air,
Are yet alive — and they must die.
They slew him — and my virgin years
Are vowed to Greece and vengeance now ;
And many an Othman dame, in tears,
Shall rue the Grecian maiden's vow.
I touched the lute in better days,
I led in dance the joyous band ;
Ah ! they may move to mirthful lays
Whose hands can touch a lover's hand.
The march of hosts that haste to meet
Seems gayer than the dance to me ;
The lute's sweet tones are not so sweet
As the fierce shout of victory.
THE AFRICAN CHIEF.
CHAINED in the market-place he stood,
A man of giant frame,
Amid the gathering multitude
That shrunk to hear his name —
All stern of look and strong of limb,
His dark eye on the ground : —
And silently they gazed on him,
As on a lion bound.
Vainly, but well, that chief had fought, —
He was a captive now, —
Yet pride, that fortune humbles not,
Was written on his brow.
The scars his dark broad bosom wore,
Shewed warrior true and brave ;
A prince among his tribe before,
He could not be a slave.
THE AFRICAN CHIEF.
Then to his conqueror he spake —
" My brother is a king ;
Undo this necklace from my neck,
And take this bracelet ring ;
And send me where my brother reigns,
And I will fill thy hands
With store of ivory from the plains,
And gold-dust from the sands."
" Not for thy ivory nor thy gold
Will I unbind thy chain ;
That bloody hand shall never hold
The battle spear again.
A price thy nation never gave,
Shall yet be paid for thee ;
For thou shalt be the Christian's slave,
In lands beyond the sea."
Then wept the warrior chief, and bade
To shred his locks away ;
And, one by one, each heavy braid
Before the victor lay.
Thick were the platted locks, and long,
And deftly hidden there
Shone many a wedge of gold among
The dark and crisped hair.
69
70 THE AFRICAN CHIEF.
" Look, feast thy greedy eye with gold
Long kept for sorest need ;
Take it — thou askest sums untold,
And say that I am freed.
Take it — my wife the long, long day
Weeps by the cocoa-tree,
And my young children leave their play,
And ask in vain for me."
" I take thy gold — but I have made
Thy fetters fast and strong,
And ween that by the cocoa shade
Thy wife will wait thee long."
Strong was the agony that shook
The captive's frame to hear,
And the proud meaning of his look
Was changed to mortal fear.
His heart was broken — crazed his brain —
At once his eye grew wild —
He struggled fiercely with his chain,
Whispered, and wept, and smiled ;
Yet wore not long those fatal bands,
And once, at shut of day,
They drew him forth upon the sands,
The foul hyena's prey.
SONG.
SOON as the glazed and gleaming snow
Reflects the day-dawn cold and clear,
The hunter of the west must go
In depth of woods to seek the deer.
His rifle on his shoulder placed,
His stores of death arranged with skill,
His moccasins and snow-shoes laced, —
Why lingers he beside the hill.
Far in the dim and doubtful light,
Where woody slopes a valley leave,
He sees what none but lover might,
The dwelling of his Genevieve.
And oft he turns his truant eye,
And pauses oft, and lingers near ;
But when he marks the reddening sky,
He bounds away to hunt the deer.
AN INDIAN STORY.
" I KNOW where the timid fawn abides
In the depths of the shaded dell,
Where the leaves are broad, and the thicket hides,
With its many stems and its tangled sides,
From the eye of the hunter well.
I know where the young- May violet grows,
In its lone and lowly nook,
On the mossy bank, where the larch-tree throws
Its broad dark boughs, in solemn repose,
Far over the silent brook.
And that timid fawn starts not with fear
When I steal to her secret bower,
And that young May violet to me is dear,
And I visit the silent streamlet near,
To look on the lovely flower."
Thus Maquon sings as he lightly walks
To the hunting-ground on the hills ;
AN INDIAN STORY. 73
Tis a song of his maid of the woods and rocks,
With her bright black eyes and long black locks,
And voice like the music of rills.
He goes to the chase — but evil eyes
Are at watch in the thicker shades ;
For she was lovely that smiled on his sighs,
And he bore from a hundred lovers his prize,
The flower of the forest rnaids.
The boughs in the morning wind are stirred,
And the woods their song renew,
With the early carol of many a bird,
And the quickened tune of the streamlet, heard
Where the hazels trickle with dew.
And Maquon has promised his dark-haired maid,
Ere eve shall redden the sky,
A good red deer from the forest shade,
That bounds with the herd through grove and glade,
At her cabin-door shall lie.
The hollow woods, in the setting sun,
Ring shrill with the fire-bird's lay ;
And Maquon's sylvan labours are done,
And his shafts are spent, but the spoil they won
He bears on his homeward way.
74 AN INDIAN STORY.
He stops near his bower — his eye perceives
Strange traces along the ground ;
At once to the earth his burden he heaves,
He breaks through the veil of boughs and leaves,
And gains its door with a bound.
But the vines are torn on its walls that leant,
And all from the young shrubs there
By struggling hands have the leaves been rent,
And there hangs on the sassafras broken and bent,
One tress of the well-known hair.
But where is she who, at this calm hour,
Ever watched his coming to see ?
She is not at the door, nor yet in the bower,
He calls — but he only hears on the flower
The hum of the laden bee.
It is not a time for idle grief,
Nor a time for tears to flow ;
The horror that freezes his limbs is brief—
He grasps his war-axe and bow, and a sheaf
Of darts made sharp for the foe.
And he looks for the print of the ruffian's feet,
Where he bore the maiden away ;
And he darts on the fatal path more fleet
AN INDIAN STORY. 75
Than the blast that hurries the vapour and sleet
O'er the wild November day.
Twas early summer when Maquon's bride
Was stolen away from his door ;
But at length the maples in crimson are dyed,
And the grape is black on the cabin side,
And she smiles at his hearth once more.
But far in a pine-grove, dark and cold,
Where the yellow leaf falls not,
Nor the autumn shines in scarlet and gold,
There lies a hillock of fresh dark mould,
In the deepest gloom of the spot.
And the Indian girls that pass that way
Point out the ravisher's grave ;
" And how soon to the bower she loved," they say,
" Returned the maid that was borne away
From Maquon, the fond and the brave."
THE HUNTER'S SERENADE.
THY bower is finished, fairest !
Fit bower for hunter's bride —
Where old woods overshadow
The green savannah's side.
I've wandered long and wandered far
And never have 1 met,
In all this lovely western land,
A spot so lovely yet.
But I shall think it fairer
When thou art come to bless,
With thy sweet eyes and silver voice,
Its silent loveliness.
For thee the wild grape glistens
On sunny knoll and tree,
And stoops the slim papaya
With yellow fruit for thee.
THE HUNTER'S SERENADE. 77
For thee the duck, on glassy stream,
The prairie-fowl shall die,
My rifle for thy feast shall bring
The wild swan from the sky.
The forest's leaping panther,
Fierce, beautiful, and fleet,
Shall yield his spotted hide to be
A carpet for thy feet.
I know, for thou hast told me,
Thy maiden love of flowers ;
Ah ! those that deck thy gardens
Are pale compared with ours.
When our wide woods and mighty lawns
Bloom to the April skies,
The earth has no more gorgeous sight
To shew to human eyes.
In meadows red with blossoms,
All summer long, the bee
Murmurs, and loads his yellow thighs,
For thee, my love, and me.
Or, wouldst thou gaze at tokens
Of ages long ago?
Our old oaks stream with mosses,
And sprout with mistletoe;
78 THE HUNTER'S SERENADE.
And mighty vines, like serpents, climb
The giant sycamore ;
And trunks, o'erthrown for centuries,
Cumber the forest floor ;
And in the great savannah
The solitary mound,
Built by the elder world, o'erlooks
The loneliness around.
Come, thou hast not forgotten
Thy pledge and promise quite,
With many blushes murmured,
Beneath the evening light.
Come, the young violets crowd my door
Thy earliest look to win,
And at my silent window-sill
The jessamine peeps in.
All day the red-breast warbles
Upon the mulberry near,
And the night-sparrow trills her song
All night, with none to hear.
SONG OF MARION'S MEN
OUR band is few, but true and tried -
Our leader frank and bold —
The foeman trembles in his camp
When Marion's name is told.
Our fortress is the good green wood,
Our tent the cypress tree ;
We know the forest round us,
As seamen know the sea.
We know its walls of thorny vines,
Its glades of reedy grass,
Its safe and silent islands
Within the dark morass.
Wo to the heedless soldiery
Who little think us near !
On them shall light at midnight
A strange and sudden fear ;
80 SONG OF MARION'S MEN.
When, waking to their tents on fire,
They grasp their arms in vain,
And they who stand to face us
Are beat to earth again ;
And they who fly in terror, deem
A mighty host behind,
And hear the tramp of thousands
Upon the hollow wind.
Then sweet the hour that brings release
From danger and from toil :
We talk the battle over,
And share the battle's spoil.
The woodland rings with laugh arid shout,
As if a hunt were up,
And woodland flowers are gathered
To crown the soldier's cup.
With merry songs we rnock the wind
That in the pine-top grieves,
And slumber long and sweetly
On beds of oaken leaves.
Well knows the fair and friendly moon
The band that Marion leads —
The glitter of their rifles,
The scampering of their steeds.
SONG OF MARION'S MEN. 81
'Tis life our fiery barbs to guide
Across the moonlight plains ;
'Tis life to feel the night-wind
That lifts their tossing manes.
A moment in the ravaged camp —
A moment — and away
Back to the pathless forest,
Before the peep of day.
Grave men there are by broad Santee,
Grave men with hoary hairs,
Their hearts are all with Marion,
For Marion are their prayers.
And loveliest ladies greet our band
With kindliest welcoming —
With smiles like those of summer,
And tears like those of spring.
For them we wear these trusty arms,
And lay them down no more
Till we have driven the oppressor,
For ever, from our shore.
SONG.
DOST thou idly ask to hear
At what gentle seasons
Nymphs relent, when lovers near
Press the tenderest reasons ?
Ah ! they give their faith too oft
To the careless wooer ;
Maidens' hearts are always soft —
Would that men's were truer !
Woo the fair one when around
Early birds are singing ;
When, o'er all the fragrant ground,
Early herbs are springing :
When the brookside, bank, and grove,
All with blossoms laden,
Shine with beauty, breathe of love —
Woo the timid maiden.
SONG.
Woo her when, with rosy blush,
Summer eve is sinking ;
When, on rills that softly gush,
Stars are softly winking;
When, through boughs that knit the bower,
Moonlight gleams are stealing,
Woo her till the gentle hour
Wake a gentler feeling.
Woo her, when autumnal dyes
Tinge the woody mountain ;
When the dropping foliage lies
In the choked-up fountain :
Let the scene, that tells how fast
Youth is passing over,
Warn her, ere her bloom is past,
To secure her lover.
Woo her when the north winds call
At the lattice nightly ;
When, within the cheerful hall,
Blaze the faggots brightly :
While the wintry tempest round
Sweeps the landscape hoary,
Sweeter in her ear shall sound
Love's delightful story.
LOVE AND FOLLY,
FROM LA FONTAINE.
LOVE'S worshippers alone can know
The thousand mysteries that are his ;
His blazing torch, his twanging bow,
His blooming age are mysteries.
A charming science — but the day
Were all too short to con it o'er ;
So take of me this little lay,
A sample of its boundless lore.
As once, beneath the fragrant. shade
Of myrtles breathing heaven's own air,
The children, Love and Folly, played —
A quarrel rose betwixt the pair ;
Love said the gods should do him right —
But Folly vowed to do it then,
And struck him, o'er the orbs of sight,
So hard, he never saw again.
LOVE AND FOLLY. 85
His lovely mother's grief was deep —
She called for vengeance on the deed :
A beauty does not vainly weep,
Nor coldly does a mother plead.
A shade came o'er the eternal bliss
That fills the dwellers of the skies ;
Even stony-hearted Nemesis
And Radamanthus wiped their eyes.
" Behold," she said, " this lovely boy,"
While streamed afresh her graceful tears,
" Immortal, yet shut out from joy
" And sunshine, all his future years.
" The child can never take, you see,
" A single step without a staff —
" The harshest punishment would be
" Too lenient for the crime by half."
All said that Love had suffered wrong,
And well that wrong should be repaid ;
Then weighed the public interest long,
And long the party's interest weighed.
And thus decreed the court above :
" Since Love is blind from Folly's blow,
" Let Folly be the guide of Love,
" Where'er the boy may choose to go."
FATIMA AND RADUAN.
FROM THE SPANISH.
Diamante falso y fingido,
Engastado en pedernal, &c.
FALSE diamond set in flint ! the caverns of the mine
Are warmer than the breast that holds that faithless heart
of thine ;
Thou art fickle as the sea, thou art wandering as the wind,
And the restless, ever-mounting flame is not more hard to
bind.
If the tears I shed were tongues, yet all too few would be
To tell of all the treachery that thou hast shewn to me.
Oh ! I could chide thee sharply — but every maiden knows
That she who chides her lover, forgives him ere he goes.
Thou hast called me oft the flower of all Grenada's maids,
Thou hast said that by the side of me the first and fairest
fades ;
And they thought thy heart was mine, and it seemed to
every one
That what thou didst to win my love, from love of me was
done.
FATIMA AND RADUAN- 87
Alas ! if they but knew thee, as mine it is to know,
They well might see another mark to which thine arrows
go;
But thou giv'st me little heed — for I speak to one who
knows
That she who chides her lover, forgives him ere he goes.
It wearies me, mine enemy, that I must weep and
bear
What fills thy heart with triumph, and fills my own with
care.
Thou art leagued with those that hate me, and ah ! thou
knowst I feel
That cruel words as surely kill as sharpest blades of
steel.
'Twas the doubt that thou wert false that wrung my heart
with pain ;
But now I know thy perfidy I shall be well again :
I would proclaim thee as thou art — but every maiden
knows
That she who chides her lover, forgives him ere he goes.
Thus Fatima complained to the valiant Raduan,
Where underneath the myrtles Alhambra's fountains ran :
The Moor was inly moved, and blameless as he was,
He took her white hand in his own, and pleaded thus his
cause :
88 FATITVfA AND RADUAN.
Oh, lady, dry those star-like eyes, their dimness does me
wrong ;
If my heart be made of flint, at least 'twill keep thy image
long :
Thou hast uttered cruel words — but I grieve the less for
those,
Since she who chides her lover, forgives him ere he goes.
THE DEATH OF ALIATAR.
FROM THE SPANISH.
'Tis not with gilded sabres
That gleam in baldrick's blue,
Nor nodding plumes in caps of Fez,
Of gay and gaudy hue ;
But, habited in mourning weeds,
Come marching from afar,
By four and four, the valiant men
Who fought with Aliatar.
All mournfully and slowly
The afflicted warriors come,
To the deep wail of the trumpet
And beat of muffled drum.
The banner of the Phoanix,
The flag that loved the sky,
That scarce the wind dared wanton with,
It flew so proud and high —
90 THE DEATH OF AL1ATAR.
Now leaves its place in battle-field,
And sweeps the ground in grief;
The bearer drags its glorious folds
Behind the fallen chief,
As mournfully and slowly
The afflicted warriors come,
To the deep wail of the trumpet
And beat of muffled drum.
Brave Aliatar led forward
A hundred Moors to go
To where his brother held Motril
Against the leaguering foe.
On horseback went the gallant Moor,
That gallant band to lead ;
And now his bier is at the gate
From whence he pricked his steed.
While mournfully and slowly
The afflicted warriors come,
To the deep wail of the trumpet
And beat of muffled drum.
The knights of the Grand Master
In crowded ambush lay ;
They rushed upon him where the reeds
Were thick beside the way ;
THE DEATH OF ALIATAR.
They smote the valiant Aliatar,
They smote him till he died,
And broken, but not beaten, were
The brave ones by his side.
Now mournfully and slowly
The afflicted warriors come,
To the deep wail of the trumpet
And beat of muffled drum.
Oh ! what was Zayda's sorrow !
How passionate her cries !
Her lover's wounds streamed not more free
Than that poor maiden's eyes.
Say, Love, for thou didst see her tears :
Oh, no ! he drew more tight
The blinding fillet o'er his lids,
To spare his eyes the sight.
While mournfully and slowly
The afflicted warriors come,
To the deep wail of the trumpet
And beat of muffled drum.
Nor Zayda weeps him only,
But all that dwell between
The great Alhambra's palace walls
And waves of Albaicin.
92 THE DEATH OF ALIATAR.
The ladies weep the flower of knights,
The brave the bravest here ;
The people weep a champion,
The Alcaydes a noble peer.
While mournfully and slowly
The afflicted warriors come,
To the deep wail of the trumpet
And beat of muffled drum.
THE ALCAYDE OF MOLINA.
FROM THE SPANISH.
To the town of Atienza, Molina's brave Alcayde,
The courteous and the valorous, led forth his bold brigade ;
The Moor came back in triumph, he came without a wound,
With many a Christian standard, and Christian captive
bound.
He passed the city portals with swelling heart and vain,
And towards his lady's dwelling he rode with slackened rein ;
Two circuits on his charger he took, and at the third,
From the door of her balcony Zelinda's voice was heard :
" Now if thou wert not shameless," said the lady to the
Moor,
" Thou wouldst neither pass my dwelling, nor stop before
my door :
Alas for poor Zelinda, and for her wayward mood,
That one in love with peace should have loved a man of
blood !
Since not that thou wert noble I chose thee for my knight,
But that thy sword was dreaded in tourney and in fight.
94 THE ALCAYDE OF MOLINA.
Ah, thoughtless and unhappy ! that I should fail to see
How ill the stubborn flint and the yielding wax agree.
Boast not thy love for me, while the shrieking of the fife
Can change thy mood of mildness to fury and to strife.
Say not my voice is magic — thy pleasure is to hear
The bursting of the carbine and shivering of the spear.
Well, follow thou thy choice — to the battle-field away,
To thy triumphs and thy trophies, since I am less than they.
Thrust thy arm into thy buckler, gird on thy crooked brand,
And call upon thy trusty squire to bring thy spears in hand.
Lead forth thy band to skirmish, by mountain and by mead,
On thy dappled Moorish barb, or thy fleeter border steed.
Go, waste the Christian hamlets, and sweep away their
flocks,
From Almazan's broad meadows to Siguenza's rocks.
Leave Zelinda altogether, whom thou leavest oft and long,
And in the life thou lovest forget whom thou dost wrong.
These eyes shall not recall thee, though they meet no more
thy own,
Though they weep that thou art absent, and that I am all
alone."
She ceased, and turning from him her flushed and angry
cheek,
Shut the door of her balcony before the Moor could speak.
FROM THE SPANISH OF VILLEGAS.
Tis sweet, in the green Spring,
To gaze upon the wakening fields around ;
Birds in the thicket sing,
Winds whisper, waters prattle from the ground ;
A thousand odours rise,
Breathed up from blossoms of a thousand dies.
Shadowy, and close, and cool,
The pine and poplar keep their quiet nook ;
For ever fresh and full
Shines at their feet the thirst-inviting brook ;
And the soft herbage seems
Spread for a place of banquets and of dreams.
Thou, who alone art fair,
And whom alone I love, art far away.
Unless thy smile be there,
It makes me sad to see the earth so gay ;
I care not if the train
Of leaves, and flowers, and zephyrs go again.
THE LIFE OF THE BLESSED.
FROM THE SPANISH OF JUAN PONCE DE LEON.
REGION of life and light!
Land of the good, whose earthly toils are o'er !
Nor frost nor heat may blight
Thy vernal beauty, fertile shore,
Yielding thy blessed fruits for evermore !
There, without crook or sling,
Walks the good shepherd ; blossoms white and red
Round his meek temples cling ;
And, to sweet pastures led,
His own loved flock beneath his eye is fed.
He guides, and near him they
Follow delighted, for he makes them go
Where dwells eternal May,
And heavenly roses blow,
Deathless, and gathered but again to grow.
He leads them to the height
Named of the infinite and long-sought Good,
THE LIFE OF THE BLESSED. 97
And fountains of delight ;
And where his feet have stood
Springs up, along the way, their tender food.
And when in the mid skies
The climbing sun has reached his highest bound,
Reposing as he lies,
With all his flock around,
He witches the still air with numerous sound.
From his sweet lute flow forth
Immortal harmonies, of power to still
All passions born of earth,
And draw the ardent will
Its destiny of goodness to fulfil.
Might but a little part,
A wandering breath of that high melody,
Descend into my heart,
And change it till it be
Transformed and swallowed up, oh love ! in thee.
Ah ! then my soul should know,
Beloved ! where thou liest at noon of day,
And from this place of woe
Released, should take its way
To mingle with thy flock and never stray.
MARY MAGDALEN.
FROM THE SPANISH OF BARTOLOME LEONARDO DE ARGENSOLA.
BLESSED, yet sinful one, and broken hearted!
The crowd are pointing at the thing forlorn,
In wonder and in scorn !
Thou weepest days of innocence departed —
Thou weepest, and thy tears have power to move
The Lord to pity and love.
The greatest of thy follies is forgiven,
Even for the least of all the tears that shine
On that pale cheek of thine.
Thou didst kneel down to him who came from heaven,
Evil and ignorant, and thou shalt rise
Holy, and pure, and wise.
MARY MAGDALEN. 99
It is not much that to the fragrant blossom
The ragged briar should change ; the bitter fir
Distil Arabian myrrh ;
Nor that upon the wintry desert's bosom
The harvest should rise plenteous, and the swain
Bear home the abundant grain.
But come and see the bleak and barren mountains
Thick to their tops with roses ; come and see
Leaves on the dry dead tree :
The perished plant, set out by living fountains,
Grows fruitful, and its beauteous branches rise
For ever towards the skies.
THE SIESTA.
FROM THE SPANISH.
Vientecico murmurador,
Que lo gozas y andas todo, &c.
AIRS! that wander and murmur round,
Bearing delight where'er ye blow,
Make in the elms a lulling sound,
While my lady sleeps in the shade below.
Lighten and lengthen her noon-day rest,
Till the heat of the noon-day sun is o'er.
Sweet be her slumbers ! though in my breast
The pain she has waked may slumber no more.
Breathing soft from the blue profound,
Bearing delight where'er ye blow,
Make in the elms a lulling sound,
While my lady sleeps in the shade below.
THE SIESTA. 101
Airs ! that over the bending boughs,
And under the shadows of the leaves,
Murmur soft, like my timid vows,
Or the secret sighs my bosom heaves, —
Gently sweeping the grassy ground,
Bearing delight where'er ye blow,
Make in the elms a lulling sound,
While my lady sleeps in the shade below.
FROM THE SPANISH
OF PEDRO DE CASTRO Y ANAYA.
STAY, rivulet, nor haste to leave
The lovely vale that lies around thee ;
y/tiy jf^uidst thou be *v sea at eve,
When but a fount ttie morning found thee
Born when the skies began to glow,
Humblest of all the rock's cold daughters,
No blossom bowed its stalk to shew
Where stole thy still and scanty waters.
Now on thy stream the noon-beams look,
Usurping, as thou downward driftest,
Its crystal from the clearest brook,
Its rushing current from the swiftest.
FROM THE SPANISH.
Ah ! what wild haste ! — and all to be
A river, and expire in ocean.
Each fountain's tribute hurries thee
To that vast grave with quickened motion.
Far better 'twere to linger still
In this green vale, these flowers to cherish,
And die in peace, an aged rill,
Than thus, a youthful Danube, perish.
103
LOVE IN THE AGE OF CHIVALRY.
FROM PEYRE VIDAL, THE TROUBADOUR,
THE earth was sown with early flowers,
The heavens were blue and bright —
I met a youthful cavalier
As lovely as the light.
I knew him not — but in my heart
His graceful image lies,
And well I marked his open brow,
His sweet and tender eyes,
His ruddy lips that ever smiled,
His glittering teeth betwixt,
And flowing robe embroidered o'er,
With leaves and blossoms mixt.
He wore a chaplet of the rose;
His palfrey, white and sleek,
Was marked with many an ebon spot,
And many a purple streak ;
Of jasper was his saddle bow,
His housings sapphire stone,
LOVE IN THE AGE OF CHIVALRY. 105
And brightly in his stirrup glanced
The purple calcedon.
Fast rode the gallant cavalier,
As youthful horsemen ride ; —
Peyre Vidal 1 know that I am Love,
The blooming stranger cried ;
And this is Mercy by my side,
A dame of high degree ;
This maid is Chastity, he said, —
This squire is Loyalty.
THE LOVE OF GOD.
FROM THE PROVENfAL OF BERNARD RASCAS.
" ALL things that are on earth shall wholly pass away,
Except the love of God, which shall live and last for aye.
The forms of men shall be as they had never been ;
The blasted groves shall lose their fresh and tender green ;
The birds of the thicket shall end their pleasant song,
And the nightingale shall cease to chant the evening long ;
The kine of the pasture shall feel the dart that kills,
And all the fair white flocks shall perish from the hills;
The goat and antlered stag, the wolf and the fox,
The wild boar of the wood, and the chamois of the rocks,
And the strong and fearless bear, in the trodden dust shall lie,
And the dolphin of the sea and the mighty whale shall die,
And realms shall be dissolved, and empires be no more,
And they shall bow to death who ruled from shore to
shore ;
And the great globe itself, (so the holy writings tell),
With the rolling firmament, where the starry armies dwell,
Shall melt with fervent heat — they shall all pass away,
Except the love of God, which shall live and last for aye."
THE HURRICANE.
LORD of the winds ! I feel thee nigh,
I know thy breath in the burning sky !
And I wait, with a thrill in every vein,
For the coming of the hurricane !
And lo ! on the wing of the heavy gales,
Through the boundless arch of heaven he sails ;
Silent and slow, and terribly strong,
The mighty shadow is borne along,
Like the dark eternity to come ;
While the world below, dismayed and dumb,
Through the calm of the thick hot atmosphere,
Looks up at its gloomy folds with fear.
They darken fast — and the golden blaze
Of the sun is quenched in the lurid haze,
And he sends through the shade a funeral ray —
A glare that is neither night nor day,
A beam that touches with hues of death
The clouds above and the earth beneath
108 THE HURRICANE.
To its covert glides the silent bird,
While the hurricane's distant voice is heard
Uplifted among the mountains round,
And the forests hear and answer the sound.
He is come ! he is come ! do ye not behold
His ample robes on the wind unrolled ?
Giant of air ! we bid thee hail ! —
How his gray skirts toss in the whirling gale —
How his huge and writhing arms are bent,
To clasp the zone of the firmament,
And fold, at length, in their dark embrace,
From mountain to mountain the visible space !
Darker — still darker ! the whirlwinds bear
The dust of the plains to the middle air :
And hark to the crashing, long and loud,
Of the chariot of God in the thunder-cloud !
You may trace its path by the flashes that start
From the rapid wheels where'er they dart,
As the fire-bolts leap to the work! below,
And flood the skies with a lurid glow.
What roar is that ? — 'tis the rain that breaks
In torrents away from the airy lakes,
Heavily poured on the shuddering ground,
And shedding a nameless horror round.
Ah ! well-known woods and mountains and skies,
With the very clouds ! — ye are lost to my eyes.
I seek ye vainly, and see in your place
The shadowy tempest that sweeps through space —
THE HURRICANE. 109
A whirling ocean that fills the wall
Of the crystal heaven, and buries all:
And I, cut off from the world, remain
Alone with the terrible hurricane.
MARCH.
THE stormy March is come at last,
With wind and cloud and changing skies, —
I hear the rushing of the blast
That through the snowy valley flies.
Ah ! passing few are they who speak,
Wild stormy month ! in praise of thee ;
Yet, though thy winds are loud and bleak,
Though art a welcome month to me.
For thou to northern lands again
The glad and glorious sun dost bring,
And thou hast joined the gentle train,
And wearst the gentle name of Spring.
And in thy reign of blast and storm
Smiles many a long bright sunny day,
When the changed winds are soft and warm,
And heaven puts on the blue of May.
MARCH. Ill
Then sing aloud the gushing rills
And the full springs from frost set free,
That, brightly leaping down the hills,
Are just set out to meet the sea.
The year's departing beauty hides
Of wintry storms the sullen threat ;
But in thy sternest frown abides
A look of kindly promise yet.
Thou bringst the hope of those calm skies,
And that soft time of sunny showers,
When the wide bloom, on earth that lies,
Seems of a brighter world than ours.
SPRING IN TOWN.
THE country ever has a lagging Spring,
Waiting for May to call its violets forth,
And June its roses: showers and sunshine bring
Slowly the deepening verdure o'er the earth ;
To put their foliage out the woods are slack,
And one by one the singing birds come back.
Within the city's bounds the time of flowers
Comes earlier. Let a mild and sunny day,
Such as full often, for a few bright hours,
Breathes through the sky of March the airs of May,
Shine on our roofs and chase the wintry gloom —
And lo ! our borders glow with sudden bloom.
For the wide side-walks of Broadway are then
Gorgeous as are a rivulet's banks in June,
That, overhung with blossoms, through its glen
Slides soft away beneath the sunny noon;
And they who search the untrodden wood for flowers,
Meet in its depths no lovelier ones than ours.
SPRING IN TOWN. 113
For here are eyes that shame the violet,
Or the dark drop that on the pansy lies,
And foreheads white, as when, in clusters set,
The anemonies by forest fountains rise ;
And the spring beauty boasts no tenderer streak
Than the soft red on many a youthful cheek.
And thick about those lovely temples lie
Locks that the lucky Vignardonne has curled —
Thrice happy man ! whose trade it is to buy,
And bake, and braid those love-knots of the world ;
Who curls of every glossy colour keepest,
And sellest, it is said, the blackest cheapest.
And well thou may'st — for Italy's brown maids
Send the dark locks with which their brows are drest,
And Gascon lasses, from their jetty braids,
Crop half, to buy a riband for the rest ;
But the fresh Norman girls their tresses spare,
And the Dutch damsel keeps her flaxen hair.
Then, henceforth, let no maid nor matron grieve
To see her locks of an unlovely hue,
Frowzy or thin, for liberal art shall give
Such piles of curls as nature never knew.
Eve, with her veil of tresses, at the sight
Had blushed, outdone, and owned herself a fright.
SPRING IN TOWN.
Soft voices and light laughter wake the street,
Like notes of woodbirds ; and where'er the eye
Threads the long way, plumes wave, and twinkling feet
Fall light, as hastes that crowd of beauty by.
The ostrich, hurrying o'er the desert space,
Scarce bore those tossing plumes with fleeter pace.
No swimming Juno gait, of languor born,
Is theirs, but a light step of freest grace —
Light as Camilla's o'er the unbent corn —
A step that speaks the spirit of the place,
Since Quiet, meek old dame, was driven away
To Singsing and the shores of Tappan bay.
Ye that dash by in chariots ! who will care
For steeds or footmen now ; ye cannot shew
Fair face, and dazzling dress, and graceful air,
And last edition of the shape ! Ah no,
These sights are for the earth and open sky,
And your loud wheels unheeded rattle by.
SUMMER WIND.
IT is a sultry day ; the sun has drank
The dew that lay upon the morning grass ;
There is no rustling in the lofty elm
That canopies my dwelling, and its shade
Scarce cools me. All is silent, save the faint
And interrupted murmur of the bee,
Settling on the sick flowers, and then again
Instantly on the wing. The plants around
Feel the too potent fervours ; the tall maize
Rolls up its long green leaves ; the clover droops
Its tender foliage, and declines its blooms;
But far in the fierce sunshine tower the hills,
With all their growth of woods, silent and stern,
As if the scorching heat and dazzling light
Were but an element they loved. Bright clonds-
Motionless pillars of the brazen heaven,
Their bases on the mountains, their white tops
Shining in the far ether — fire the air
With a reflected radiance, and make turn
116 SUMMER WIND.
The gazer's eye away. For me, I lie
Languidly in the shade, where the thick turf,
Yet virgin from the kisses of the sun,
Retains some freshness, and I woo the wind
That still delays its coming. Why so slow,
Gentle and voluble spirit of the air ?
Oh, come and breathe upon the fainting earth
Coolness and life. Is it that in his caves
He hears me ? See, on yonder woody ridge
The pine is bending his proud top, and now,
Among the nearer groves, chestnut and oak
Are tossing their green boughs about. He comes !
Lo, where the grassy meadow runs in waves !
The deep distressful silence of the scene
Breaks up, with mingling of unnumbered sounds
And universal motion. He is come,
Shaking a shower of blossoms from the shrubs,
And bearing on their fragrance ; and he brings
Music of birds, and rustling of young boughs,
And sound of swaying branches, and the voice
Of distant waterfalls. All the green herbs
Are stirring in his breath ; a thousand flowers,
By the road-side and the borders of the brook,
Nod gaily to each other ; glossy leaves
Are twinkling in the sun, as if the dew
Were on them yet ; and silver waters break
Into small waves, and sparkle as he comes.
AUTUMN WOODS.
ERE, in the northern gale,
The summer tresses of the trees are gone,
The woods of Autumn, all around our vale,
Have put their glory on.
The mountains, that infold
In their wide sweep the coloured landscape round,
Seem groups of giant kings, in purple and gold,
That guard the enchanted ground.
I roam the woods that crown
The upland, where the mingled splendours glow,
Where the gay company of trees look down
On the green fields below.
My steps are not alone
In these bright walks ; the sweet south-west, at play,
Flies, rustling, where the painted leaves are strown
Along the winding way.
118 AUTUMN WOODS.
And far in heaven, the while,
The sun, that sends that gale to wander here,
Pours out on the fair earth his quiet smile, —
The sweetest of the year.
Where now the solemn shade,
Verdure and gloom where many branches meet —
So grateful, when the noon of summer made
The valleys sick with heat ?
Let in through all the trees
Come the strange rays ; the forest depths are bright ;
Their sunny-coloured foliage in the breeze
Twinkles, like beams of light.
The rivulet, late unseen,
Where bickering through the shrubs its waters run,
Shines with the image of its golden screen,
And glimmerings of the sun.
But 'neath yon crimson tree,
Lover to listening maid might breathe his flame,
Nor mark, within its roseate canopy,
Her blush of maiden shame.
Oh, Autumn ! why so soon
Depart the hues that make thy forests glad ;
AUTUMN WOODS. 119
Thy gentle wind and thy fair sunny noon,
And leave thee wild and sad ?
Ah ! 'twere a lot too blest
For ever in thy coloured shades to stray ;
Amidst the kisses of the soft south-west
To rove and dream for aye ;
And leave the vain low strife
That makes men mad — the tug for wealth and power,
The passions and the cares that wither life,
And waste its little hour.
A WINTER PIECE.
THE time has been that these wild solitudes,
Yet beautiful as wild, were trod by me
Oftener than now ; and when the ills of life
Had chafed my spirit — when the unsteady pulse
Beat with strange flutterings — I would wander forth
And seek the woods. The sunshine on my path
Was to me as a friend. The swelling hills,
The quiet dells retiring far between,
With gentle invitation to explore
Their windings, were a calm society
That talked with me and soothed me. Then the chant
Of birds, and chime of brooks, and soft caress
Of the fresh sylvan air, made me forget
The thoughts that broke my peace, and I began
To gather simples by the fountain's brink,
And lose myself in day-dreams. While I stood
In nature's loneliness, I was with one
With whom I early grew familiar, one
Who never had a frown for me, whose voice
A WINTER PIECE.
Never rebuked me for the hours I stole
From cares I loved not, but of which the world
Deems highest, to converse with her. When shrieked
The bleak November winds, and smote the woods,
And the brown fields were herbless, and the shades
That met above the merry rivulet
Were spoiled, I sought, I loved them still, — they seemed
Like old companions in adversity.
Still there was beauty in my walks; the brook,
Bordered with sparkling frost-work, was as gay
As with its fringe of summer flowers. Afar,
The village with its spires, the path of streams,
And dim receding valleys, hid before
By interposing trees, lay visible
Through the bare grove, and my familiar haunts
Seemed new to me. Nor was I slow to come
Among them, when the clouds, from their still skirts,
Had shaken down on earth the feathery snow,
And all was white. The pure keen air abroad,
Albeit it breathed no scent of herb, nor heard
Love-call of bird nor merry hum of bee,
Was not the air of death. Bright mosses crept
Over the spotted trunks, and the close buds,
That lay along the boughs, instinct with life,
Patient, and waiting the soft breath of Spring,
Feared not the piercing spirit of the North.
The snow-bird twittered on the beechen bough,
A WINTER PIECE.
And 'neath the hemlock, whose thick branches bent
Beneath its bright cold burden, and kept dry
A circle on the earth, of withered leaves,
The partridge found a shelter. Through the snow
The rabbit sprang away. The lighter track
Of fox, and the racoon's broad path, were there,
Crossing each other. From his hollow tree
The squirrel was abroad, gathering the nuts
Just fallen, that asked the winter cold, and sway
Of winter blast, to shake them from their hold.
But Winter has yet brighter scenes, — he boasts
Splendours beyond what gorgeous Summer knows ;
Or Autumn, with his many fruits, and woods
All flushed with many hues. Come, when the rains
Have glazed the snow, and clothed the trees with ice,
While the slant sun of February pours
Into the bowers a flood of light. Approach !
The incrusted surface shall upbear thy steps,
And the broad arching portals of the grove
Welcome thy entering. Look ! the massy trunks
Are cased in the pure crystal ; each light spray,
Nodding and tinkling in the breath of heaven,
Is studded with its trembling water-drops,
That stream with rainbow radiance as they move.
But round the parent stem the long low boughs
Bend, in a glittering ring, and arbours hide
The grassy floor. Oh ! you might deem the spot,
A WINTER PIECE. 123
The spacious cavern of the virgin mine,
Deep in the womb of earth — where the gems grow,
And diamonds put forth radiant rods, and bud
With amethyst and topaz — and the place
Lit up most royally, with the pure beam
That dwells in them. Or haply the vast hall
Of fairy palace, that outlasts the night,
And fades not in the glory of the sun ; —
Where crystal columns send forth slender shafts
And crossing arches ; and fantastic aisles
Wind from the sight in brightness, and are lost
Among the crowded pillars. Raise thine eye, —
Thou seest no cavern roof, no palace vault ;
There the blue sky and the white drifting cloud
Look in. Again the wildered fancy dreams
Of spouting fountains, frozen as they rose,
And fixed, with all their branching jets, in air,
And all their sluices sealed. All, all is light —
Light without shade. But all shall pass away
With the next sun. From numberless vast trunks,
Loosened, the crashing ice shall make a sound
Like the far roar of rivers, and the eve
Shall close o'er the brown woods as it was wont.
And it is pleasant, when the noisy streams
Are just set free, and milder suns melt off
The plashy snow — save only the firm drift
In the deep glen or the close shade of pines —
A WINTER PIECE.
Tis pleasant to behold the wreaths of smoke
Roll up among the maples of the hill,
'Where the shrill sound of youthful voices wakes
The shriller echo, as the clear pure lymph,
That from the wounded trees, in twinkling drops,
Falls, 'mid the golden brightness of the morn,
Is gathered in with brimming pails, and oft,
Wielded by sturdy hands, the stroke of axe
Makes the woods ring. Along the quiet air,
Come and float calmly off the soft light clouds,
Such as you see in summer, and the winds
Scarce stir the branches. Lodged in sunny cleft,
Where the cold breezes come not, blooms alone
The little wind-flower, whose just opened eye
Is blue as the spring heaven it gazes at —
Startling the loiterer in the naked groves
With unexpected beauty, for the time
Of blossoms and green leaves is yet afar.
And ere it comes, the encountering winds shall oft
Muster their wrath again, and rapid clouds
Shade heaven, and bounding on the frozen earth
Shall fail their volleyed stores, rounded like hail
And white like snow, and the loud North again
Shall buffet the vexed forests in his rage.
" OH, FAIREST OF THE RURAL MAIDS!"
OH, fairest of the rural maids !
Thy birth was in the forest shades ;
Green boughs, and glimpses of the sky,
Were all that met thy infant eye.
Thy sports, thy wanderings, when a child,
Were ever in the sylvan wild ;
And all the beauty of the place
Is in thy heart and on thy face.
The twilight of the trees and rocks
Is in the light shade of thy locks ;
Thy step is as the wind, that weaves
Its playful way among the leaves.
Thy eyes are springs, in whose serene
And silent waters heaven is seen ;
Their lashes are the herbs that look
On their young figures in the brook.
The forest depths, by foot unprest,
Are not more sinless than thy breast;
The holy peace that fills the air
Of those calm solitudes, is there.
THE DISINTERRED WARRIOR.
GATHER him to his grave again,
And solemnly and softly lay,
Beneath the verdure of the plain,
The warrior's scattered bones away.
Pay the deep reverence, taught of old,
The homage of man's heart to death ;
Nor dare to trifle with the mould
Once hallowed by the Almighty's breath,
The soul hath quickened every part —
That remnant of a martial brow,
Those ribs that held the mighty heart,
That strong arm — strong no longer now.
Spare them, each mouldering relic spare,
Of God's own image, let them rest,
'Till not a trace shall speak of where
The awful likeness was imprest.
THE DISINTERRED WARRIOR.
For he was fresher from the hand
That formed of earth the human face,
And to the elements did stand
In nearer kindred than our race.
In many a flood to madness tost,
In many a storm has been his path ;
He hid him not from heat or frost,
But met them, and defied their wrath.
Then they were kind — the forests here,
Rivers and stiller waters paid
A tribute to the net and spear
Of the red ruler of the shade.
Fruits on the woodland branches lay,
Roots in the shaded soil below,
The stars looked forth to teach his way,
The still earth warned him of the foe.
A noble race ! but they are gone,
With their old forests wide and deep,
And we have built our homes upon
Fields where their generations sleep.
Their fountains slake our thirst at noon,
Upon their fields our harvest waves,
Our lovers woo beneath their moon —
Ah, let us spare, at least, their graves !
THE GREEK BOY.
GONE are the glorious Greeks of old,
Glorious in mien and mind ;
Their bones are mingled with the mould,
Their dust is on the wind ;
The forms they hewed from living stone
Survive the waste of years, alone,
And scattered with their ashes, show
What greatness perished long ago.
Yet fresh the myrtles there — the springs
Gush brightly as of yore ;
Flowers blossom from the dust of kings,
As many an age before.
There nature moulds as nobly now,
As e'er of old, the human brow;
And copies still the martial form
That braved Platsea's battle-storm.
THE GREEK BOY.
Boy ! thy first looks were taught to seek
Their heaven in Hellas' skies ;
Her airs have tinged thy dusky cheek,
Her sunshine lit thine eyes ;
Thy ears have drunk the woodland strains
Heard by old poets, and thy veins
Swell with the blood of demi-gods,
That slumber in thy country's sods.
Now is thy nation free — though late —
Thy elder brethren broke —
Broke, ere thy spirit felt its weight,
The intolerable yoke.
And Greece, decayed, dethroned, doth see
Her youth renewed in such as thee ;
A shoot of that old vine that made
The nations silent in its shade.
" UPON THE MOUNTAIN'S DISTANT HEAD."
UPON the mountain's distant head,
With trackless snows for ever white,
Where all is still, and cold, and dead,
Late shines the day's departing light.
But far below those icy rocks, —
The vales, in summer bloom arrayed,
Woods full of birds, and fields of flocks,
Are dim with mist and dark with shade.
Tis thus, from warm and kindly hearts,
And eyes where generous meanings burn,
Earliest the light of life departs,
But lingers with the cold and stern.
SONNET — WILLIAM TELL.
"i '•' * A
CHAINS may subdue the feeble spirit, but thee,
Tell, of the iron heart! they could not tame;
For thou wert of the mountains : they proclaim
The everlasting creed of Liberty.
That creed is written on the untrampled snow, —
Thundered by torrents which no power can hold,
Save that of God, when he sends forth his cold, —
And breathed by winds that through the free heaven blow.
Thou, while thy prison walls were dark around,
Didst meditate the lesson Nature taught;
And to thy brief captivity was brought
A vision of thy Switzerland unbound.
The bitter cup they mingled, strengthened thee
For the great work to set thy country free.
TO THE RIVER ARVE.
SUPPOSED TO BE WRITTEN AT A HAMLET NEAR THE FOOT
OF MONT BLANC.
NOT from the sands or cloven rocks,
Thou rapid Arve ! thy waters flow ;
Nor earth within its bosom locks
Thy dark unfathomed wells below.
Thy springs are in the cloud, thy stream
Begins to move and murmur first
Where ice-peaks feel the noonday beam,
Or rain-storms on the glacier burst.
Born where the thunder and the blast,
And morning's earliest light are born,
Thou rushest swoln, and loud, and fast,
By these low homes, as if in scorn :
Yet humbler springs yield purer waves ;
And brighter, glassier streams than thine,
Sent up from earth's unlighted caves,
With heaven's own beam and image shine.
TO THE RIVER ARVE. 133
Yet stay ! for here are flowers and trees,
Warm rays on cottage roofs are here,
And laugh of girls, and hum of bees —
Here linger till thy waves are clear.
Thou heedest not — thou hastest on,
From steep to steep thy torrent falls,
Till, mingling with the mighty Rhone,
It rests beneath Geneva's walls.
Rush on — but were there one with me
That loved me, I would light my hearth
Here, where with God's own majesty
Are touched the features of the earth —
By these old peaks, white, high, and vast,
Still rising as the tempests beat ;
Here would I dwell, and sleep, at last,
Among the blossoms at their feet.
INSCRIPTION FOR-THE ENTRANCE TO A WOOD.
STRANGER, if thou hast learnt a truth which needs
No school of long experience, that the world
Is full of guilt and misery, and hast seen
Enough of all its sorrows, crimes, and cares,
To tire thee of it — enter this wild wood
And view the haunts of Nature. The calm shade
Shall bring a kindred calm, and the sweet breeze
That makes the green leaves dance, shall waft a balm
To thy sick heart. Thou wilt find nothing here
Of all that pained thee in the haunts of men,
And made thee loathe thy life. The primal curse
Fell, it is true, upon the unsinning earth,
But not in vengeance. God hath yoked to guilt
Her pale tormentor, misery. Hence, these shades
Are still the abodes of gladness, the thick roof
Of green and stirring branches is alive
And musical with birds, that sing and sport
In wantonness of spirit ; while below
INSCRIPTION FOR A WOOD. 135
The squirrel, with raised paws and form erect,
Chirps merrily. Throngs of insects in the shade
Try their thin wings, and dance in the warm beam
That waked them into life. Even the green trees
Partake the deep contentment ; as they bend
To the soft winds, the sun from the blue sky
Looks in and sheds a blessing on the scene.
Scarce less the cleft-born wild-flower seems to enjoy
Existence, than the winged plunderer
That sucks its sweets. The massy rocks themselves,
And the old and ponderous trunks of prostrate trees
That lead from knoll to knoll, a causey rude,
Or bridge the sunken brook, and their dark roots,
With all their earth upon them, twisting high,
Breathe fixed tranquillity. The rivulet
Sends forth glad sounds, and tripping o'er its bed
Of pebbly sands, or leaping down the rocks,
Seems, with continuous laughter, to rejoice
In its own being. Softly tread the marge,
Lest from her midway perch thou scare the wren
That dips her bill in water. The cool wind,
That stirs the stream in play, shall come to thee,
Like one that loves thee, nor will let thee pass
Ungreeted, and shall give its light embrace.
" WHEN THE FIRMAMENT QUIVERS WITH
DAYLIGHT'S YOUNG BEAM.
WHEN the firmament quivers with daylight's young beam,
And the woodlands awaking burst into a hymn,
And the glow of the sky blazes back from the stream, —
How the bright ones of heaven in the brightness grow
dim !
Oh, 'tis sad, in that moment of glory and song,
To see, while the hill-tops are waiting the sun,
The glittering band that kept watch all night long
O'er Love and o'er Slumber, go out one by one,
Till the circle of ether, deep, ruddy, and vast,
Scarce glimmers with one of the train that were there ;
And their leader the day-star, the brightest and last,
Twinkles faintly, and fades in that desert of air.
137
Thus, Oblivion, from midst of whose shadow we came,
Steals o'er us again when life's twilight is gone;
And the crowd of bright names in the heaven of fame,
Grow pale and are quenched as the years hasten on.
Let them fade — but we'll pray that the age, in whose flight,
Of ourselves and our friends the remembrance shall die,
May rise o'er the world with the gladness and light
Of the dawn that effaces the stars from the sky.
A SCENE ON THE BANKS OF THE HUDSON.
COOL shades and dews are round my way,
And silence of the early day ;
'Mid the dark rocks that watch his bed,
Glitters the mighty Hudson spread,
Unrippled, save by drops that fall
From shrubs that fringe his mountain wall ;
And o'er the clear still water swells
The music of the Sabbath bells.
All, save this little nook of land
Circled with trees, on which I stand —
All, save that line of hills which lie
Suspended in the mimic sky —
Seems a blue void above, below,
Through which the white clouds come and go
And from the green world's farthest steep •*.
I gaze into the airy deep.
BANKS OF THE HUDSON. 139
Loveliest of lovely things are they,
On earth, that soonest pass away.
The rose that lives its little hour
Is prized beyond the sculptured flower.
Even love, long tried and cherished longj
Becomes more tender and more strong
At thought of that insatiate grave
From which its yearnings cannot save.
River ! in this still hour thou hast
Too much of heaven on earth to last ;
Nor long may thy still waters lie,
An image of the glorious sky.
Thy fate and mine are not repose ;
And ere another evening close,
Thou to thy tides shalt turn again,
And I to seek the crowd of men.
THE WEST WIND.
BENEATH the forest's skirts I rest,
Whose branching pines rise dark and high,
And hear the breezes of the West
Among the threaded foliage sigh.
Sweet Zephyr ! why that sound of wo ?
Is not thy home among the flowers ?
Do not the bright June roses blow,
To meet thy kiss at morning hours ?
And lo ! thy glorious realm outspread —
Yon stretching valleys, green and gay,
And yon free hill-tops, o'er whose head
The loose white clouds are borne away.
And there the full broad river runs,
And many a fount wells fresh and sweet,
To cool thee when the mid-day suns
Have made thee faint beneath their heat.
THE WEST WIND. 141
Thou wind of joy, and youth, and love ;
Spirit of the new wakened year !
The sun in his blue realm above
Smooths a bright path when thou art here.
In lawns the murmuring bee is heard,
The wooing ring-dove in the shade,
On thy soft breath the new-fledged bird
Takes wing, half happy, half afraid.
Ah ! thou art like our wayward race ; —
When not a shade of pain or ill
Dims the bright smile of Nature's face,
Thou lov'st to sigh and murmur still.
TO A MUSQUITO.
FAIR insect! that, with threadlike legs spread out,
And blood-extracting bill and filmy wing,
Dost murmur, as thou slowly sailst about,
In pitiless ears full many a plaintive thing —
And tell how little our large veins should bleed,
Would we but yield them to thy bitter need.
Unwillingly, I own, and, what is worse,
Full angrily, men hearken to thy plaint ;
Thou gettest many a brush, and many a curse,
For saying thou art gaunt, and starved, and faint :
Even the old beggar, while he asks for food,
Would kill thee, hapless stranger, if he could.
I call thee stranger, for the town, I ween
Has not the honour of so proud a birth,
Thou com'st from Jersey meadows, fresh and green,
The offspring of the gods, though born on earth ;
For Titan was thy sire, and fair was she,
The ocean nymph, that nursed thy infancy.
TO A MUSQUITO. 14$
Beneath the rushes was thy cradle swung ;
And when at length thy gauzy wings grew strong,
Abroad to gentle airs their folds were flung,
Rose in the sky and bore thee soft along ;
The south wind breathed to waft thee on thy way,
And danced and shone beneath the billowy bay.
And calm, afar, the city's spires arose, —
Thence didst thou hear the distant hum of men,
And as its grateful odours met thy nose,
Didst seem to smell thy native marsh again ;
Fair lay its crowded streets, and at the sight
Thy tiny song grew shriller with delight.
At length thy pinions fluttered in Broadway —
Ah ! there were fairy steps, and white necks kissed
By wanton airs, and eyes whose killing ray
Shone through the snowy veils like stars through mist;
And fresh as morn, on many a cheek and chin,
Bloomed the bright blood through the transparent skin,
Oh, these were sights to touch an anchorite !
What ! do I hear thy slender voice complain ?
Thou wailest when I talk of beauty's light,
As if it brought the memory of pain :
Thou art a wayward being — well — come near.
And pour thy tale of sorrow in my ear.
TO A MUSQUITO.
What sayst them, slanderer! — rouge makes thee sick?
And China bloom at best is sorry food ?
And Rowland's Kalydor, if laid on thick,
Poisons the thirsty wretch that bores for blood ?
Go ! 'twas a just reward that met thy crime —
But shun the sacrilege another time.
That bloom was made to look at, not to touch ;
To worship, not approach, that radiant white :
And well might sudden vengeance light on such
As dared, like thee, most impiously, to bite;
Thou shouldst have gazed at distance and admired,
Murmured thy adoration and retired.
Thou'rt welcome to the town — but why come here
To bleed a brother poet, gaunt like thee ?
Alas ! the little blood I have is dear,
And thin will be the banquet drawn from me.
Look round — the pale-eyed sisters in my cell,
Thy old acquaintance, Song and Famine, dwell.
Try some plump alderman, and suck the blood
Enriched by generous wine and costly meat ;
On well-filled skins, sleek as thy native mud —
Fix thy light pump and press thy freckled feet :
Go to the men for whom, in ocean's halls,
The oyster breeds, and the green turtle sprawls.
TO A MUSQUITO. 145
There corks are drawn, and the red vintage flows
To fill the swelling veins for thee, and now
The ruddy cheek and now the ruddier nose
Shall tempt thee, as thou flittest round the brow ;
And, when the hour of sleep its quiet brings,
No angry hand shall rise to brush thy wings.
I .
" I BROKE THE SPELL THAT HELD ME LONG."
I BROKE the spell that held me long,
The dear, dear witchery of song.
I said, the poets' idle lore
Shall waste my prime of years no more ;
For Poetry, though heavenly born,
Consorts with Poverty and Scorn.
I broke the spell — nor deemed its power
Could fetter me another hour.
Ah, thoughtless ! how could I forget
Its causes were around me yet ?
For wheresoe'er I looked, the while,
Was Nature's everlasting smile.
Still came and lingered on my sight
Of flowers and stars the bloom and light,
And glory of the stars and sun ; —
And these and poetry are one.
They, ere the world had held me long,
Recalled me to the love of song.
THE CONJUNCTION OF JUPITER AND VENUS.
I WOULD not always reason. The straight path
Wearies us with its never-varying lines,
And we grow melancholy. I would make
Reason my guide, but she should sometimes sit
Patiently by the way-side, while I traced
The mazes of the pleasant wilderness
Around me. She should be my counsellor,
But not my tyrant ; for the spirit needs
Impulses from a deeper source than hers,
And there are motions in the mind of man
That she must look upon with awe. I bow
Reverently to her dictates, but not less
Hold to the fair illusions of old time —
Illusions that shed brightness over life,
And glory over nature. Look even now,
Where two bright planets in the twilight meet
Upon the saffron heaven, — the imperial star
Of Jove, and she that from her radiant urn
Pours forth the light of love. Let me believe,
Awhile, that they are met for ends of good,
148 CONJUNCTION OF JUPITER AND VENUS.
Amid the evening glory, to confer
Of men and their affairs, and to shed down
Kind influences. Lo ! their orbs burn more bright,
And shake out softer fires ! The great earth feels
The gladness and the quiet of the time :
Meekly the mighty river, that infolds
This mighty city, smooths his front, and far
Glitters and burns even to the rocky base
Of the dark heights that bound him to the west ;
And a deep murmur, from the many streets,
Rises like a thanksgiving. Put we hence
Dark and sad thoughts awhile — there's time for them
Hereafter — on the morrow we will meet,
With melancholy looks, to tell our griefs,
And make each other wretched ; this calm hour,
This balmy, blessed evening, we will give
To cheerful hopes and dreams of happy days,
Born of the meeting of those glorious stars.
Enough of drought has parched the year, and scared
The land with dread of famine. Autumn, yet,
Shall make men glad with unexpected fruits :
The dog-star shall shine harmless ; genial days
Shall softly glide away into the keen
And wholesome cold of winter ; he that fears
The pestilence shall gaze on those pure beams,
And breathe with confidence the quiet air.
CONJUNCTION OF JUPITER AND VENUS. 149
Emblems of Power and Beauty ! well may they
Shine brightest on our borders, and withdraw
Towards the great Pacific, marking out
The path of empire. Thus, in our own land,
Ere long, the better Genius of our race,
Having encompassed earth, and tamed its tribes,
Shall sit him down beneath the farthest west,
By the shore of that calm ocean, and look back
On realms made happy.
Light the nuptial torch,
And say the glad, yet solemn rite, that knits
The youth and maiden. Happy days to them
That wed this evening ! — a long life of love,
And blooming sons and daughters ! Happy they
Born at this hour, for they shall see an age
Whiter and holier than the past, and go
Late to their graves. Men shall wear softer hearts,
And shudder at the butcheries of war,
As now at other murders.
Hapless Greece !
Enough of blood has wet thy rocks, and stained
Thy rivers ; deep enough thy chains have worn
Their links into thy flesh ; the sacrifice
Of thy pure maidens, and thy innocent babes,
And reverend priests, has expiated all
150 CONJUNCTION OF JUPITER AND VENUS.
Thy crimes of old. In yonder mingling lights
There is an omen of good days for thee.
Thou shalt arise from 'midst the dust, and sit
Again among the nations. Thine own arm
Shall yet redeem thee. Not in wars like thine
The world takes part. Be it a strife of kings, —
Despot with despot battling for a throne, —
And Europe shall be stirred throughout her realms ;
Nations shall put on harness, and shall fall
Upon each other, and in all their bounds
The wailing of the childless shall not cease.
Thine is a war for liberty, and thou
Must fight it single-handed. The old world
Looks coldly on the murderers of thy race,
And leaves thee to the struggle ; and the new, —
I fear me thou couldst tell a shameful tale
Of fraud and lust of gain ; — thy treasury drained,
And Missolonghi fallen. Yet thy wrongs
Shall put new strength into thy heart and hand,
And God and thy good sword shall yet work out
For thee a terrible deliverance.
JUNE.
I GAZED upon the glorious sky
And the green mountains round,
And thought, that when I came to lie
Within the silent ground,
'Twere pleasant, that in flowery June,
When brooks sent up a cheerful tune,
And groves a joyous sound,
The sexton's hand, my grave to make,
The rich, green, mountain-turf should break.
A cell within the frozen mould,
A coffin borne through sleet,
And icy clods above it rolled,
While fierce the tempests beat —
Away ! — I will not think of these.
Blue be the sky and soft the breeze,
Earth green beneath the feet,
And be the damp mould gently prest
Into my narrow place of rest.
152 JUNE.
There, through the long, long summer hours,
The golden light should lie,
And thick young herbs and groups of flowers
Stand in their beauty by.
The oriole should build and tell
His love-tale, close beside my cell ;
The idle butterfly
Should rest him there, and there be heard
The housewife bee and humming bird.
And what if cheerful shouts, at noon,
Come from the village sent,
Or songs of maids, beneath the moon,
With fairy laughter blent;
And what if, in the evening light,
Betrothed lovers walk in sight
Of my low monument :
I would the lovely scene around
Might know no sadder sight nor sound.
I know, I know I should not see
The season's glorious show,
Nor would its brightness shine for me,
Nor its wild music flow ;
But, if around my place of sleep
The friends I love should come to weep,
They might not haste to go.
JUNE.
153
Soft airs, and song, and light, and bloom,
Should keep them lingering by my tomb.
These to their softened hearts should bear
The thought of what has been,
And speak of one who cannot share
The gladness of the scene ;
Whose part, in all the pomp that fills
The circuit of the summer hills,
Is _that his grave is green ;
And deeply would their hearts rejoice
To hear again his living voice.
THE TWO GRAVES,
Tis a bleak wild hill, but green and bright
In the summer warmth, and the mid-day light :
There's the hum of the bee and the chirp of the wren,
And the dash of the brook from the alder glen ;
There's a sound of a bell from the scattered flock,
And the shade of the beech lies cool on the rock.
And fresh from the west is the free wind's breath, —
There is nothing here that speaks of death.
Far yonder, where orchards and gardens lie,
And dwellings cluster, 'tis there men die.
They are born, they die, and are buried near,
Where the populous grave-yard lightens the bier ;
For strict and close are the ties that bind,
In death, the children of human kind ;
Yea, stricter and closer than those of life, —
Tis a neighbourhood that knows no strife.
They are noiselessly gathered — friend and foe —
To the still and dark assemblies below :
THE TWO GRAVES. 155
Without a frown or a smile they meet,
Each pale and calm in his winding sheet ;
In that sullen home of peace and gloom,
Crowded, like guests in a banquet room.
Yet there are graves in this lonely spot,
Two humble graves, — but I meet them not.
I have seen them, — eighteen years are past,
Since I found their place in the brambles last, —
The place where, fifty winters ago,
An aged man in his locks of snow,
And an aged matron, withered with years,
Were solemnly laid, — but not with tears :
For none who sat by the light of their hearth
Beheld their coffins covered with earth.
Their kindred were far, and their children dead,
When the funeral prayer was coldly said.
Two low green hillocks, two small gray stones,
Rose over the place that held their bones ;
But the grassy hillocks are levelled again,
And the keenest eye might search in vain,
'Mong briars, and ferns, and paths of sheep,
For the spot where the aged couple sleep.
Yet well might they lay, beneath the soil
Of this lonely spot, that man of toil,
156 THE TWO GRAVES.
And trench the strong hard mould with the spade,
Where never before a grave was made ;
For he hewed the dark old woods away,
And gave the virgin fields to the day, —
And the gourd and the bean, beside his door,
Bloomed where their flowers ne'er opened before";
And the maize stood up, and the bearded rye
Bent low in the breath of an unknown sky.
Tis said, that when life is ended here,
The spirit is borne to a distant sphere ;
That it visits its earthly home no more,
Nor looks on the haunts it loved before.
But why should the bodiless soul be sent
Far off, to a long, long banishment ?
Talk not of the light and the living green !
It will pine for the dear familiar scene ;
It will yearn, in that strange bright world, to behold
The rock and the stream it knew of old.
'Tis a cruel creed, believe it not !
Death to the good is a milder lot.
They are here — they are here — that harmless pair,
In the yellow sunshine and flowing air,
In the light cloud-shadows that slowly pass,
In the sounds that rise from the murmuring grass.
THE TWO GRAVES. 157
They sit where their humble cottage stood,
They walk by the waving edge of the wood,
And list to the long accustomed flow
Of the brook that wets the rocks below.
Patient, and peaceful, and passionless,
As seasons on seasons swiftly press,
They watch, and wait, and linger around,
Till the day when their bodies shall leave the ground.
THE NEW MOON.
WHEN, as the garish day is done,
Heaven burns with the descended sun,
Tis passing sweet to mark,
Amid that flush of crimson light,
The new moon's modest bow grow bright,
As earth and sky grow dark.
Few are the hearts too cold to feel
A thrill of gladness o'er them steal,
When first the wandering eye
Sees faintly, in the evening blaze,
That glimmering curve of tender rays
Just planted in the sky.
The sight of that young crescent brings
Thoughts of all fair and youthful things —
The hopes of early years ;
And childhood's purity and grace,
And joys that, like a rainbow, chase
The passing shower of tears.
THE NEW MOON. 159
The captive yields him to the dream
Of freedom, when that virgin beam
Comes out upon the air ;
And painfully the sick man tries
To fix his dim and burning eyes
On the soft promise there.
Most welcome to the lover's sight
Glitters that pure, emerging light ;
For prattling poets say,
That sweetest is the lover's walk,
And tenderest is their murmured talk,
Beneath its gentle ray.
And there do graver men behold
A type of errors, loved of old,
Forsaken and forgiven ;
And thoughts and wishes not of earth,
Just opening in their early birth,
Like that new light in heaven.
THE GLADNESS OF NATURE.
Is this a time to be cloudy and sad,
When our mother Nature laughs around ;
When even the deep blue heavens look glad,
And gladness breathes from the blossoming ground ?
There are notes of joy from the hang-bird and wren,
And the gossip of swallows through all the sky ;
The ground-squirrel gaily chirps by his den,
And the wilding bee hums merrily by.
The clouds are at play in the azure space,
And their shadows at play on the bright green vale,
And here they stretch to the frolic chase,
And there they roll on the easy gale.
There 's a dance of leaves in that aspen bower,
There 's a titter of winds in that beechen tree,
There 's a smile on the fruit, and a smile on the flower,
And a laugh from the brook that runs to the sea.
THE GLADNESS OF NATURE. 161
And look at the broad-faced sun how he smiles
On the dewy earth that smiles in his ray,
On the leaping waters and gay young isles,
Ay, look, and he'll smile thy gloom away.
TO THE FRINGED GENTIAN.
THOU blossom, bright with autumn dew,
And coloured with the heaven's own blue,
That openest when the quiet light
Succeeds the keen and frosty night.
Thou comest not when violets lean
O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen,
O'er columbines, in purple drest,
Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest.
Thou waitest late, and com'st alone,
When woods are bare and birds are flown,
And frosts and shortening days portend
The aged year is near its end.
Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye
Look through its fringes to the sky,
Blue — blue — as if that sky let fall
A flower from its cerulean wall.
TO THE FRINGED GENTIAN. 163
I would that thus, when I shall see
The hour of death draw near to me,
Hope, blossoming within my heart,
May look to heaven as I depart.
" INNOCENT CHILD AND SNOW-WHITE FLOWER.'
INNOCENT child and snow-white flower !
Well are ye paired in your opening hour.
Thus should the pure and the lovely meet,
Stainless with stainless, and sweet with sweet.
White as those leaves, just blown apart,
Are the folds of thy own young heart :
Guilty passion and cankering care
Never have left their traces there.
Artless one ! though thou gazest now
O'er the white blossom with earnest brow,
Soon will it tire thy childish eye —
Fair as it is, thou wilt throw it by.
Throw it aside in thy weary hour —
Throw to the ground the fair white flower ;
Yet, as thy tender years depart,
Keep that white and innocent heart.
SONNET— MIDSUMMER.
A POWER is on the earth and in the air,
From which the vital spirit shrinks afraid,
And shelters him, in nooks of deepest shade,
From the hot steam and from the fiery glare.
Look forth upon the earth — her thousand plants
Are smitten ; even the dark, sun-loving maize
Faints in the field beneath the torrid blaze ;
The herd beside the shaded fountain pants ;
For life is driven from all the landscape brown :
The bird has sought his tree, the snake his den,
The trout floats dead in the hot stream, and men
Drop by the sun-stroke in the populous town ;
As if the Day of Fire had dawned and sent
Its deadly breath into the firmament.
SONNET— OCTOBER.
AYE, thou art welcome, heaven's delicious breath !
When woods begin to wear the crimson leaf,
And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief,
And the year smiles as it draws near its death.
Wind of the sunny south ! oh, still delay
In the gay woods and in the golden air,
Like to a good old age released from care,
Journeying, in long serenity, away.
In such a bright, late quiet, would that I
Might wear out life like thee, 'mid bowers and brooks,
And, dearer yet, the sunshine of kind looks,
And music of kind voices ever nigh ;
And when my last sand twinkled in the glass,
Pass silently from men — as thou dost pass.
SONNET — NOVEMBER.
YET one smile more, departing distant sun !
One mellow smile through the soft vapoury air,
Ere, o'er the frozen earth, the loud winds run,
Or snows are sifted o'er the meadows bare.
One smile on the brown hills and naked trees,
And the dark rocks whose summer wreaths are cast,
And the blue gentian flower, that in the breeze
Nods lonely, of her beauteous race the last.
Yet a few sunny days, in which the bee
Shall murmur by the hedge that skirts the way,
The cricket chirp upon the russet lea,
And man delight to linger in thy ray.
Yet one rich smile, and we will try to bear
The piercing winter frost, and winds, and darkened air.
A MEDITATION ON RHODE-ISLAND COAL.
Decolor, obscurus, vilis, non ille repexam
Caesariem regum, non Candida virginis ornat
Colla, nee insigni splendet per cingula morsu.
Sed nova si nigri videas miracula saxi,
Tune superat pulchros cultus et quicquid Eois
Indus litoribus rubra scrutatur in alga. CLAUDIAN.
I SAT beside the glowing grate, fresh heaped
With Newport coal, and as the flame grew bright —
The many-coloured flame — and played and leaped,
I thought of rainbows and the northern light,
Moore's Lalla Rookh, the Treasury Report,
And other brilliant matters of the sort,
And last I thought of that fair isle which sent
The mineral fuel : on a summer day
I saw it once, with heat and travel spent,
And scratched by dwarf oaks in the hollow way ;
Now dragged through sand, now jolted over stone —
A rugged road through rugged Tiverton.
ON RHODE-ISL.\ND COAL. 169
And hotter grew the air, and hollower grew
The deep-worn path, and, horror-struck, I thought,
Where will this dreary passage lead me to? —
This long, dull road, so narrow, deep, and hot ?
I looked to see it dive in earth outright ;
I looked — but saw a far more welcome sight.
Like a soft mist upon the evening shore,
At once a lovely isle before me lay ;
Smooth, and with tender verdure covered o'er,
As if just risen from its calm inland bay ;
Sloped each way gently to the grassy edge,
And the small waves that dallied with the sedge.
The barley was just reaped, its heavy sheaves
Lay on the stubble field — the tall maize stood
Dark in its summer growth, and shook its leaves —
And bright the sunlight played on the young wood —
For fifty years ago, the old men say,
The Briton hewed their ancient groves away.
I saw where fountains freshened the green land,
And where the pleasant road, from door to door,
With rows of cherry-trees on either hand,
Went wandering all that fertile region o'er —
Rogue's Island once — but when the rogues were dead,
Rhode-Island was the name it took instead.
»
170 ON RHODE-ISLAND COAL.
Beautiful island ! then it only seemed
A lovely stranger — it has grown a friend.
I gazed on its smooth slopes, but never dreamed
How soon that bright beneficent isle would send
The treasures of its womb across the sea,
To warm a poet's room and boil his tea.
Dark anthracite ! that reddenest on my hearth,
Thou in those island mines didst slumber long ;
But now thou art come forth to move the earth,
And put to shame the men that mean thee wrong.
Thou shalt be coals of fire to those that hate thee,
And warm the shins of all that under-rate thee.
Yea, they did wrong thee foully — they who mocked
Thy honest face, and said thou wouldst not burn ;
Of hewing thee to chimney-pieces talked,
And grew profane — and swore, in bitter scorn,
That men might to thy inner caves retire,
And there, unsinged, abide the day of fire.
Yet is thy greatness nigh. I pause to state,
That I too have seen greatness — even 1 —
Shook hands with Adams — stared at La Fayette,
When, barehead, in the hot noon of July,
He would not let the umbrella be held o'er him,
For which three cheers burst from the mob before him
ON RHODE-ISLAND COAL. 171
And I have seen — not many months ago —
An eastern governor in chapeau bras
And military coat — a glorious show ! —
Ride forth to visit the reviews, and ah !
How oft he smiled and bowed to Jonathan !
How many hands were shook and votes were won !
'Twas a great governor — thou too shalt be
Great in thy turn — and wide shall spread thy fame,
And swiftly ; farthest Maine shall hear of thee,
And cold New Brunswick gladden at thy name,
And, faintly through its sleets, the weeping isle
That sends the Boston folks their cod shall smile.
For thou shalt forge vast railways, and shalt heat
The hissing rivers into steam, and drive
Huge masses from thy mines, on iron feet,
Walking their steady way, as if alive,
Northward, till everlasting ice besets thee,
And south as far as the grim Spaniard lets thee.
Thou shalt make mighty engines swim the sea,
Like its own monsters — boats that for a guinea
Will take a man to Havre — and shalt be
The moving soul of many a spinning jenny,
And ply thy shuttles, till a bard can wear
As good a suit of broadcloth as the mayor.
172 ON RHODE-ISLAND COAL.
Then we will laugh at winter when we hear
The grim old churl about our dwellings rave :
Thou, from that " ruler of the inverted year,"
Shalt pluck the knotty sceptre Cowper gave,
And pull him from his sledge, and drag him in,
And melt the icicles from off his chin.
AN INDIAN AT THE BURYING-PLACE OF HIS FATHERS.
IT is the spot I came to seek, —
My fathers' ancient burial-place,
Ere from these vales, ashamed and weak,
Withdrew our wasted race.
It is the spot — I know it well —
Of which our old traditions tell.
For here the upland bank sends out
A ridge toward the river side ;
I know the shaggy hills about,
The meadows smooth and wide ;
The plains that, toward the southern sky,
Fenced east and west by mountains lie.
A white man, gazing on the scene,
Would say a lovely spot was here,
And praise the lawns so fresh and green
Between the hills so sheer.
I like it not — I would the plain
Lay in its tall old groves again.
174 AN INDIAN AT THE BURY1NG-PLACE
The sheep are on the slopes around,
The cattle in the meadows feed,
And labourers turn the crumbling ground,
Or drop the yellow seed,
And prancing steeds, in trappings gay,
Whirl the bright chariot o'er the way.
Methinks it were a nobler sight
To see these vales in woods arrayed,
Their summits in the golden light,
Their trunks in grateful shade ;
And herds of deer, that bounding go
O'er rills and prostrate trees below.
And then to mark the lord of all,
The forest hero, trained to wars,
Quivered and plumed, and lithe and tall,
And seamed with glorious scars,
Walk forth, amid his reign, to dare
The wolf, and grapple with the bear.
This bank, in which the dead were laid,
Was sacreu when its soil was ours ;
Hither the artless Indian maid
Brought wreaths of beads and flowers,
And the gray chief and gifted seer
Worshipped the God of thunders here.
OF HIS FATHERS. 175
But now the wheat is green and high
On clods that hid the warrior's breast,
And scattered in the furrows lie
The weapons of his rest ;
And there, in the loose sand is thrown
Of his large arm the mouldering bone.
Ah ! little thought the strong and brave,
Who bore their lifeless chieftain forth,
Or the young wife, that weeping gave
Her first-born to the earth —
That the pale race, who waste us now,
Among their bones should guide the plough.
They waste us — ay, like April snow
In the warm noon we shrink away ;
And fast they follow, as we go
Towards the setting day, —
Till they shall fill the land, and we
Are driven into the western sea.
But I behold a fearful sign,
To which the white men's eyes are blind ;
Their race may vanish hence, like mine,
And leave no trace behind —
Save ruins o'er the region spread,
And the white stones above the dead.
176 AN INDIAN AT THE BURYING-PLACE, &C.
Before these fields were shorn and tilled,
Full to the brim our rivers flowed ;
The melody of waters filled
The fresh and boundless wood :
And torrents dashed, and rivulets played,
And fountains spouted in the shade.
Those grateful sounds are heard no more :
The springs are silent in the sun,
The rivers, by the blackened shore,
With lessening current run ;
The realm our tribes are crushed to get
May be a barren desert yet.
SONNET
TO AN AMERICAN PAINTER DEPARTING FOR EUROPE.
THINE eyes shall see the light of distant skies :
Yet, Cole ! thy heart shall bear to Europe's strand
A living image of thy native land,
Such as on thy own glorious canvass lies.
Lone lakes — savannahs where the bison roves —
Rocks rich with summer garlands — solemn streams —
Skies, where the desert eagle wheels and screams —
Spring bloom and autumn blaze of boundless groves.
Fair scenes shall greet thee where thou goest — fair,
But different :. every where the trace of men,
Paths, homes, graves, ruins, from the lowest glen
To where life shrinks from the fierce Alpine air.
Gaze on them, till the tears shall dim thy sight,
But keep that earlier, wilder image bright.
GREEN RIVER.
WHEN breezes are soft and skies are fair,
I steal an hour from study and care,
And hie me away to the woodland scene,
Where wanders the stream with waters of green ;
As if the bright fringe of herbs on its brink
Had given their stain to the wave they drink :
And they, whose meadows it murmurs through,
Have named the stream from its own fair hue.
Yet pure its waters — its shallows are bright
With coloured pebbles and sparkles of light —
And clear the depths where its eddies play,
And dimples deepen and whirl away ;
And the plane-tree's speckled arms o'ershoot
The swifter current that mines its root,
Through whose shifting leaves, as you walk the hill,
The quivering glimmer of sun and rill
With a sudden flash on the eye is thrown,
Like the ray that streams from the diamond stone.
GREEN RIVER. 179
Oh ! loveliest there the spring days come,
With blossoms, and birds, and wild-bees' hum ;
The flowers of summer are fairest there,
And freshest the breath of the summer air ;
And sweetest the golden autumn day
In silence and sunshine glides away.
Yet, fair as thou art, thou shunst to glide,
Beautiful stream ! by the village side ;
But windest away from haunts of men,
To quiet valley and shaded glen ;
And forest, and meadow, and slope of hill
Around thee, are lonely, lovely, and still.
Lonely— save when, by thy rippling tides,
From thicket to thicket the angler glides ;
Or the simpler comes with basket and brook,
For herbs of power on thy banks to look ;
Or haply some idle dreamer, like me,
To wander, and muse, and gaze on thee.
Still — save the chirp of birds that feed
On the river cherry and seedy reed,
And thy own mild music gushing out
With mellow murmur and fairy shout,
From dawn to the blush of another day,
Like traveller singing along his way.
180 GREEN RIVER.
That fairy music I never hear,
Nor gaze on those waters so green and clear,
And mark them winding away from sight,
Darkened with shade or flashing with light —
While o'er them the vine to its thicket clings,
And the zephyr stoops to freshen his wings —
But I wish that fate had left me free
To wander these quiet haunts with thee —
Till the eating cares of earth should depart,
And the peace of the scene pass into my heart ;
And I envy thy stream, as it glides along,
Through its beautiful banks, in a trance of song.
Though forced to drudge for the dregs of men,
And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen,
And mingle among the jostling crowd,
Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud —
I often come to this quiet place,
To breathe the airs that ruffle thy face,
And gaze upon thee in silent dream ;
For in thy lonely and lovely stream,
An image of that calm life appears
That won my heart in my greener years.
TO A CLOUD.
BEAUTIFUL cloud ! with folds so soft and fair,
Swimming in the pure quiet air !
Thy fleeces bathed in sunlight, while below
Thy shadow o'er the vale moves slow,
Where, 'midst their labour, pause the reaper train
As cool it comes along the grain.
Beautiful cloud ! I would I were with thee
In thy calm way o'er land and sea :
To rest on thy unrolling skirts, and look
On Earth as on an open book ;
On streams that tie her realms with silver bands,
And the long ways that seam her lands ;
And hear her humming cities, and the sound
Of the great ocean breaking round.
Ay — I would sail upon thy air-borne car
To blooming regions distant far, —
To where the sun of Andalusia shines
On his own olive-groves and vines ;
Or the soft lights of Italy's bright sky
In smiles upon her ruins lie.
182 TO A CLOUD.
But I would woo the winds to let us rest
O'er Greece long fettered and opprest,
Whose sons at length have heard the call that comes
From the old battle-fields and tombs,
And risen, and drawn the sword, and on the foe
Have dealt the swift and desperate blow ;
And the Othman power is cloven, and the stroke
Has touched its chains, and they are broke.
Ay — we would linger till the sunset there
Should come, to purple all the air ;
And thou reflect upon the sacred ground,
The ruddy radiance streaming round.
Bright meteor ! for the summer noontide made —
Thy peerless beauty yet shall fade !
The sun, that fills with light each glistening fold,
Shall set, and leave thee dark and cold ;
The blast shall rend thy skirts, or thou mayst frown
In the dark heaven when storms come down,
And weep in rain, till man's inquiring eye
Miss thee for ever from the sky.
AFTER A TEMPEST.
THE day had been a day of wind and storm ; —
The wind was laid, the storm was overpast,
And, stooping from the zenith, bright and warm,
Shone the great sun on the wide earth at last.
I stood upon the upland slope, and cast
My eye upon a broad and beauteous scene,
Where the vast plain lay girt by mountains vast,
And hills o'er hills lifted their heads of green,
With pleasant vales scooped out and villages between.
The rain-drops glistened on the trees around,
Whose shadows on the tall grass were not stirred,
Save when a shower of diamonds to the ground
Was shaken by the flight of startled bird ;
For birds were warbling round, and bees were heard
About the flowers ; the cheerful rivulet sung
And gossiped, as he hastened ocean-ward ;
To the gray oak the squirrel, chiding, clung,
And chirping from the ground the grasshopper upsprung.
184 AFTER A TEMPEST.
And from beneath the leaves that kept them dry
Flew many a glittering insect here and there,
And darted up and down the butterfly,
That seemed a living blossom of the air.
The flocks came scattering from the thicket, where
The violent rain had pent them ; in the way
Strolled groups of damsels frolicksome and fair ;
The farmer swung the scythe or turned the hay,
And 'twixt the heavy swaths his children were at play.
It was a scene of peace — and, like a spell,
Did that serene and golden sunlight fall
Upon the motionless wood that clothed the fell,
And precipice upspringing like a wall,
And glassy river and white waterfall,
And happy living things that trod the bright
And beauteous scene ; while far beyond them all,
On many a lovely valley, out of sight,
Was poured from the blue heavens the same soft golden
light.
I looked, and thought the quiet of the scene
An emblem of the peace that yet shall be,
When, o'er earth's continents and isles between,
The noise of war shall cease from sea to sea,
And married nations dwell in harmony ;
When millions, crouching in the dust to one,
No more shall beg their lives on bended knee ;
AFTER A TEMPEST. 185
Nor the black stake be dressed, nor in the sun
The o'erlaboured captive toil, and wish his life were done.
Too long, at clash of arms amid her bowers
And pools of blood, the earth has stood aghast —
The fair earth, that should only blush with flowers
And ruddy fruits ; but not for aye can last
The storm, and sweet the sunshine when 'tis past.
Lo ! the clouds roll away — they break — they fly —
And, like the glorious light of summer cast
O'er the wide landscape from the embracing sky,
On all the peaceful world the smile of Heaven shall lie.
THE BURIAL PLACE — A FRAGMENT.
EREWHILE, on England's pleasant shores, our sires
Left not their churchyards unadorned with shades
Or blossoms ; and indulgent to the strong
And natural dread of man's last home, the grave,
Its frost and silence — they disposed around,
To soothe the melancholy spirit that dwelt
Too sadly on life's close, the forms and hues
Of vegetable beauty. There the yew,
Green even amid the snows of winter, told
Of immortality ; and gracefully
The willow, a perpetual mourner, drooped ;
And there the gadding woodbine crept about,
And there the ancient ivy. From the spot
Where the sweet maiden, in her blossoming years
Cut off, was laid, with streaming eyes, and hands
That trembled as they placed her there, the rose
Sprung modest, on bowed stalk, and better spoke
Her graces than the proudest monument.
And children set about their playmate's grave
THE BURIAL-PLACE. 187
The pansy. On the infant's little bed,
Wet at its planting with maternal tears,
Emblem of early sweetness, early death,
Nestled the lowly primrose. Childless dames,
And maids that would not raise the reddened eye, —
Orphans, from whose young lids the light of joy
Fled early, — silent lovers, who had given
All that they lived for to the arms of earth,
Came often, o'er the recent graves to strew
Their offerings, rue, and rosemary, and flowers.
The pilgrim bands who passed the sea to keep
Their Sabbaths in the eye of God alone,
In his wide temple of the wilderness,
Brought not these simple customs of the heart
With them. It might be, while they laid their dead
By the vast solemn skirts of the old groves,
And the fresh virgin soil poured forth strange flowers
About their graves, and the familiar shades
Of their own native isle, and wonted blooms
And herbs were wanting, which the pious hand
Might plant or scatter there, these gentle rites
Passed out of use. Now, they are scarcely known,
And rarely in our borders may you meet
The tall larch, sighing in the burying-place,
Or willow, trailing low its boughs to hide
The gleaming marble. Naked rows of graves
And melancholy ranks of monuments,
188 THE BURIAL-PLACE.
Are seen instead, where the coarse grass between
Shoots up its dull green spikes, and in the wind
Hisses, and the neglected bramble nigh
Offers its berries to the schoolboy's hand
In vain — they grow too near the dead. Yet here,
Nature, rebuking the neglect of man,
Plants often, by the ancient mossy stone,
The briar rose, and upon the broken turf
That clothes the fresher grave, the strawberry-vine
Sprinkles its swell with blossoms, and lays forth
Her ruddy, pouting fruit. * * * * *.
THE YELLOW VIOLET.
WHEN beechen buds begin to swell,
And woods the blue bird's warble know,
The yellow violet's modest bell
Peeps from the last year's leaves below.
Ere russet fields their green resume,
Sweet flower ! I love in forest bare
To meet thee, when thy faint perfume
Alone is in the virgin air.
Of all her train, the hands of Spring
First plant thee in the watery mould,
And I have seen thee blossoming
Beside the snow-bank's edges cold.
Thy parent sun, who bade thee view
Pale skies, and chilling moisture sip,
Has bathed thee in his own bright hue,
And streaked with jet thy glowing lip.
190 THE YELLOW VIOLET.
Yet slight thy form, and low thy seat,
And earthward bent thy gentle eye,
Unapt the passing view to meet,
When loftier flowers are flaunting nigh.
Oft, in the sunless April day,
Thy early smile has staid my walk,
But, 'midst the gorgeous blooms of May,
I passed thee on thy humble stalk.
So they, who climb to wealth, forget
The friends in darker fortunes tried :
I copied them — but I regret
That I should ape the ways of pride.
And when again the genial hour
Awakes the painted tribes of light,
I'll not overlook the modest flower
That made the woods of April bright.
I CANNOT FORGET WITH WHAT FERVID DEVOTION."
I CANNOT forget with what fervid devotion
I worshipped the visions of verse and of fame ;
Each gaze at the glories of earth, sky, and ocean,
To my kindled emotions was wind over flame.
And deep were my musings in life's early blossom,
'Mid the twilight of mountain-groves wandering long ;
How thrilled my young veins, and how throbbed my full
bosom,
When o'er me descended the Spirit of Song!
'Mong the deep-cloven fells that for ages had listened
To the rush of the pebble-paved river between,
Where the king-fisher screamed and gray precipice glistened,
All breathless with awe have I gazed on the scene,
Till I felt the dark power o'er my reveries stealing,
From his throne in the depth of that stern solitude,
And he breathed through my lips, in that tempest of feeling,
Strains warm with his spirit, though artless and rude.
192 I CANNOT FORGET, &C.
Bright visions ! I mixed with the world and ye faded —
No longer your pure rural worshipper now ;
In the haunts your continual presence pervaded,
Ye shrink from the signet of care on my brow.
In the old mossy groves on the breast of the mountain,
In deep lonely glens where the waters complain,
By the shade of the rock, by the gush of the fountain,
I seek your loved footsteps, but seek them in vain.
Oh, leave not, forlorn and for ever forsaken,
Your pupil and victim, to life and its tears !
But sometimes return, and in mercy awaken
The glories ye shewed to his earlier years.
LINES ON RE-VISITING THE COUNTRY.
I STAND upon my native hills again,
Broad, round, and green, that in the summer sky,
With garniture of waving grass and grain,
Orchards, and beechen forests, basking lie,
While deep the sunless glens are scooped between,
Where brawl o'er shallow beds the streams unseen.
A lisping voice and glancing eyes are near,
And ever-restless feet of one, who now
Gathers the blossoms of her fourth bright year ;
There plays a gladness o'er her fair young brow,
As breaks the varied scene upon the sight,
Upheaved and spread in verdure and in light.
For I have taught her with delighted eye
To gaze upon the mountains, to behold
With deep affection the pure ample sky,
And clouds along its blue abysses rolled,
To love the song of waters, and to hear
The melody of winds with charmed ear.
194 LINES ON RE-VISITING THE COUNTRY.
Here, I have 'scaped the city's stifling heat,
Its horrid sounds, and its polluted air ;
And where the season's milder fervours beat,
And gales, that sweep the forest borders, bear
The song of bird, and sound of running stream,
Am come awhile to wander and to dream.
Ay, flame thy fiercest, Sun ! thou canst not wake,
In this pure air, the plague that walks unseen.
The maize-leaf and the maple-bough but take
From thy strong heats a deeper, glossier green.
The mountain wind, that faints not in thy ray,
Sweeps the blue steams of pestilence away.
The mountain wind ! most spiritual thing of all
The wide earth knows; — when, in the sultry time,
He stoops him from his vast cerulean hall,
He seems the breath of a celestial clime ;
As if from heaven's wide-open gates did flow
Health and refreshment on the world below.
SONNET — MUTATION.
THEY talk of short-lived Pleasure — be it so —
Pain dies as quickly : stern, hard-featured Pain
Expires, and lets her weary prisoner go.
The fiercest agonies have shortest reign ;
And after dreams of horror, comes again
The welcome morning with its rays of peace.
Oblivion, softly wiping out the stain,
Makes the strong secret pangs of shame to cease :
Remorse is Virtue's root ; its fair increase
Are fruits of innocence and blessedness :
Thus Joy o'erborne and bound, doth still release
His young limbs from the chains that round him press.
Weep not that the world changes — did it keep
A stable changeless state, 'twere cause indeed to weep.
HYMN TO THE NORTH STAR.
THE sad and solemn Night
Has yet her multitude of cheerful fires ;
The glorious host of light
Walk the dark hemisphere till she retires :
All through her silent watches, gliding slow,
Her constellations come, and climb the heavens, and go.
Day, too, hath many a star
To grace his gorgeous reign, as bright as they ;
Through the blue fields afar,
Unseen, they follow in his flaming way :
Many a bright lingerer, as the eve grows dim,
Tells what a radiant troop arose and set with him.
And thou dost see them rise,
Star of the Pole ! and thou dost see them set.
Alone, in thy cold skies,
Thou keep'st thy old unmoving station yet,
Nor join'st the dances of that glittering train,
Nor dipp'st thy virgin orb in the blue western main.
HYMN TO THE NORTH STAR. 197
There, at Morn's rosy birth,
Thou lookest meekly through the kindling air ;
And Eve, that round the earth
Chases the Day, beholds thee watching there ;
There noontide finds thee, and the hour that calls
The shapes of polar flame to scale heaven's azure walls.
Alike, beneath thine eye,
The deeds of darkness and of light are done ;
High towards the star-lit sky
Towns blaze — the smoke of battle blots the sun —
The night-storm on a thousand hills is loud —
And the strong wind of day doth mingle sea and cloud.
On thy unaltering blaze,
The half-wrecked mariner, his compass lost,
Fixes his steady gaze,
And steers, undoubting, to the friendly coast ;
And they who stray in perilous wastes by night,
Are glad when thou dost shine to guide their footsteps right.
And, therefore, bards of old,
Sages, and hermits of the solemn wood,
Did in thy beams behold
A beauteous type of that unchanging good,
That bright eternal beacon, by whose ray
The voyager of time should shape his heedful way.
THE TWENTY-SECOND OF DECEMBER.
WILD was the day ; the wintry sea
Moaned sadly on New England's strand,
When first, the thoughtful and the free,
Our fathers, trod the desert land.
They little thought how pure a light,
With years, should gather round that day ;
How love should keep their memories bright,
How wide a realm their sons should sway.
Green are their bays ; but greener still
Shall round their spreading fame be wreathed ;
And regions, now untrod, shall thrill
With reverence, when their names are breathed.
Till where the sun, with softer fires,
Looks on the vast Pacific's sleep —
The children of the pilgrim sires,
This hallowed day like us shall keep.
ODE FOR AN AGRICULTURAL CELEBRATION.
FAR back in the ages
The plough with wreaths was crowned ;
The hands of kings and sages
Entwined the chaplet round ;
Till men of spoil disdained the toil
By which the world was nourished,
And dews of blood enriched the soil
Where green their laurels flourished.
Now the world her fault repairs —
The guilt that stains her story ;
And weeps her crimes amid the cares
That formed her earliest glory.
The proud throne shall crumble,
The diadem shall wane,
The tribes of earth shall humble
The pride of those who reign ;
And War shall lay his pomp away —
The fame that heroes cherish,
200 ODE.
The glory earned in deadly fray,
Shall fade, decay, and perish :
Honour waits o'er all the Earth,
Through endless generations,
The art that calls her harvests forth,
And feeds the expectant nations.
A WALK AT SUNSET.
WHEN insect wings are glistening in the beam
Of the low sun, and mountain tops are bright ;
Oh ! let me, by the crystal valley-stream,
Wander amid the mild and mellow light —
And while the redbreast pipes his evening lay,
Give me one lonely hour to hymn the setting day.
Oh, Sun ! that o'er the western mountains now
Goest down in glory ! ever beautiful
And blessed is thy radiance, whether thou
Colourest the eastern heaven and night-mist cool,
Till the bright day-star vanish, or on high
Climbest, and streamest thy white splendours from
mid-sky.
Yet, loveliest are thy setting smiles, and fair,
Fairest of all that earth beholds, the hues
That live among the clouds, and flush the air,
Lingering and deepening at the hour of dews.
Then softest gales are breathed, and softest heard
The plaining voice of streams, and pensive note of bird.
A WALK AT SUNSET.
«
They who here roamed, of yore, the forest wide,
Felt by such charm their simple bosoms won,
They deemed their quivered warrior, when he died,
Went to bright isles beneath the setting sun,
Where winds are aye at peace, and skies are fair,
And purple-skirted clouds curtain the crimson air.
So, with the glories of the dying day,
Its thousand trembling lights and changing hues,
The memory of the brave who passed away
Tenderly mingled — fitting hour to muse
On such grave theme, and sweet the dream that shed
Brightness and beauty round the destiny of the dead.
For ages, on the silent forests here,
Thy beams did fall before the red man came
To dwell beneath them ; in their shade the deer
Fed, and feared not the arrow's deadly aim ;
Nor tree was felled, in all that world of woods,
Save by the beaver's tooth, or winds, or rush of floods,
Then came the hunter tribes, and thou didst look
For ages on their deeds in the hard chase,
And well-fought wars ; green sod and silver brook
Took the first stain of blood ; before thy face
The warrior generations came and past,
And glory was laid up for many an age to last.
A WALK AT SUNSET. 203
Now they are gone, gone as thy setting blaze
Goes down the west while night is pressing on,
And with them the old tale of better days,
And trophies of remembered power, are gone.
Yon field that gives the harvest, where the plough
Strikes the white bone, is all that tells their story now.
I stand upon their ashes in thy beam —
The offspring of another race, I stand
Beside a stream they loved, this valley, stream,
And where the night-fire of the quivered band
Shewed the gray oak by fits, and war-song rung,
I teach the quiet shades the strains of this new tongue.
Farewell ! but thou shall come again — thy light
Must shine on other changes, and behold
The place of the thronged city still as night —
States fallen — new empires built upon the old —
But never shalt thou see these realms again
Darkened by boundless groves, and roamed by savage men.
HYMN OF THE WALDENSES.
HEAR, Father, hear thy faint afflicted flock
Cry to thee, from the desert and the rock ;
While those who seek to slay thy children hold
Blasphemous worship under roofs of gold ;
And the broad goodly lands, with pleasant airs
That nurse the grape and wave the grain, are theirs.
Yet better were this mountain wilderness,
And this wild life of danger and distress —
Watchings by night and perilous flight by day,
And meetings in the depths of earth to pray ;
Better, far better, than to kneel with them,
And pay the impious rite thy laws condemn.
Thou, Lord, dost hold the thunder ; the firm land
Tosses in billows when it feels thy hand ;
Thou dashest nation against nation, then
Stillest the angry world to peace again.
Oh ! touch their stony hearts who hunt thy sons —
The murderers of our wives and little ones.
HYMN OF THE WALDENSES. 205
Yet, mighty God, yet shall thy frown look forth
Unveiled, and terribly shall shake the earth.
Then the foul power of priestly sin, and all
Its long-upheld idolatries, shall fall :
Thou shalt raise up the trampled and opprest,
And thy delivered saints shall dwell in rest.
SONG OF THE STARS.
WHEN the radiant morn of creation broke,
And the world in the smile of God awoke,
And the empty realms of darkness and death
Were moved through their depths by his mighty breath,
And orbs of beauty and spheres of flame
From the void abyss by myriads came ;
In the joy of youth as they darted away,
Through the widening wastes of space to play,
Their silver voices in chorus rung,
And this was the song the bright ones sung.
" Away, away, through the wide, wide sky —
The fair blue fields that before us lie ;
Each sun, with the worlds that around him roll,
Each planet, poised on her turning pole,
With her isles of green, and her clouds of white,
And her waters that lie like fluid light.
SONG OF THE STARS. 207
" For the Source of glory uncovers his face,
And the brightness o'erflows unbounded space ;
And we drink, as we go, the luminous tides
In our ruddy air and our blooming sides :
Lo, yonder the living splendours play —
Away, on our joyous path, away !
" Look, look, through our glittering ranks afar,
In the infinite azure, star after star,
How they brighten and bloom as they swiftly pass !
How the verdure runs o'er each rolling mass !
And the path of the gentle winds is seen,
Where the small waves dance, and the young woods lean.
" And see, where the brighter daybeams pour,
How the rainbows hang in the sunny shower;
And the morn and eve, with their pomp of hues,
Shift o'er the bright planets and shed their dews ;
And 'twixt them both, o'er the teeming ground,
With her shadowy cone, the night goes round !
" Away, away ! in our blossoming bowers,
In the soft air wrapping these spheres of ours,
In the seas and fountains that shine with morn,
See, love is brooding, and life is born,
And breathing myriads are breaking from night,
To rejoice like us, in motion and light.
208 SONG OF THE STARS.
" Glide on in your beauty, ye youthful spheres,
To weave the dance that measures the years ;
Glide on, in the glory and gladness sent,
To the furthest wall of the firmament —
The boundless visible smile of Him,
To the veil of whose brow your lamps are dim."
HYMN OF THE CITY.
NOT in the solitude
Alone, may man commune with Heaven, or see
Only in savage wood
And sunny vale the present Deity ;
Or only hear his voice
Where the winds whisper and the waves rejoice.
Even here do I behold
Thy steps, Almighty ! — here, amidst the crowd
Through the great city rolled,
With everlasting murmur deep and loud —
Choking the ways that wind
'Mongst the proud piles, the work of human kind.
Thy golden sunshine comes
From the round heaven, and on their dwellings lies,
And lights their inner homes —
For them thou fillst with air the unbounded skies,
And givest them the stores
Of ocean, and the harvests of its shores.
210 HYMN OF THE CITY.
Thy Spirit is around,
Quickening the restless mass that sweeps along ;
And this eternal sound —
Voices and footfalls of the numberless throng —
Like the resounding sea,
Or like the rainy tempest, speaks of Thee.
And when the hours of rest
Come, like a calm upon the mid-sea brine,
Hushing its billowy breast —
The quiet of that moment too is thine ;
It breathes of Him who keeps
The vast and helpless City while it sleeps.
"NO MAN KNOWETH HIS SEPULCHRE."
WHEN he who, from the scourge of wrong,
Aroused the Hebrew tribes to fly,
Saw the fair region, promised long,
And bowed him on the hills to die —
God made his grave, to men unknown,
Where Moab's rocks a vale infold,
And laid the aged seer alone,
To slumber while the world grows old.
Thus still, whene'er the good and just
Close the dim eye on life and pain,
Heaven watches o'er their sleeping dust,
Till the pure spirit comes again.
Though nameless, trampled, and forgot,
His servant's humble ashes lie,
Yet God has marked and sealed the spot,
To call its inmate to the sky.
BLESSED ARE THEY THAT MOURN."
OH, deem not they are blest alone
Whose lives a peaceful tenor keep ;
The Power who pities man has shewn
A blessing for the eyes that weep.
The light of smiles shall fill again
The lids that overflow with tears ;
And weary hours of woe and pain
Are promises of happier years.
There is a day of sunny rest
For every dark and troubled night ;
And grief may bide an evening guest,
But joy shall come with early light.
And thou, who, o'er thy friend's low bier,
Sheddest the bitter drops like rain,
Hope that a brighter, happier sphere,
Will give him to thy arms again.
Nor let the good man's trust depart,
Though life its common gifts deny,
Though with a pierced and broken heart,
And spurned of men, he goes to die.
For God has marked each sorrowing day,
And numbered every secret tear ;
And heaven's long age of bliss shall pay
For all his children suffer here.
THE SKIES.
AY ! gloriously thou standest there,
Beautiful, boundless firmament !
That, swelling wide o'er earth and air,
And round the horizon bent,
With thy bright vault and sapphire wall
Dost overhang and circle all.
Far, far below thee, tall old trees
Arise, and piles built up of old,
And hills, whose ancient summits freeze
In the fierce light and cold.
The eagle soars his utmost height,
Yet far thou stretchest o'er his flight.
Thou hast thy frowns — with thee on high
The storm has made his airy seat,
Beyond that soft blue curtain lie
His stores of hail and sleet ;
Thence the consuming lightnings break,
There the strong hurricanes awake.
THE SKIES. 215
Yet art thou prodigal of smiles —
Smiles sweeter than thy frowns are stern ;
Earth sends from all her thousand isles
A shout at thy return ;
The glory that comes down from thee
Bathes in deep joy the land and sea.
The sun, the gorgeous sun, is thine,
The pomp that brings and shuts the day,
The clouds that round him change and shine,
The airs that fan his way :
Thence look the thoughtful stars, and there
The meek moon walks the silent air.
The sunny Italy may boast
The beauteous tints that flush her skies ;
And lovely, round the Grecian coast,
May thy blue pillars rise :
I only know how fair they stand
Around my own beloved land.
And they are fair — a charm is theirs,
That earth, the proud green earth, has not,
With all the forms, and hues, and airs,
That haunt her sweetest spot.
We gaze upon thy calm pure sphere,
And read of Heaven's eternal year.
216 THE SKIES.
Oh, when, amid the throng of men,
The heart grows sick of hollow mirth,
How willingly we turn us then
Away from this cold earth,
And look into thy azure breast
For seats of innocence and rest !
SONNET TO
AY, thou art for the grave ; thy glances shine
Too brightly to shine long ; another Spring
Shall deck her for men's eyes — but not for thine,
Sealed in a sleep which knows no wakening.
The fields for thee have no medicinal leaf,
Nor the vexed ore a mineral of power ;
And they who love thee wait in anxious grief
Till the slow plague shall bring the fatal hour.
Glide softly to thy rest, then ; Death should come
Gently to one of gentle mould like thee —
As light winds wandering through groves of bloom
Detach the delicate blossom from the tree.
Close thy sweet eyes calmly and without pain ;
And, we will trust in God to see thee yet again.
THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS.
THE melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown
and sear.
Heaped in the hollows of the grove the withered leaves lie
dead;
They rustle to the eddying gust and to the rabbit's tread.
The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the
Jay>
And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the
gloomy day.
Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately
sprang and stood
In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood ?
Alas! they all are in their graves, the gentle race of flowers
Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours.
The rain is falling where they lie ; but the cold November rain
Calls not, from out the gloomy earth, the lovely ones again.
The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago,
And the briar-rose and the orchis died amid the summer
glow;
THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS. 219
But on the hill the golden rod, and the aster in the wood,
And the yellow sun-flower by the brook, in autumn beauty
stood,
Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the
plague on men,
And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland,
glade, and glen.
And now, when comes the calm mild day, as still such days
will come,
To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home;
When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the
trees are still,
And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill,
The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance
late he bore,
And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no
more.
And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died,
The fair, meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side :
In the cold moist earth we laid her, when the forest cast
the leaf,
And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief:
Yet not unmeet it was, that one, like that young friend of ours,
So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers.
HYMN TO DEATH.
OH ! could I hope the wise and pure in heart
Might hear my song without a frown, nor deem
My voice unworthy of the theme it tries, —
I would take up the hymn to Death, and say
To the grim power, the world has slandered thee
And mocked thee. On thy dim and shadowy brow
They place an iron crown, and call thee king
Of terrors, and the spoiler of the world,
Deadly assassin, that strikst down the fair,
The loved, the good — that breathst upon the lights
Of virtue set along the vale of life,
And they go out in darkness. I am come,
Not with reproaches, not with cries and prayers,
Such as have stormed thy stern insensible ear
From the beginning. I am come to speak
Thy praises. True it is, that I have wept
Thy conquests, and may weep them yet again ;
And thou from some I love wilt take a life
Dear to me as my own. Yet while the spell
Is on my spirit, and I talk with thee
HYMN TO DEATH.
In sight of all thy trophies, face to face,
Meet is it that my voice should utter forth
Thy nobler triumphs : I will teach the world
To thank thee. Who are thine accusers ?— Who ?
The living ! — they who never felt thy power,
And know thee not. The curses of the wretch
Whose crimes are ripe, his sufferings when thy hand
Is on him, and the hour he dreads is come,
Are writ among thy praises. But the good —
Does he whom thy kind hand dismissed to peace
Upbraid the gentle violence that took off
His fetters, and unbarred his prison cell?
Raise, then, the hymn to Death ! Deliverer !
God hath anointed thee to free the oppressed,
And crush the oppressor. When the armed chief,
The conqueror of nations, walks the world,
And it is changed beneath his feet, and all
Its kingdoms melt into one mighty realm —
Thou, while his head is loftiest, and his heart
Blasphemes, imagining his own right hand
Almighty, settst upon him thy stern grasp,
And the strong links of that tremendous chain
That bound mankind are crumbled : thou dost break
Sceptre and crown, and beat his throne to dust.
Then the earth shouts with gladness, and her tribes
Gather within their ancient bounds again.
Else had the mighty of the olden time,
HYMN TO DEATH.
Nimrod, Sesostris, or the youth who feigned
His birth from Lybian Ammon, smote even now
The nations with a rod of iron, and driven
Their chariot o'er our necks. Thou dost avenge,
In thy good time, the wrongs of those who know
No other friend. Nor dost thou interpose
Only to lay the sufferer asleep,
Where he who made him wretched troubles not
His rest — thou dost strike down his tyrant too.
Oh, there is joy when hands that held the scourge
Drop lifeless, and the pitiless heart is cold !
Thou too dost purge from earth its horrible
And old idolatries ; — from the proud fanes
Each to his grave their priests go out, till none
Is left to teach their worship ; then the fires
Of sacrifice are chilled, and the green moss
O'ercreeps their altars ; the fallen images
Cumber the weedy courts, and for loud hymns,
Chanted by kneeling crowds, the chiding winds
Shriek in the solitary aisles. When he
Who gives his life to guilt, and laughs at all
The laws that God or man has made, and round
Hedges his seat with power, and shines in wealth, -
Lifts up his atheist front to scoff at heaven,
And celebrates his shame in open day,
Thou, in the pride of all his crimes, cutst off
The horrible example. Touched by thine,
HYMN TO DEATH.
The extortioner's hard hand foregoes the gold
Wrung from the o'er-worn poor. The perjurer,
Whose tongue was lithe, e'en now, and voluble
Against his neighbour's life ; and he who laughed
And leaped for joy to see a spotless fame
Blasted before his own foul calumnies,
Are smit with deadly silence. He who sold
His conscience to preserve a worthless life,
Even while he hugs himself on his escape,
Trembles, as, doubly terrible, at length
Thy steps o'ertake him, and there is no time
For parley — nor will bribes unclench thy grasp.
Oft, too, dost thou reform thy victim, long
Ere his last hour. And when the reveller,
Mad in the chase of pleasure, stretches on,
And strains each nerve, and clears the path of life
Like wind, thou pointst him to the dreadful goal,
And shakst thy hour-glass in his reeling eye,
And checkst him in mid course. Thy skeleton hand
Shews to the faint of spirit the right path —
And he is warned, and fears to step aside.
Thou settst between the ruffian and his crime
Thy ghastly countenance, and his slack hand
Drops the drawn knife. But, oh, most fearfully
Dost thou shew forth Heaven's justice, when thy shafts
Drink up the ebbing spirit — then the hard
Of heart and violent of hand restores
HYMN TO DEATH.
The treasure to the friendless wretch he wronged.
Then from the writhing bosom thou dost pluck
The guilty secret ; lips, for ages sealed,
Are faithless to the dreadful trust at length,
And give it up ; the felon's latest breath
Absolves the innocent man who bears his crime ;
The slanderer, horror-smitten and in tears,
Recalls the deadly obloquy he forged
To work his brother's ruin. Thou dost make
Thy penitent victim utter to the air
The dark conspiracy that strikes at life,
And aims to whelm the laws — ere yet the hour
Is come, and the dread sign of murder given.
Thus, from the first of time, hast thou been found
On virtue's side ; the wicked, but for thee,
Had been too strong for the good ; the great of earth
Had crushed the weak for ever. Schooled in guile
For ages, while each passing year had brought
Its baneful lesson, they had filled the world
With their abominations ; while its tribes,
Trodden to earth, embruted, and despoiled,
Had knelt to them in worship ; sacrifice
Had smoked on many an altar, temple-roofs
Had echoed with the blasphemous prayer and hymn :
But thou, the great reformer of the world,
Takst off the sons of violence and fraud
In their green pupilage, their lore half learned —
HYMN TO DEATH.
Ere guilt has quite overrun the simple heart
God gave them at their birth, and blotted out
His image. Thou dost mark them, flushed with hope,
As on the threshold of their vast designs
Doubtful and loose they stand, and strikst them down.
* * * * . * *
Alas ! I little thought that the stern power
Whose fearful praise I sung, would try me thus
Before the strain was ended. It must cease ;
For he is in his grave who taught my youth
The art of verse, and in the bud of life
Offered me to the Muses. Oh, cut off
Untimely! when thy reason in its strength,
Ripened by years of toil and studious search,
And watch of Nature's silent lessons, taught
Thy hand to practise best the lenient art
To which thou gavest thy laborious days,
And, last, thy life. And therefore, when the earth
Received thee, tears were in unyielding eyes
And on hard cheeks, and they who deemed thy skill
Delayed their death-hour, shuddered and turned pale
When thou wert gone. This faltering verse, which thou
Shalt not, as wont, o'erlook, is all I have
To offer at thy grave — this — and the hope
To copy thy example, and to leave
A name of which the wretched shall not think
As of an enemy's, whom they forgive,
Q
HYMN TO DEATH.
As all forgive the dead. Rest, therefore, thou
Whose early guidance trained my infant steps —
Rest in the bosom of God, till the brief sleep
Of death is over, and a happier life
Shall dawn to waken thine insensible dust.
Now thou art not — and yet the men whose guilt
Has wearied Heaven for vengeance — he who bears
False witness — he who takes the orphan's bread,
And robs the widow — he who spreads abroad
Polluted hands in mockery of prayer —
Are left to cumber earth. Shuddering I look
On what is written ; yet I blot not out
The desultory numbers — let them stand,
The record of an idle reverie.
TO A WATERFOWL.
WHITHER, midst falling dew,
While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue
Thy solitary way ?
Vainly the fowler's eye
Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,
As, darkly painted on the crimson sky,
Thy figure floats along.
Seekst thou the plashy brink
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
On the chafed ocean-side ?
There is a Power whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast —
The desert and illimitable air —
Lone wandering, but not lost.
% TO A WATERFOWL.
All day thy wings have fanned,
At that far height, the cold thin atmosphere,
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
Though the dark night is near.
And soon that toil shall end,
Soon sh alt thou find a summer home, and rest
And scream among thy fellows ; reeds shall bend
Soon o'er thy sheltered nest.
Thou'rt gone — the abyss of heaven
Hath swallowed up thy form ; yet on my heart
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,
And shall not soon depart.
He, who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright.
NOTES.
Page 1. — POEM OF THE AGES.
In this poem, written and printed nearly eleven years since,
the author has endeavoured, from a survey of the past ages of the
world, and of the successive advances of mankind in knowledge,
virtue, and happiness, to justify and confirm the hopes of the phi
lanthropist for the future destinies of the human race.
Page 47. — Her maiden veil, her own black hair, <Sfc.
" The unmarried females have a modest falling down of the
hair over the eyes." — ELIOT.
Page 50. — THE MASSACRE AT Scio.
This poem, written about the time of the horrible butchery of
the Sciotes by the Turks, in 1824, has been more fortunate than
most poetical predictions. The independence of the Greek nation,
which it foretold, has come to pass ; and the massacre, by inspir
ing a deeper detestation of their oppressors, did much to promote
that event.
Page 68. — MONUMENT MOUNTAIN.
The mountain called by this name is a remarkable precipice in
Great Barrington, overlooking the rich and picturesque valley of
the Housatonic, in the western part of Massachusetts. At the
southern extremity is, or was a few years since, a conical pile of
R
230 NOTES.
small stones, erected, according to the tradition of the surround
ing country, by the Indians, in memory of a woman of the Stock-
bridge tribe, who killed herself by leaping from the edge of the
precipice. Until within a few years past, small parties of that
tribe used to arrive from their settlement, in the western part of
the state of New York, on visits to Stockbridge, the place of their
nativity and former residence. A young woman belonging to one
of these parties, related to a friend of the author the story on
which the poem of Monument Mountain is founded. An Indian
girl had formed an attachment for her cousin, which, according to
the customs of the tribe, was unlawful. She was, in consequence,
seized with a deep melancholy, and resolved to destroy herself.
In company with a female friend she repaired to the mountain,
decked out for the occasion in all her ornaments ; and after pass
ing the day on its summit, in singing with her companion the
traditional songs of her nation, she threw herself headlong from
the rock and was killed.
Page 64. — THE MURDERED TRAVELLER.
Some years since, in the month of May, the remains of a
human body, partly devoured by wild animals, were found in a
woody ravine, near a solitary road passing between the moun
tains west of the village of Stockbridge. It was supposed that
the person came to his death by violence, but no traces could be
discovered of his murderers. It was only recollected that one
evening in the course of the previous winter, a traveller had
stopped at an inn in the village of West Stockbridge — that he had
inquired the way to Stockbridge — and that in paying the innkeeper
for something he had ordered, it appeared that he had a consider
able sum of money in his possession. Two ill-looking men were
present, and went out about the same time that the traveller pro
ceeded on his journey. During the winter also, two men of
shabby appearance, but plentifully supplied with money, had
lingered for a while about the village of Stockbridge. Several
NOTES. 231
years afterwards, a criminal about to be executed for a capital
offence in Canada, confessed that he had been concerned in mur
dering a traveller in Stockbridge for the sake of his money.
Nothing was ever discovered respecting the name or residence
of the person murdered.
Page 68. — Chained in the market-place he stood, fyc.
The story of the African chief, related in this ballad, may be
found in the African Repository for April, 1825. The subject of
it was a warrior of majestic stature, the brother of Yarradee, king
of the Solima nation. He had been taken in battle, and was
brought in chains for sale to the Rio Pongas, where he was ex
hibited in the market-place, his ancles still adorned with the
massy rings of gold which he wore when captured. The refusal
of his captor to listen to his offers of ransom drove him mad, and
he died a maniac.
Page 76. — And stoops the slim papaya, fyc.
Papaya — papaw, custard-apple. Flint, in his excellent work
on the Geography and History of the Western States, thus de
scribes this tree and its fruit : " A papaw shrub hanging full of
fruits, of a size and weight so disproportioned to the stem, and
from under long and rich-looking leaves, of the same yellow with
the ripened fruit, and of an African luxuriance of growth, is to ua
one of the richest spectacles that we have ever contemplated in
the array of the woods. The fruit contains from two to six seeds
like those of the tamarind, except that they are double the size.
The pulp of the fruit resembles egg-custard in consistence and
appearance. It has the same creamy feeling in the mouth, and
unites the taste of eggs, cream, sugar, and spice. It is a natural
custard, too luscious for the relish of most people."
Chateaubriand, in his Travels, speaks disparagingly of the
fruit of the papaw ; but on the authority of Mr. Flint, who must
NOTES.
know more of the matter, I have ventured to make my western
lover enumerate it among the delicacies of the wilderness.
Page 79. — SONG OF MARION'S MEN.
The exploits of General Francis Marion, the famous partisan
warrior of South Carolina, form an interesting chapter in the
annals of the American revolution. The British troops were so
harassed by the irregular and successful warfare which he kept
up at the head of a few daring followers, that they sent an officer
to remonstrate with him for not coming into the open field and
fighting " like a gentleman and a Christian."
Page 84. — LOVE AND FOLLY. — (From La Fontaine.}
This is rather an imitation than a translation of the poem of
the graceful French fabulist.
Page 86. — FATIMA AND RADUAN.
This, and the following poems, belong to that class of ancient
Spanish ballads by unknown authors, called Eomances Moriscos —
Moriscan romances or ballads. They were composed in the 14th
century, some of them probably by the Moors, who then lived
intermingled with the Christians ; and they relate the loves and
achievements of the knights of Grenada.
Page 91. — Say, Love, for thou didst see her tears, fyc.
The stanza beginning with this line stands thus in the original :
" Dilo tu, amor, si lo viste
; Mas ay ! que de lastimado
Diste otro nudo a la venda,
Para no ver lo que ha pasado."
I am sorry to find so poor a conceit deforming so spirited a
NOTES.
composition as this old ballad, but I have preserved it in the
version. It is one of those extravagances which afterwards be
came so common in Spanish poetry when Gongora introduced the
estilo culto, as it was called.
Page 94. — These eyes shall not recall thee, fyc.
This is the very expression of the original — No te llamardn
mis ojos, fyc. The Spanish poets early adopted the practice of
calling a lady by the name of the most expressive feature of her
countenance, her eyes. The lover styled his mistress " ojos
bellos," beautiful eyes ; " ojos serenos," serene eyes. Green
eyes seem to have been anciently thought a great beauty in
Spain ; and there is a very pretty ballad by an absent lover, in
which he addressed his lady by the title of " green eyes," sup
plicating that he may remain in her remembrance.
" j Ay ojuelos verdes,
Ay los mis ojuelos,
Ay hagan los cielos
Que de mi te acuerdes !"
Page 102. — FROM THE SPANISH OF PEDRO DE CASTRO y ANAYA.
Las Auroras de Diana, in which the original of these lines is
contained, is, notwithstanding it was praised by Lope de Vega,
one of the worst of the old Spanish romances, being a tissue of
riddles and affectations, with now and then a little poem of consi
derable beauty.
Page 104. — LOVE IN THE AGE OF CHIVALRY.
This personification of the passion of Love, by Peyre Vidal,
has been referred to as a proof of how little the Provenpal poeta
were indebted to the authors of Greece and Rome for the imagery
of their poems.
234 NOTES.
Page 106. — THE LOVE OF GOD. — (From the Provencal of
Bernard Rascas.)
The original of these lines is thus given by John of Nostra
damus, in his Lives of the Troubadours, in a barbarous Frenchified
orthography.
" Touta kausa mortala una fes perira,
Fors que 1'amour de Dieu, que tousiours durara.
Tous nostres cors vendran essuchs, coma fa 1'eska,
Lous Aubres leyssaran lour verdour tendra e fresca,
Lous Auselets del bosc perdran lour kant subtyeu,
E noil s'auzira plus lou Rossignol gentyeu.
Lous Buols al Pastourgage, e las blankas fedettas
Sent'ran lous agulhons de las mortals Sagettas,
Lous crestas d' Aries fiers, Renards, e Loups espars,
Kabrols, Cervys, Chamous, Senglars de toutes pars,
Lous Ours hardys e forts, seran poudra, e Arena,
Lou Daulphin en la Mar,Jou Ton, e la Balena,
Monstres impetuous, Ryaumes, e Comtas,
Lous Princes, e lous Reyes, seran per inort domtas.
E nota ben eysso kascun : la Terra granda,
(Ou 1'Escritura ment) lou fermament que branda,
Prendra autra figura. Enfin tout perira,
Fors que 1'Amour de Dieu, que touiour durara.
Page 107. — THE HURRICANE.
This poem is nearly a translation from one by Jos6 Maria de
Heredia, a native of the island of Cuba, who published at New
York, six or seven years since, a volume of poems in the Spanish
language.
Page 131. — SONNET — WILLIAM TELL.
Neither this, nor any of the other sonnets in the volume, is
framed according to the legitimate Italian model, which, in the
author's opinion, possesses no peculiar beauty for an ear accus-
NOTES. 235
tomed only to the metrical forms of our own language. The
sonnets in this volume are rather poems in fourteen lines than
sonnets.
Page 147. — THE CONJUNCTION OF JUPITER AND VENUS.
This conjunction was said, in the common calendars, to have
taken place on the 2d of August, 1826. This I believe was an
error; but the apparent approach of the planets was sufficiently
near for poetical purposes.
Page 186. — THE BURIAL-PLACE.
The first half of this fragment may seem to the reader bor
rowed from the Essay on Rural Funerals, in the 4th No. of the
Sketch-Book. The lines were, however, written more than a
year before that number appeared. The poem, unfinished as it
is, would not have been admitted into this collection, had not the
author been unwilling to lose what had the honour of resembling
so beautiful a composition.
THE END.
LONDON:
J. MOVES, CASTLE STREKT, LEICESTER SQUARE.
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