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V/.IILLIAM DTUM.1SM BEYANT

NEW YORK:
Harper k Brothers

POEMS

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

SIXTH EDITION.

NEW-YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, CLIFF-ST.

184 2.

PS

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1836, by

Harper & Brothers,
in the Clerk's Office of the Southern District of New- York.

BRYANT'S POEMS

ADVERTISEMENT

TO THE FIFTH EDITION.

The present edition, by the advice of the publishers,
is somewhat enlarged. A few corrections have also been
made in the text of the poems which were published in
the other editions.

PREFACE

TO THE FIRST EDITION

Most of the following poems have been alieadv
printed. The longest, entitled " The Ages," was pub-
lished 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 compila-
tions 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 literary attempts, he yet cannot let this
volume go forth to the public without a feeling of ap-
prehension that it may contain things which did not de

Ylll PREFACE.

I

serve admission, and that the entire collection may not
be thought worthy of the generous and partial judg-
ment which has been passed upon some of the separ-
ate poems.

New- York, January, 1832.

CONTENTS.

Page

The Ages, 13

To the Past, 28

Thanatopsis, 31

The Lapse of Time, 34

To the Evening Wind, 37

Forest Hymn, 39

The Old Man's Funeral, 44

The Rivulet, 46

The Prairies, 50

Earth, 55

To the Apennines, 59

The Knight's Epitaph, 61

Seventy-Six, 63

The Living Lost, P5

The Strange Lady, 67

The Hunter's Vision, 70

Catterskill Falls, 73

The Hunter of the Prairies, 78

The Damsel of Peru, 81

Song of Pitcairn's Island, 83

Rizpah, 85

The Indian Girl's Lament, 89

The Arctic Lover, 92

The Massacre at Scio, 94

Version of a fragment of Simonides, 95

The Greek Partisan, 97

Romero, 99

Monument Mountain 102

X CONTENTS.

Ph.

The Murdered Traveller 107

Song of The Greek Amazon, 109

The African Chief, Ill

Song — " Soon as the glazed and gleaming snow," 114

An Indian Story, 115

The Hunter's Serenade, 119

Song of Marion's Men, 122

Song — " Dost thou idly ask to hear," 125

Love and Folly, 127

Fatima and Raduan, 129

The Death of Aliatar, 131

The Alcayde of Molina, 134

From the Spanish of Villegas, 136

The Life of the Blessed, 137

Mary Magdalen, 139

The Siesta, 141

From the Spanish of Pedro de Castro, &c 143

The Count of Greiers — From the German, 145

Song — From the Spanish, 148

Sonnet — From the Portuguese of Semedo, 150

Love in the Age of Chivalry, 151

The Love of God, 153

The Hurricane, 154

March, 156

Spring in Town, 158

Summer Wind, 161

Autumn Woods, 163

A Winter Piece, 166

" Oh fairest of the rural maids," 171

The Disinterred Warrior, 172

The Greek Boy, : . , 174

" Upon the mountain's distant head," : . . . 176

Sonnet— William Tell, 177

To the River Arve, 178

Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood, 180

" When the firmament quivers with daylight's young beam," . 182
A Scene on the Banks of the Hudson, 183

CONTENTS. XI

Pag*

The West Wind, 185

To a Mosquito, " 187

" I broke the spell that held me long," 190

The Conjunction of Jupiter and Venus, 191

June, 195

The Two Graves, 198

The New Moon, 201

The Gladness of Nature, 203

To the Friiged Gentian, 204

" Innocent Child and snow-white Flower," 205

Sonnet — Midsummer, 206

Sonnet— October, 207

Sonnet— November, 208

A Meditation on Rhode Island Coal, 209

An Indian at the Burial-place of his Fathers, 213

Sonnet— To Cole, the painter, departing for Europe, . . . .217

Green River, v 218

To a Cloud, 221

After a Tempest, 223

The Burial-place— A Fragment, 226

The Yellow Violet, 229

" I cannot forget with what fervid devotion," 231

Lines on revisiting the Country, 233

Sonnet— Mutation, 235

Hymn to the North Star, 236

The Twenty-second of December, 238

Ode for an Agricultural Celebration, 239

A Walk at Sunset, .241

Hymn of the Waldenses, 244

Song of the Stars, 246

Hymn of the City, 248

" No Man knoweth his Sepulchre," . 250

" Blessed are they that mourn," 251

The Skies, 253

The Journey of Life, 255

Sonnet — To , 256

Death of the Flowers, ^ 25?

A2

Xl'l CONTENTS.

Hymn to Death, 259

" Earth's Children cleave to Earth," 265

To a Waterfowl, 266

The Battle-field, 268

Notes 271

THE AGES.

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.

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 stepped —
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 —
Those pure and happy times — the golden days of old.

2

14 THE AGES.

III.

Peace to the just man's memory, — let it grow
Greener with years, and blossom through the flight
Of ages ; let the mimic canvass show
His calm benevolent features ; let the light
Stream on his 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 1 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. 15

Less brightly 1 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 1
Does prodigal Autumn, to our age, deny
The plenty that once swelled beneath his sober eye ?

VJ.

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 1 will he quench the ray
Infused by his own forming smile at first,
And leave a work so fair all blighted and accursed ?

16 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 show 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 u^t

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. 17

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.

2*

18 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. 19

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 the 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.

20 THE AGES.

XVUI.

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 floodgates, 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. 21

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 saintiy 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 gayly on, and grew to giant size,
Shielded by priestly power, and watched by priestly eyes.

22 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 nightmare's hideous shapes, away,
Full many a horrible worship, that, of old,
Held, o'er the shuddering realms, unquestioned sway

THE AGES. 23

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.

24 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 Wue sheet that flashed with many an oar,
Whore the brown otter plunged him from the brake,
And the deer drank : as the light gale flew o'er,

THE AGES. 25

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 Ids 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, disimbowered, 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.
B 3

26 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 vampyre 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 blessings showered on all —
These are thy fetters — seas and stormy air

THE AGES. 27

Are the wide barrier of thy borders, where, ~
Among thy gallant sons that guard thee well,
Thou laugh'st 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 ?
B2

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.

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.

TO THE PAST. 29

In vain — thy gates deny
All passage save to those who hence depart ;

Nor to the streaming eye
Thou giv'st 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 ;

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.
3*

30 TO THE PAST.

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 healing 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,
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,

32 THANATOPSI .

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 thine 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,

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.

THANATOPSIS. 33

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 withdraw
Unheeded by the living — and no friend
Take note of thy departure 1 All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, 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
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.
B 3

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 give up the hopes that glow

In prospect, like Elysian isles ;
And let the charming future go,

With all her promises and smiles ?

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.

THE LAPSE OF TIME. 35

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,
And my good glass will tell me how

A grizzly 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.

36 THE LAPSE OF TIME.

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 waves 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 !

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
4

38 TO THE EVENING WIND.

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 birthplace 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,
Here, in the shadow of this aged wood,
Offer one hymn — thrice happy, if it find
Acceptance in his ear.

40 FOREST HYMN.

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 hi their tops, grew old and died
Among their branches, till, at last, they stood,
As now they stand, massy, and tall, and dark,
Fit shrine for humble worshipper to hold
Communion with his Maker. These dim vaults,
These winding aisles, of human pomp or pride
Report not. No fantastic carvings show,
The boast of our vain race to change the form
Of thy fair works. But thou art here — thou fill'st
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.
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

FOREST HYMN. 41

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 immoveable 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,
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 los*
One of earth's charms : upon her bosom yet,

4*

42 FOREST HYMN.

After the flight of untold centuries,

The freshness of her far beginning lies

And yet shalklie. Life mocks the idle hate

Of his arch enemy Death — yea, seats himself

Upon the tyrant's throne — the sepulchre,

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,
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,

FOREST HYMN. 43

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.

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 passed ;

THE OLD MAN'S FUNERAL. 45

While the soft memory of his virtues, yet,

Lingers like twilight hues, when the bright sun is set.

His youth was innocent ; 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 a while, 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 dressed,
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 thrashers 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.
Words cannot tell how bright and gay
The scenes of life before me lay.

THE RIVULET. 47

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 ;
As green amid thy current's stress,
Floats the scarce-rooted watercress ;
And the brown ground-bird, in thy glen,
Still chirps as merrily as then.

48 THE RIVULET.

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 lust.
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,
Shows 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
(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 ;

THE RIVULET. 49

Yet shalt thou flow as glad and bright
As when thou met'st 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 shalt pass ;
And, singing down thy narrow glen,
Shalt mock the fading race of men.
C 5

THE PRAIRIES.

These are the Gardens of the Desert, these
The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful, . .
For which the speech of England has no name —
The Prairies. I behold them for the first,
And my heart swells, while the dilated sight
Takes in the encircling vastness. Lo ! they stretch
In airy undulations, far away,
As if the ocean, in his gentlest swell,
Stood still, with all his rounded billows fixed,
And motionless for ever. — Motionless ? —
No — they are all unchained again. The clouds
Sweep over with their shadows, and, beneath,
The surface rolls and fluctuates to the eye ;
Dark hollows seem to glide along and chase
The sunny ridges. Breezes of the South !
Who toss the golden and the flame-like flowers,
And pass the prairie-hawk that, poised on high,
Flaps his broad wings, yet moves not — ye have played
Among the palms of Mexico and vines
Of Texas, and have crisped the limpid brooks
That from the fountains of Sonora glide
Into the calm Pacific — have ye fanned
A nobler or a lovelier scene than this ?
Man hath no part in all this glorious work :

THE PRAIRIES. 51

The hand that built the firmament hath heaved
And smoothed these verdant swells, and sown their slopes
With herbage, planted them with island groves,
And hedged them round with forests. Fitting floor
For this magnificent temple of the sky —
With flowers whose glory and whose multitude
Rival the constellations ! The great heavens
Seem to stoop down upon the scene in love, —
A nearer vault, and of a tenderer blue,
Than that which bends above the eastern hills.
As o'er the verdant waste I guide my steed,
Among the high rank grass that sweeps his sides,
The hollow beating of his footstep seems
A sacrilegious sound. I think of those
Upon whose rest he tramples. Are they here —
The dead of other days ? — and did the dust
Of these fair solitudes once stir with life
And burn with passion 1 Let the mighty mounds
That overlook the rivers, or that rise
In the dim forest crowded with old oaks,
Answer. A race, that long has passed away,
Built them ; — a disciplined and populous race
Heaped, with long toil, the earth, while yet the Greek
Was hewing the Pentelicus to forms
Of symmetry, and rearing on its rock
The glittering Parthenon. These ample fields
Nourished their harvests, here their herds were fed,
When haply by their stalls the bison lowed,
And bowed his maned shoulder to the yoke.
All day this desert murmured with their toils,
C 2

52 THE PRAIRIES.

Till twilight blushed and lovers walked, and wooed

In a forgotten language, and old tunes,

From instruments of unremembered form,

Gave the soft winds a voice. The red man came —

The roaming hunter tribes, warlike and fierce,

And the mound-builders vanished from the earth.

The solitude of centuries untold

Has settled where they dwelt. The prairie wolf

Hunts in their meadows, and his fresh-dug den

Yawns by my path. The gopher mines the ground

Where stood their swarming cities. All is gone —

All — save the piles of earth that hold their bones —

The platforms where they worshipped unknown gods-

The barriers which they builded from the soil

To keep the foe at bay — till o'er the walls

The wild beleaguerers broke, and, one by one,

The strongholds of the plain were forced, and heaped

With corpses. The brown vultures of the wood

Flocked to those vast uncovered sepulchres,

And sat, unscared and silent, at their feast.

Haply some solitary fugitive,

Lurking in marsh and forest, till the sense

Of desolation and of fear became

Bitterer than death, yielded himself to die.

Man's better nature triumphed. Kindly words

Welcomed and soothed him ; the rude conquerors

Seated the captive with their chiefs ; he chose

A bride among their maidens, and at length

Seemed to forget, — yet ne'er forgot,— the wife

THE PRAIRIES. 53

Of his first love, and her sweet little ones
Butchered, amid their shrieks, with all his race.

Thus change the forms of being. Thus arise
Races of living things, glorious in strength,
And perish, as the quickening breath of God
Fills them, or is withdrawn. The red man too—
Has left the blooming wilds he ranged so long,
And, nearer to the Rocky Mountains, sought
A wider hunting-ground. The beaver builds
No longer by these streams, but far away,
On waters whose blue surface ne'er gave back
The white man's face — among Missouri's springs,
And pools whose issues swell the Oregan,
He rears his little Venice. In these plains
The bison feeds no more. Twice twenty leagues
Beyond remotest smoke of hunter's camp,
Roams the majestic brute, in herds that shake
The earth with thundering steps — yet here I meet
His ancient footprints stamped beside the pool.

Still this great solitude is quick with life.
Myriads of insects, gaudy as the flowers
They flutter over, gentle quadrupeds,
And birds, that scarce have learned the fear of man,
Are here, and sliding reptiles of the ground,
Startlingly beautiful. The graceful deer
Bounds to the wood at my approach. The bee,
A more adventurous colonist than man,
With whom he came across the eastern deep,
Fills the savannas with his murmurings,
And hides his swtets, as in the golden age,
5*

54 THE PRAIRIES.

Within the hollow oak. I listen long

To his domestic hum. and think I hear

The sound of that advancing multitude

Which soon shall fill these deserts. From the ground

Comes up the laugh of children, the soft voice

Of maidens, and the sweet and solemn hymn

Of Sabbath worshippers. The low of herds

Blends with the rustling of the heavy grain

Over the dark-brown furrows. All at once

A fresher wind sweeps by, and breaks my dream,

And I am in the wilderness alone.

EARTH.

A midnight black with clouds is in the sky ;
I seem to feel, upon my limbs, the weight
Of its vast brooding shadow. All in vain
Turns the tired eye in search of form ; no star
Pierces the pitchy veil ; no ruddy blaze,
From dwellings lighted by the cheerful hearth,
Tinges the flowering summits of the grass.
No sound of life is heard, no village hum,
Nor measured tramp of footstep in the path,
Nor rush of wing, while, on the breast of Earth,
I lie and listen to her mighty voice :
A voice of many tones — sent up from streams
That wander through the gloom, from woods unseen,
Swayed by the sweeping of the tides of air,
From rocky chasms where darkness dwells all day,
And hollows of the great invisible hills,
And sands that edge the ocean, stretching far
Into the night — a melancholy sound !

Oh Earth ! dost thou too sorrow for the past
Like man thy offspring ? Do I hear thee mourn
Thy childhood's unreturning hours, thy springs
Gone with their genial airs and melodies,
The gentle generations of thy flowers,

56 EARTH.

And thy majestic groves of olden time,

Perished with all their dwellers 1 Dost thou wail

For that fair age of which the poets tell,

Ere the rude winds grew keen with frost, or fire

Fell with the rains, or spouted from the hills,

To blast thy greenness, while the virgin night

Was guiltless and salubrious as the day ?

Or haply dost thou grieve for those that die —

For living things that trod a while thy face,

The love of thee and heaven — and now they sleep

Mixed with the shapeless dust on which thy herds

Trample and graze 1 I too must grieve with thee,

O'er loved ones lost — their graves are far away

Upon thy mountains, yet, while I recline,

Alone, in darkness, on thy naked soil,

The mighty nourisher and burial-place

Of man, I feel that I embrace their dust.

Ha ! how the murmur deepens ! I perceive
And tremble at its dreadful import. Earth
Uplifts a general cry for guilt and wrong,
And Heaven is listening. The forgotten graves
Of the heart-broken utter forth their plaint.
The dust of her who loved and was betrayed,
And him who died neglected in his age ;
The sepulchres of those who for mankind
Laboured, and earned the recompense of scorn ;
Ashes of martyrs for the truth, and bones
Of those who, in the strife for liberty,
Were beaten down, their corses given to dogs,
Their names to infamy, all find a voice.

EARTH. 57

The nook in which the captive, overtoiled,

Lay down to rest at last, and that which holds

Childhood's sweet blossoms, crushed by cruel hands.

Send up a plaintive sound. From battle-fields,

Where heroes madly drave and dashed their hosts

Against each other, rises up a noise,

As if the armed multitudes of dead

Stirred in their heavy slumber. Mournful tones

Come from the green abysses of the sea —

A story of the crimes the guilty sought

To hide beneath its waves. The glens, the groves,

Paths in the thicket, pools of running brook,

And banks and depths of lake, and streets and lanes

Of cities, now that living sounds are hushed,

Murmur of guilty force and treachery.

Here, where I rest, the vales of Italy
Are round me, populous from early time,
And field of the tremendous warfare waged
'Twixt good and evil. Who, alas, shall dare
Interpret to man's ear the mingled voice
From all her ways and walls, and streets and streams,
And hills and fruitful fields? Old dungeons breathe
Of horrors veiled from history ; the stones
Of mouldering amphitheatres, where flowed
The life-blood of the warrior slave, cry out.
The fanes of old religions, the proud piles
Reared with the spoil of empires, yea, the hearths
Of cities dug from their volcanic graves,
Report of human suffering and shame
And folly. Even the common dust, among
C3

58 EARTH.

The springing com and vine-rows, witnesses
To ages of oppression. Ah, I hear
A murmur of confused languages,
The utterance of nations now no more,
Driven out by mightier, as the days of heaven
Chase one another from the sky. The blood
Of freemen shed by freemen, till strange lords
Came in the hour of weakness, and made fast
The yoke that yet is worn, appeals to Heaven.

What then shall cleanse thy bosom, gentle Earth,
From all its painful memories of guilt ?
The whelming flood, or the renewing fire,
Or the slow change of time? that so, at last,
The horrid tale of perjury and strife,
Murder and spoil, which men call history,
May seem a fable, like the inventions told
By poets of the gods of Greece. Oh thou,
Who sittest far beyond the Atlantic deep,
Among the sources of thy glorious streams,
My native Land of Groves ! a newer page
In the great record of the world is thine,
Shall it be fairer 1 Fear, and friendly Hope,
And Envy, watch the issue, while the lines,
By which thou shalt be judged, are written down.

TO THE APENNINES.

Your peaks are beautiful, ye Apennines !

In the soft light of these serenest skies ;
From the broad highland region, black with pines,

Fair as the hills of Paradise they rise,
Bathed in the tint Peruvian slaves behold
In rosy flushes on the virgin gold.

There, rooted to the aerial shelves that wear
The glory of a brighter world, might spring

Sweet flowers of heaven to scent the unbreathed air,
And heaven's fleet messengers might rest the wing,

To view the fair earth in its summer sleep,

Silent, and cradled by the glimmering deep.

Below you lie men's sepulchres, the old
Etrurian tombs, the graves of yesterday ;

The herd's white bones lie mixed with human mould-
Yet up the radiant steeps that I survey

Death never climbed, nor life's soft breath, with pain,

Was yielded to the elements again.

Ages of war have filled these plains with fear ;

How oft the hind has started at the clash
Of spears, and yell of meeting armies here,

Or seen the lightning of the battle flash

60

TO THE APENNINES.

From clouds, that rising with the thunder's sound,
Hung like an earth-born tempest o'er the ground.

Ah me ! what armed nations — Asian horde,
And Lybian host — the Scythian and the Gaul,

Have swept your base and through your passes poured,
Like ocean-tides uprising at the call

Of tyrant winds — against your rocky side

The bloody billows dashed, and howled, and died.

How crashed the towers before beleaguering foes,
Sacked cities smoked and realms were rent in twain ;

And commonwealths against their rivals rose,

Trode out their lives and earned the curse of Cain !

While in the noiseless air and light that flowed

Round your far brows, eternal Peace abode.

Here pealed the impious hymn, and altar flames
Rose to false gods, a dream-begotten throng,

Jove, Bacchus, Pan, and earlier, fouler names ;
While, as the unheeding ages passed along,

Ye, from your station in the middle skies,

Proclaimed the essential Goodness, strong and wise.

In you the heart that sighs for freedom seeks
Her image ; there the winds no barrier know,

Clouds come and rest and leave your fairy peaks ;
While even the immaterial Mind, below,

And Thought, her winged offspring, chained by power,

Pine silently for the redeeming hour.

THE KNIGHT'S EPITAPH.

This is the church which Pisa, great and free,
Reared to St. Catharine. How the time-stained walls,
That earthquakes shook not from their poise, appear
To shiver in the deep and voluble tones
Rolled from the organ ! Underneath my feet
There lies the lid of a sepulchral vault.
The image of an armed knight is graven
Upon it, clad in perfect panoply —
Cuishes, and greaves, and cuirass, with barred helm,
Gauntleted hand, and sword, and blazoned shield.
Around, in Gothic characters, worn dim
By feet of worshippers, are traced his name,
And birth, and death, and words of eulogy.
Why should I pore upon them 1 This old tomb,
This effigy, the strange disused form
Of this inscription, eloquently show
His history. Let me clothe in fitting words
The thoughts they breathe, and frame his epitaph.

" He whose forgotten dust for centuries
Has lain beneath this stone, was one in whom
Adventure, and endurance, and emprise
Exalted the mind's faculties and strung
The body's sinews. Brave he was in fight,
Courteous in banquet, scornful of repose,
6

62

And bountiful, and cruel, and devout,
And quick to draw the sword in private feud.
He pushed his quarrels to the death, yet prayed
The saints as fervently on bended knees
As ever shaven cenobite. He loved
As fiercely as he fought. He would have borne
The maid that pleased him from her bower by night,
To his hill-castle, as the eagle bears
His victim from the fold, and rolled the rocks
On his pursuers. He aspired to see
His native Pisa queen and arbitress
Of cities ; earnestly for her he raised
His voice in council, and affronted death
In battle-field, and climbed the galley's deck,
And brought the captured flag of Genoa back,
Or piled upon the Arno's crowded quay
The glittering spoils of the tamed Saracen.
He was not born to brook the stranger's yoke,
But would have joined the exiles, that withdrew
For ever, when the Florentine broke iu
The gates of Pisa, and bore off the bolts
For trophies — but he died before that day.
" He lived, the impersonation of an age
That never shall return. His soul of fire
Was kindled by the breath of the rude time
He lived in. Now a gentler race succeeds,
Shuddering at blood ; the effeminate cavalier
Turning from the reproaches of the past,
And from the hopeless future, gives to ease,
And love, and music, his inglorious life."

SEVENTY-SIX.

What heroes from the woodland sprung,

When, through the fresh awakened land,
The thrilling cry of freedom rung,
And to the work of warfare strung
The yeoman's iron hand !

Hills flung the cry to hills around,
And ocean-mart replied to mart,
And streams, whose springs were yet unfound
Pealed far away the startling sound
Into the forest's heart.

Then marched the brave from rocky steep,

From mountain river swift and cold ;
The borders of the stormy deep,
The vales where gathered waters sleep,
Sent up the strong and bold.

As if the very earth again

Grew quick with God's creating breath
And, from the sods of grove and glen,
Rose ranks of lion-hearted men

To battle to the death.

64 SEVENTY-SIX.

The wife, whose babe first smiled that day

The fair fond bride of yestereve,
And aged sire and matron gray,
Saw the loved warriors haste away,
And deemed it sin to grieve.

Already had the strife begun ;

Already blood on Concord's plain
Along the springing grass had run,
And blood had flowed at Lexington,

Like brooks of April rain.

That death-stain on the vernal sward
Hallowed to freedom all the shore ;

In fragments fell the yoke abhorred—

The footstep of a foreign lord
Profaned the soil no fnore.

THE LIVING LOST.

Matron ! the children of whose love,

Each to his grave, in youth have passed,
And now the mould is heaped above

The dearest and the last !
Bride ! who dost wear the widow's veil
Before the wedding flowers are pale !
Ye deem the human heart endures
No deeper, bitterer grief than yours.

Yet there are pangs of keener wo,

Of which the sufferers never speak,
Nor to the world's cold pity show
The tears that scald the cheek,
Wrung from their eyelids by the shame
And guilt of those they shrink to name,
Whom once they loved, with cheerful will,
And love, though fallen and branded, still.

Weep, ye who sorrow for the dead,

Thus breaking hearts their pain relieve ;

And graceful are the tears ye shed,
And honoured ye who grieve.
6*

66 THE LIVING LOST.

The praise of those who sleep in earth,
The pleasant memory of their worth,
The hope to meet when life is past,
Shall heal the tortured mind at last

But ye, who for the living lost
That agony in secret bear,
Who shall with soothing words accost

The strength of your despair ?
Grief for your sake is scorn for them
Whom ye lament and all condemn ;
And o'er the world of spirits lies
A. gloom from which ye turn your eyes.

THE STRANGE LADY.

The summer morn is bright and fresh, the birds are darting

by,

As if they loved to breast the breeze that sweeps the cool

clear sky ;
Young Albert, in the forest's edge, has heard a rustling sound
An arrow slightly strikes his hand and falls upon the ground.

A lovely woman from the wood comes suddenly in sight ;
Her merry eye is full and black, her cheek is brown and

bright ;
Her robe is of the mid-sea blue, her belt with beads is strung,
And yet she speaks in gentle tones, and in the English

tongue.

** It was an idle bolt I sent, against the villain crow ;

Fair sir, I fear it harmed thy hand ; beshrew my erring bow !"

" Ah ! would that bolt had not been spent, then, lady, might

I wear
A lasting token on my hand of one so passing fair !"

" Thou art a flatterer like the rest, but wouldst thou take with

me
A day of hunting in the wilds, beneath the greenwood tree,

68 THE STRANGE LADY.

I know where most the pheasants feed, and where the red-
deer herd,

And thou shouldst chase the nobler game, and I bring down
the bird."

Now Albert in her quiver lays the arrow in its place,
And wonders as he gazes on the beauty of her face :
* Those hunting-grounds are far away, and, lady, 'twere not

meet
That night, amid the wilderness, should overtake thy feet."

" Heed not the night, a summer lodge amid the wild is mine,
'Tis shadowed by the tulip-tree, 'tis mantled by the vine ;
The wild plum sheds its yellow fruit from fragrant thickets

nigh,
And flowery prairies from the door stretch till they meet the

sky.

" There in the boughs that hide the roof the mock-bird sits

and sings,
And there the hang-bird's brood within its little hammock

swings ;
A pebbly brook, where rustling winds among the hopples

sweep,
Shall lull thee till the morning sun looks in upon thy sleep."

Away, into the forest depths by pleasant paths they go,

He with his rifle on his arm, the lady with her bow,

Where cornels arch their cool dark boughs o'er beds of win-

tergreen,
And never at his father's door again was Albert seen.

THE STRANGE LADY. 69

That night upon the woods came down a furious hurricane,

With howl of winds and roar of streams and beating of the
rain;

The mighty thunder broke and drowned the noises in its
crash ;

The old trees seemed to fight like fiends beneath the light-
ning-flash.

Next day, within a mossy glen, mid mouldering trunks were

found
The fragments of a human form, upon the bloody ground ;
White bones from which the flesh was torn, and locks of

glossy hair ;
They laid them in the place of graves, yet wist not whose

they were.

And whether famished evening wolves had mangled Albert

so,
Or that strange dame so gay and fair were some mysterious

foe,
Or whether to that forest lodge, beyond the mountains blue,
He went to dwell with her, the friends who mourned him

never knew.

THE HUNTER'S VISION

Upon a rock that, high and sheer,
Rose from the mountain's breast,

A weary hunter of the deer
Had sat him down to rest,

And bared, to the soft summer air,

His hot red brow and sweaty hair.

All dim in haze the mountains lay,
With dimmer vales between ;

And rivers glimmered on their way,
By forests, faintly seen ;

While ever rose a murmuring sound,

From brooks below and bees around.

He listened, till he seemed to hear

A strain, so soft and low,
That whether in the mind or ear

The listener scarce might know.
With such a tone, so sweet and mild,
The watching mother lulls her child.

Thou weary .huntsman, thus it said,
Thou faint with toil and heat,

The pleasant land of rest is spread
Before thy very feet,

71

And those whom thou wouldst gladly see
Are waiting there to welcome thee.

He looked, and 'twixt the earth and sky,

Amid the noontide haze,
A shadowy region met his eye,

And grew beneath his gaze,
As if the vapours of the air
Had gathered into shapes so fair.

Groves freshened as he looked, and flowers

Showed bright on rocky bank,
And fountains welled beneath the bowers,

Where deer and pheasant drank.
He saw the glittering streams, he heard
The rustling bough and twittering bird.

And friends — the dead — in boyhood dear,
There lived and walked again,

And there was one who many a year
Within her grave had lain,

A fair young girl, the hamlet's pride —

His heart was breaking when she died :

Bounding, as was her wont, she came
Right towards his resting-place,

And stretched her hand and called his name
With that sweet smiling face.

Forward, with fixed and eager eyes,

The hunter leaned in act to rise :

72 the hunter's vision.

Forward he leaned, and headlong down
Plunged from that craggy wall,

He saw the rocks, steep, stern, and brown,
An instant, in his fall ;

A frightful instant — and no more,

The dream and life at once were o'er.

CATTERSKILL FALLS.

Midst greens and shades the Catterskill leaps,
From cliffs where the wood-flower clings ;

\11 summer he moistens his verdant steeps
With the sweet light spray of the mountain springs ;

And he shakes the woods on the mountain side,

When they drip with the rains of autumn tide.

But when, in the forest bare and old,

The blast of December calls,
He builds, in the starlight clear and cold,

A palace of ice where his torrent falls,
With turret, and arch, and fretwork fair,
And pillars blue as the summer air.

For whom are those glorious chambers wrought,

In the cold and cloudless night ?
Is there neither spirit nor motion of thought

In forms so lovely and hues so bright ?
Hear what the gray-haired woodmen tell
Of this wild stream and its rocky dell.
D 7

74 CATTERSKILL FALLS.

'Twas hither a youth of dreamy mood,

A hundred winters ago,
Had wandered over the mighty wood,

When the panther's track was fresh on the snow,
And keen were the winds that came to stir
The long dark boughs of the hemlock fir.

Too gentle of mien he seemed and fair,
For a child of those rugged steeps ;

His home lay low in the valley where
The kingly Hudson rolls to the deeps ;

But he wore the hunter's frock that day,

And a slender gun on his shoulder lay.

And here he paused, and against the trunk

Of a tall gray linden leant,
When the broad clear orb of the sun had sunk

From his path in the frosty firmament,
And over the round dark edge of the hill
A cold green light was quivering still.

And the crescent moon, high over the green,

From a sky of crimson shone,
On that icy palace, whose towers were seen

To sparkle as if with stars of their own ;
While the water fell, with a hollow sound,
'Twixt the glistening pillars ranged around.

Is that a being of life, that moves
Where the crystal battlements rise 1

CATTERSKILL FALLS. 75

A maiden, watching the moon she loves,

At the twilight hour, with pensive eyes 1
Was that a garment which seemed to gleam
Betwixt the eye and the falling stream 1

'Tis only the torrent, tumbling o'er,

In the midst of those glassy walls,
Gushing, and plunging, and beating the floor

Of the rocky basin in which it falls.
'Tis only the torrent — but why that start 1
Why gazes the youth with a throbbing heart 1

He thinks no more of his home afar,

Where his sire and sister wait.
He heeds no longer how star after star

Looks forth on the night, as the hour grows late.
He heeds not the snow-wreaths, lifted and cast,
From a thousand boughs, by the rising blast.

His thoughts are alone of those who dwell

In the halls of frost and snow,
Who pass where the crystal domes upswell

From the alabaster floors below,
Where the frost-trees bourgeon with leaf and spray,
And frost-gems scatter a silvery day.

" And oh that those glorious haunts were mine !"

He speaks, and throughout the glen
Thin shadows swim in the faint moonshine,

And take a ghastly likeness of men,
D 2

76 CATTERSKILL FALLS.

As if the slain by the wintry storms
Came forth to the air in their earthly forms.

There pass the chasers of seal and whale,

With their weapons quaint and grim,
And bands of warriors in glimmering mail,

And herdsmen and hunters huge of limb.
There are naked arms, with bow and spear,
And furry gauntlets the carbine rear.

There are mothers — and oh how sadly their eyes

On their children's white brows rest ;
There are youthful lovers — the maiden lies,

In a seeming sleep, on the chosen breast ;
There are fair wan women with moonstruck air,
The snow stars flecking their long loose hair.

They eye him not as they pass along,

But his hair stands up with dread,
When he feels that he moves with that phantom throng,

Till those icy turrets are over his head,
And the torrent's roar as they enter seems
Like a drowsy murmur heard in dreams.

The glittering threshold is scarcely passed,
When there gathers and wraps him round

A thick white twilight, sullen and vast,
In which there is neither form nor sound ;

The phantoms, the glory, vanish all,

With the dying voice of the waterfall.

CATTERSKILL FALLS. 77

Slow passes the darkness of that trance,

And the youth now faintly sees
Huge shadows and gushes of light that dance

On a rugged ceiling of unhewn trees,
And walls where the skins of beasts are hung,
And rifles glitter on antlers strung.

On a couch of shaggy skins he lies ;

As he strives to raise his head,
Hard-featured woodmen, with kindly eyes,

Come round him and smooth his furry bed,
And bid him rest, for the evening star
Is scarcely set, and the day is far.

They had found at eve the dreaming one

By the base of that icy steep,
When over his stiffening limbs begun

The deadly slumber of frost to creep,
And they cherished the pale and breathless form,
Till the stagnant blood ran free and warm.
7*

THE HUNTER OF THE PRAIRIES.

Ay, this is freedom! — these pure skies

Were never stained with village smoke :
The fragrant wind, that through them flies,

Is breathed from wastes by plough unbroke.
Here, with my rifle and my steed,

And her who left the world for me,
I plant me, where the red deer feed

In the green desert — and am free.

For here the fair savannas know

No barriers in the bloomy grass ;
Wherever breeze of heaven may blow,

Or beam of heaven may glance, I pass.
In pastures, measureless as air,

The bison is my noble game ;
The bounding elk, whose antlers tear

The branches, falls before my aim.

Mine are the river-fowl that scream

From the long stripe of waving sedge ;

The bear, that marks my weapon's gleam,
Hides vainly in the forest's edge ;

THE HUNTER OF THE PRAIRIES. 79

In vain the she-wolf stands at bay ;

The brinded catamount, that lies
High in the boughs to watch his prey,

Even in the act of springing, dies.

With what free growth the elm and plane

Fling their huge arms across my way,
Gray, old, and cumbered with a train

Of vines, as huge, and old, and gray !
Free stray the lucid streams, and find

No taint in these fresh lawns and shades ;
Free spring the flowers that scent the wind

Where never scythe has swept the glades.

Alone the Fire, when frostwinds sere

The heavy herbage of the ground,
Gathers his annual harvest here,

With roaring like the battle's sound,
And hurrying flames that sweep the plain,

And smoke-streams gushing up the sky :
I meet the flames with flames again,

And at my door they cower and die.

Here, from dim woods, the aged past

Speaks solemnly ; and I behold
The boundless future in the vast

And lonely river, seaward rolled.
Who feeds its founts with rain and dew ?

Who moves, I ask, its gliding mass,
And trains the bordering vines, whose blue

Bright clusters tempt me as T pass ?

80 SONG OF THE PRAIRIES.

Broad are these streams — my steed obeys,

Plunges, and bears me through the tide.
Wide are these woods — I thread the maze

Of giant stems, nor ask a guide.
I hunt, till day's last glimmer dies

O'er woody vale and grassy height ;
And kind the voice and glad the eyes,

That welcome my return at night.

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.

For she has bound the sword to a youthful lover's side,
And sent him to the war the day she should have been his bride,
And bade him bear a faithful heart to battle for the right,
And held the fountains of her eyes till he was out of sight.
Since the parting kiss was given, six weary months are fled,
And yet the foe is in the land, and blood must yet be shed.

A white hand parts the branches, a lovely face looks forth,
And bright dark eyes gaze steadfastly and sadly towards the
north.

D3

82 THE DAMSEL OF PERU.

Thou look'st 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 the

mane,
He speeds him toward 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 Tahete's beach,
Thou cam'st to woo me to be thine,
With many a speaking look and sign.

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 vet !

84 A SONG OF PITCAIRN's ISLAND.

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 blessed 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 the 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 the water dropped upon
them out of heaven, and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest upon
them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night.

2 Samuel, xxi., 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,
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.
8

66 RIZPAH.

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 drunk 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.
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.

RIZPAH. 87

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.

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
Where 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 ;

88 RIZPAH.

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 southwest

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.

'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 ;

8

90 THE INDIAN GIRLS LAMENT.

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 passed
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 to thine own 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.

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.

THE INDIAN GIRL S LAMENT.

91

And thou dost wait and watch to meet
My spirit sent to join the blessed,

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 ARCTIC LOVER.

Gone is the long, long winter night,

Look, my beloved one !
How glorious, through his depths of light,

Rolls the majestic sun.
The willows, waked from winter's death,
Give out a fragrance like thy breath —

The summer is begun !

Ay, 'tis the long bright summer day :

Hark, to that mighty crash !
The loosened ice-ridge breaks away —

The smitten waters flash.
Seaward the glittering mountain rides,
While, down its green translucent sides,

The foamy torrents dash.

See, love, my boat is moored for thee,

By ocean's weedy floor —
The petrel does not skim the sea

More swiftly than my oar.
We'll go where, on the rocky isles,
Her eggs the screaming sea-fowl piles

Beside the pebbly shore.

THE ARCTIC LOVER. 93

Or, bide thou where the poppy blows,

With wind-flowers frail and fair,
While I, upon his isle of snows,

Seek and defy the bear.
Fierce though he be, and huge of frame,
This arm his savage strength shall tame,

And drag him from his lair.

When crimson sky and flamy cloud

Bespeak the summer o'er,
And the dead valleys wear a shroud

Of snows that melt no more,
I'll build of ice thy winter home,
With glistening walls and glassy dome,

And spread with skins the floor.

The white fox by thy couch shall play ;

And, from the frozen skies,
The meteors of a mimic day

Shall flash upon thine eyes.
And I — for such thy vow — meanwhile
Shall hear thy voice and see thy smile,

Till that long midnight flies.

THE MASSACRE AT SCIO.

Weep not for Scio's children slain ;

Their blood, by Turkish falchions shed,
Sends not its ery 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 pressed.

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 clustering locks are dry,
Thou dost not hear the shrieking gust,

Nor breakers booming high.

As o'er thy sweet unconscious face

A mournful watch I keep,
I think, didst thou but know thy fate,

How thou wouldst also weep.

96 . VERSION OF A FRAGMENT.

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.

At-

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 nor 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 ;
To rush on them from rock and height,

And clear the narrow valley,
Or fire their camp at dead of night,

And fly before they rally.
9

98 THE GREEK PARTISAN.

— Chains are round our country pressed,
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.

ROMERO.

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.
There once, when on his cabin lay
The crimson light of setting day,
E 2

100 ROMERO.

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 :
I see thy fig-trees bask, with the fair pomegranate near,
And the fragrance of thy lemon-groves can almost reach me

here.

ROMERO. 101

III.

Fair — fair — but fallen Spain ! 'tis with a swelling heart,
That I think on all thou might'st 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 —
I 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 ihe

ground ;
And, to my mountain cell, the voices of the free
Shall rise, as from the beaten shore the thunders of the sea.

9*

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,
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,

MONUMENT MOUNTAIN. 103

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 wliiteness 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,

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

104 MONUMENT MOUNTAIN.

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,

Iacestuous, 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 ;

Nor when they gathered from the rustling husk

The shining ear ; nor when, by the river's 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 know'st, and thou alone,
She said, for I have told thee, all my love,

MONUMENT MOUNTAIN. 105

And guilt, and sorrow. I am sick of life.
All night I weep in darkness, and the mom
Glares on me, as upon a thing accursed,
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, and shaggy skins
Of wolf and bear, the offerings of the tribe
Here made to the Great Spirit, for they deemed,
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
E3

106 MONUMENT MOUNTAIN.

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,

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, who 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 waibled, 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.

They little knew, who loved him so,

The fearful death he met,
When shouting o'er the desert snow,

Unarmed, and hard beset ; —

108 THE MURDERED TRAVELLER

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 his 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 cimetar,
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.

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.
10

110 SONG OF THE GREEK AMAZON.

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,

Showed warrior true and brave ;
A prince among his tribe before,

He could not be a slave.

Then to bis conqueror he spake —

" My brother is a king ;
Undo this necklace from my neck,

And take this bracelet ring

112 THE AFRICAN CHIEF.

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.

" 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."

THE AFRICAN CHIEF. 113

* 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.
10*

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 dec

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 1

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 ;
'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.

116 AN INDIAN STORY.

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 maids.

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.

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.

AN INDIAN STORY. 117

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 feeU

Where he bore the maiden away ;
And he darts on the fatal path more fleet
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 died,
And the grape is black on the cabin side, —

And she smiles at his hearth once more.

118 AN INDIAN STORY.

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 ;
44 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 savanna's side.
I've wandered long, and wandered far,

And never have I 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 smile 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.
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.

120 the hunter's serenade.

The forest's leaping panther,
Fierce, beautiful, and fleet,

Shall yield his brinded 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 show 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 ;
And mighty vines, like serpents, climb

The giant sycamore ;
And trunks, o'erthrown for centuries,

Cumber the forest floor ;
And in the great savanna

The solitary mound,
Built by the elder world, o'erJooks

The loneliness around.

THE HUNTER S SERENADE. 121

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 fed-bird warbles,

Upon the mulberry near,
And the night-sparrow trills her song,

All night, with none to hear.
11

SONG OF MARION'S MEN.

Our band is few, but true and tried,

Our leader frank and bold ;
The British soldier trembles

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 English soldiery

That little dread us near !
On them shall light at midnight

A strange and sudden fear :
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 ;

song of marion's men. 123

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 and shout,

As if a hunt were up,
And woodland flowers are gathered

To crown the soldier's cup.
With merry songs we mock 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.
'Tis life to guide the fiery barb

Across the moonlight plain ;
'Tis life to feel the night-wind

That lifts his tossing mane.
A moment in the British camp —

A moment — and away
Back to the pathless forest,

Before the peep of day.
F 2

124 song of Marion's men.

Grave men there are by broad Santee,

Grave men with hoary hairs,
Their hearts are all with Marion.

For Marion are their prayers.
And lovely 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 Briton,

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 1
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.

Woo her when, with rosy blush,

Summer eve is sinking ;
When, on rills that softly gush,

Stars are softly winking ;

126 SONG.

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 dies

Tinge the woody mountain ;
When the dropping foliage lies,

In the weedy 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 northwinds call

At the lattice nightly ;
When, within the cheerful hall,

Blaze the fagots 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.

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.

128 LOVE AND POLLY.

A shade came o'er the eternal bliss
That fills the dwellers of the skies ;

Even stony-hearted Nemesis,

And Rhadamanthus, wiped their eyes.

" Behold," she said, " this lovely boy,"

While streamed afresh her graceful tears,
44 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 —

44 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 shown 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.

F3

130 FATIMA AND RADUAN.

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

know'st 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 : •

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 baldricks 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 Phenix,

The flag that loved the sky,
That scarce the wind dared wanton witn,

It flew so proud and high —
Now leaves its place in battle-field,

And sweeps the ground in grief
The bearer drags its glorious folds

Behind the fallen chief,

132 THE DEATH OF ALIATAR.

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 ;
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.

THE DEATH OF ALIATAR. 133

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 springs of Albaicin.
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.
12

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 vein.
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 tournay and in fight.
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

THE ALCAYDE OP MOLINA. ' 135

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

thine 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 LUIS 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 neai 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,
And fountains of delight ;
12*

138 THE LIFE OF THE BLESSED.

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 wo

Released, should take its way
To mingle with thy flock and never stray.

MARY MAGDALEN.

(PROM 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.

It is not much that to the fragrant blossom

The ragged brier 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.

140 MARY MAGDALEN.

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 noonday rest,

Till the heat of the noonday 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.

Airs ! that over the bending boughs,

And under the shade of pendent leaves,

Murmur soft, like my timid vows

Or the secret sighs my bosom heaves,—

142 THE SIESTA.

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.

Why wouldst thou be a sea at eve,

When but a fount the morning found thee ?

Born when the skies began to glow,

Humblest of all the rock's cold daughters,

No blossom bowed its stalk to show
Where stole thy still and scanty waters.

Now on thy stream the noonbeams look,
Usurping, as thou downward driftest,

Its crystal from the clearest brook,
Its rushing current from the swiftest.

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 quicker motion.

144

FROM THE SPANISH.

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.

THE COUNT OF GREIERS.

(FROM THE GERMAN.)

At morn the Count of Greiers before his castle stands ;
He sees afar the glory that lights the mountain lands ;
The horned crags are shining, and in the shade between
A pleasant Alpine valley lies beautifully green.

" Oh, greenest of the valleys, how shall I come to thee !
Thy herdsmen and thy maidens, how happy must they be !
I have gazed upon thee coldly, all lovely as thou art,
But the wish to walk thy pastures now stirs my inmost heart."

He hears a sound of timbrels, and suddenly appear
A troop of ruddy damsels and herdsmen drawing near ;
They reach the castle greensward, and gaily dance across ;
The white sleeves flit and glimmer, the wreaths and ribands
toss.

The youngest of the maidens, slim as a spray of spring,
She takes the young Count's fingers, and draws him to the

ring;
They fling upon his forehead a crown of mountain flowers,
** And ho, young Count of Greiers ! this morning thou art

ours !"

D3

146 THE COUNT OF GREIERS.

Then hand in hand departing, with dance and roundelay,
Through hamlet after hamlet, they lead the Count away.
They dance through wood and meadow, they dance across

the linn,
Till the mighty Alpine summits have shut the music in.

The second morn is risen, and now the third is come ;
Where stays the Count of Greiers 1 has he forgot his home ?
Again the evening closes, in thick and sultry air,
There's thunder on the mountains, the storm is gathering
there.

The cloud has shed its waters, the brook comes swollen

down;
You see it by the lightning — a river wide and brown.
Around a struggling swimmer the eddies dash and roar,
Till, seizing on a willow, he swings him to the shore.

" Here am I cast by tempests far from your mountain dell.
Amid our evening dances the bursting deluge fell.
Ye all, in cots and caverns, have 'scaped the waterspout,
While me alone the tempest o'erwhelmed and hurried out.

" Farewell, with thy glad dwellers, green vale among the

rocks !
Farewell the swift sweet moments, in which I watched thy

flocks !
Why rocked they not my cradle in that delicious spot,
That garden of the happy, where heaven endures me not ?

THE COUNT OF GREIERS. 147

" Rose of the Alpine valley ! I feel, in every vein,
Thy soft touch on my fingers ; oh, press them not again !
Bewitch me not, ye garlands, to tread that upward track,
And thou, my cheerless mansion, receive thy master back."

SONG.

(FROM THE SPANISH OF IGLE8IA8.)

Alexis calls me cruel ;

The rifted crags that hold
The gathered ice of winter,

He says, are not more cold.

When even the very blossoms
Around the fountain's brim,

And forest walks, can witness
The love I bear to him.

I would that I could utter
My feelings without shame ;

And tell him how I love him,
Nor wrong my virgin fame.

Alas ! to seize the moment
When heart inclines to heart,

And press a suit with passion,
Is not a woman's part.

SONG. ' H9

If man comes not to gather
The roses where they stand,

They fade among their foliage ;
They cannot seek his hand.
13*

SONNET.

(FROM THE PORTUGUESE OF SEMEDO.)

It is a fearful night ; a feeble glare

Streams from the sick moon in the o'erclouded sky ;

The ridgy billows, with a mighty cry,
Rush on the foamy beaches wild and bare ;
No bark the madness of the waves will dare ;

The sailors sleep ; the winds are loud and high ;

Ah, peerless Laura ! for whose love I die,
Who gazes on thy smiles while I despair?

As thus, in bitterness of heart, I cried,
I turned, and saw my Laura, kind and bright,

A messenger of gladness, at my side :
To my poor bark she sprang with footstep light,

And as we furrowed Tago's heaving tide,
I never saw so beautiful a night.

IOVE 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 mixed.
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,
And brightly in his stirrup glanced

The purple calcedon.

152 LOVE IN THE AGE OF CHIVALRY.

Fast rode the gallant cavalier,

As youthful horsemen ride ;
Peyre Vidal ! 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 PROVENSAL 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 fonns 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.
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.

THE HURRICANE. 155

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 world 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,
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, passmg few are they who speak,
Wild stormy month ! in praise of thee ;

Yet, though thy winds are loud and bleak,
Thou 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 wear'st 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.

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.

MARCH.

157

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 bring'st 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.
14

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 sidewalks 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.

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 ;

•PRING IN TOWN. 159

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 dressed,

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,
Frouzy 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.

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.

160 SPRING IN TOWN.

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 Sing Sing and the shores of Tappan bay.

Ye that dash by in chariots ! who will care
For steeds or footmen now ? ye cannot show

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 clouds,
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
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

162 SUMMER WIND.

That still delays its coming. Why so slow,

Gentle and voluble spirit of the air 1

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 southwest, at play,
Flies, rustling, where the painted leaves are strown

Along the winding way.

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.

164 AUTUMN WOODS.

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 1

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 ;
Thy gentle wind and thy fair sunny noon,

And leave thee wild and sad !

Ah ! 'twere a lot too blessed
For ever in thy coloured shades to stray ;
Amid the kisses of the soft southwest

To rove and dream for aye ;

AUTUMN WOODS. 165

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
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,

A WINTER PIECE. 167

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,

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,

168 A WINTER PIECE.

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 glassy floor. Oh ! you might deem the spot,
The spacious cavern of some 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

A WINTER PIECE. 169

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, —
'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 mom,
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
H 15

170 A WINTER PIECE.

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 fall 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 unpressed,
Are not more sinless than thy breast ;
The holy peace, that fills the air
Of those calm solitudes, is there.
H2

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 impressed.

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.

THE DISINTERRED WARRIOR. 173

In many a flood to madness tossed,

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 !
15*

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 nowt
As e'er of old, the human brow ;
And copies still the martial form
That braved Plataea's battle storm.

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 ;

THE GREEK BOY

175

Thine ears have drunk the woodland strains
Heard by old poets, and thy veins
Swell with the blood of demigods,
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 forever 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.

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.
H3

TO THE RIVER ARVE.

•UPF08ED TO BE WRITTEN AT A HAMLET NEAE 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.

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.

TO THE RIVER ARVE. 179

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 learned 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
The squirrel, with raised paws and form erect,
Chirps merrily. Throngs of insects in the shade
Try their thin wings and danoe in the warm beam
That waked them into life. Even the green trees
Partake the deep contentment ; as they bend

INSCRIPTION TO A WOOD. ' 181

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.
16

"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.

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.

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.

184 BANKS OF THE HUDSON.

Even love, long tried and cherished long,
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 1
Is not thy home among the flowers ?

Do not the bright June roses blow,
To meet thy kiss at morning hours 1

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.

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,
16*

86 THE WEST WIND.

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 sail'st 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.

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 :

1SS TO A MUSQUITO.

The south wind breathed to waft thee on thy way,
And danced and shone beneath the billowy bay.

And calm, afar, the city 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.

What say'st thou — slanderer! — rouge makes thee sick?

And China bloom at best is sorry food ?
Ind 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.

TO A MUSQUITO. 189

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 1
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.

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 BROKE THE SPELL THAT HELD ME LONG"

I broke the spell that held me long,

The dear, dear witchery of song.

I said, the poet's 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 wheresoever I looked, the while,

Was nature's everlasting smile.

Still came and lingered on my sight

Of flowers and streams 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,
Amid the evening glory, to confer
Of men and their affairs, and to shed down
Kind influence. Lo ! their orbs burn more bright,

192 CONJUNCTION OF JUPITER AND VENUS.

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 bums 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.

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,

CONJUNCTION OF JUPITER AND VENUS. 193

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 solenm 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
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,
I 17

194 CONJUNCTION OF JUPITER AND VENUS.

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 pressed

Into my narrow place of rest.

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.
I 2

196 JUNE.

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 1
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.
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 ;

JUNE. 197

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.
17*

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 the 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 :
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.

THE TWO GRAVES. 199

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 briers, 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,
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.

200 THE TWO GRAVES.

'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 1
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 gras *.
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 gairish 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 captive yields him to the dream
Of freedom, when that virgin beam
I 3

202 THE NEW MOON.

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 lovers' 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 1

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.

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,
Or columbines, in purple dressed,
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 his 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.

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.
18

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.

Ay, 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, obscuris, vilis, non ille repexam
Cesariem regum, non Candida virginis ornat
Colla, nee insigni splendet per cingula raorsu.
Sed nova si nigri videas miracula saxi,
Tunc superat pulchros cultus et quicquid Eois
Indus litoribus rubrd scrutatur in alg&. 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.

And hotter grew the air, and hollo wer grew

The deep-worn path, and horror-struck, I thought,

Where will this dreary passage lead me to 1 —
This long, dull road, so narrow, deep, and hot ?
18*

210 ON RHODE ISLAND COAL.

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.

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.

ON RHODE ISLAND COAL. 211

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.

Vet is thy greatness nigh. I pause to state,
That I too have seen greatness — even I —

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.

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,

212 ON RHODE ISLAND COAL.

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.

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 BURIAL-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.

214 AN INDIAN AT THE BURIAL-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 sacred 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.

But now the wheat is green and high
On clods that hid the warrior's breast,

OF HIS FATHERS. 215

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.

Before these fields were shorn and tilled,

Full to the brim our rivers flowed ;
The melody of waters filled

The fresh and boundless wood ;

216 AN INDIAN AT THE BURIAL-PLACE, ETC.

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 COLE, THE 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 — savannas 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 — everywhere 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.
K 19

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 roor,
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.
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 ;

GREEN RIVER.

And sweetest the golden autumn day
In silence and sunshine glides away.

Yet fair as thou art, thou shunn'st 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 book,
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 wild music gushing out
With mellow murmur and fairy shout,
From dawn, to the blush of another day
Like traveller singing along his way.

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,
K2

219

220 GREEN RIVER.

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.
But I would woo the winds to let us rest

O'er Greece long fettered and oppressed,

222 TO A CLOUD.

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 may'st frown

In the dark heaven when storms come down,
And weep in rain, till man's inquiring eye

Miss thee, forever 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.

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.
19*

224 AFTER A TEMPEST.

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,
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

AFTER A TEMPEST.

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.
K3

225

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 sooth 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 pansy. On the infant's little bed,
Wet at its planting with maternal tears,
Emblem of early sweetness, early death,

THE BURIAL-PLACE. 227

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, ^hese 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
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,

228 THE BURIAL-PLACE.

Plants often, by the ancient mossy stone,

The brier 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.

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.
20

230 THE YELLOW VIOLET.

Oft, in the sunless April day,

Thy early smile has stayed 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 o'erlook 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 kingfisher 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.

232 I CANNOT FORGET, ETC.

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 showed to his earlier years.

LINES ON REVISITING 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 her 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.

Here, I have 'scaped the city's stifling heat,
Its horrid sounds, and its polluted air ;
20*

234 ON REVISITING THE COUNTRY.

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.

There, at morn's rosy birth,
Thou lookest meekly through the kindling air,

HYMN TO THE NORTH STAR. 237

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 heams 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,
The glory earned in deadly fray,

Shall fade, decay, and perish.

240 ODE.

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.

They who here roamed, of yore, the forest wide,
Felt, by such charrn, their simple bosoms won ;
L 21

242 A WALK AT SUNSET.

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 passed,

And glory was laid up for many an age to last

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.

A WALK AT SUNSET. 243

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
Showed the gray oak by fits, and war-song rung,
I teach the quiet shades the strains of this new tongue.

Farewell ! but thou shalt 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.
L

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.

Yet, mighty God, yet shall thy frown look forth
Unveiled, and terribly shall shake the earth.

HYMN OF THE WALDENSES- 245

Then the foul power of priestly sin and all
Its long upheld idolatries shall fall.
Thou shalt raise up the trampled and oppressed,
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 round 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.

" 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 !

SONG OF THE STARS. 247

" 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 day-beams 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.

" 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 farthest 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 fill'st with air the unbounded skies,

And givest them the stores
Of ocean, and the harvests of its shores.

Thy spirit is around,
Quickening the restless mass that sweeps along ;

HYMN OF THE CITY. 249

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.
L3

"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 tenour keep ;

The Power who pities man, has shown
A blessing for the eyes that weep.

The light of smiles shall fill again
The lids that overflow with tears ;

And weary hours of wo 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.

252

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.

Yet art thou prodigal of smiles —

Smiles, sweeter than thy frowns are stern
Earth sends, from all her thousand isles,
22

254 THE SKIES.

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.

Oh, when, am' • tne throng of men,
The heart grows sick of hollow mirth,

How willingly we turn us 4hen
Away from this cold earth,

And look into thy azure breast,

For seats of innocence and rest.

THE JOURNEY OF LIFE.

Beneath the waning moon I walk at night,
And muse on human life — for all around

Are dim uncertain shapes that cheat the sight,
And pitfalls lurk in shade along the ground,

And broken gleams of brightness, here and there,

Glance through, and leave unwarmed the death-like air.

The trampled earth returns a sound of fear —
A hollow sound, as if I walked on tombs ;

And lights, that tell of cheerful homes, appear,
Far off, and die like hope amid the glooms.

A mournful wind across the landscape flies,

And the wide atmosphere is full of sighs.

And I, with faltering footsteps, journey on,
Watching the stars that roll the hours away,

Till the faint light that guides me now is gone,
And, like another life, the glorious day

Shall open o'er me from the empyreal height,

With warmth, and certainty, and boundless light

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,

And the vexed ore no 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

They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread.
The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the

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 brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer
glow;

258 THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS.

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 hath slandered thee

And mocked thee. On thy dim and shadowy brow

They place an iron crown, and call thee king

Of teiTors, and the spoiler of the world,

Deadly assassin, that strik'st down the fair,

The loved, the good — that breath'st 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

In sight of all thy trophies, face to face,

Meet is it that my voice should utter forth

260 HYMN TO DEATH.

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, sett'st 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,
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

HYMN TO DEATH. 261

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, cutt'st off
The horrible example. Touched by thine,
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 spotless7 fame
Blasted before his own foul calumnies,
Are smit with deadly silence. He, who sold
His conscience to preserve a worthless life,

262 HYMN TO DEATH.

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 point'st him to the dreadful goal,

And shak'st thy hour-glass in his reeling eye,

And check' st him in mid course. Thy skeleton hand

Shows to the faint of spirit the right path,

And he is warned, and fears to step aside.

Thou sett'st between the ruffian and his crime

Thy ghastly countenance, and his slack hand

Drops the drawn knife. But, oh, most fearfully

Dost thou show forth Heaven's justice, when thy shafts

Drink up the ebbing spirit — then the hard

Of heart and violent of hand restores

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,

HYMN TO DEATH. 263

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, imbruted, 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,
Tak'st off the sons of violence and fraud
In their green pupilage, their lore half learned —
Ere guilt has quite o'errun 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 strik'st 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

264 HYMN TO DEATH.

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

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 revery.

" EARTH'S CHILDREN CLEAVE TO EARTH.'

Earth's children cleave to Earth — her frail

Decaying children dread decay.
Yon wreath of mist that leaves the vale,

And lessens in the morning ray :
Look, how, by mountain rivulet,

It lingers, as it upward creeps,
And clings to fern and copsewood set

Along the green and dewy steeps :
Clings to the fragrant kalmia, clings

To precipices fringed with grass,
Dark maples where the wood- thrush sings,

And bowers of fragrant sassafras.
Yet all in vain — it passes still

From hold to hold, it cannot stay,
And in the very beams that fill

The world with glory, wastes away.
Till, parting from the mountain's brow,

It vanishes from human eye,
And that which sprung of earth is now

A portion of the glorious sky.
M 23

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.

Seek'st 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.

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.

TO A WATERFOWL. 267

And soon that toil shall end ;
Soon shalt 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
M2

THE BATTLE-FIELD.

Once this soft turf, this rivulet's sands,
Were trampled by a hurrying crowd,

And fiery hearts and armed hands
Encountered in the battle cloud.

Ah ! never shall the land forget

How gushed the life-blood of her brave —
Gushed, warm with hope and courage yet,

Upon the soil they fought to save.

Now, all is calm, and fresh, and still,

Alone the chirp of flitting bird,
And talk of children on the hill,

And bell of wandering kine are heard.

No solemn host goes trailing by

The black-mouthed gun and staggering wain,
Men start not at the battle cry,

Oh be it never heard again.

Soon rested those who fought ; but thou
Who minglest in the harder strife

For truths which men receive not now,
Thy warfare only ends with life.

THE BATTLE-FIELD. 269

A friendless warfare ! lingering long
Through weary day and weary year.

A wild and many-weaponed throng

Hang on thy front, and flank, and rear.

Yet, nerve thy spirit to the proof,

And blench not at thy chosen lot.
The timid good may stand aloof,

The sage may frown — yet faint thou not.

Nor heed the shaft too surely cast,

The hissing, stinging bolt of scorn ;
For with thy side shall dwell, at last,

The victory of endurance born.

Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again ;

The eternal years of God are hers ;
But error, wounded, writhes with pain,

And dies among his worshippers.

Yea, though thou lie upon the dust,

When they who helped thee flee in fear,

Die full of hope and manly trust,
Like those who fell in battle here.

Another hand thy sword shall wield,

Another hand the standard wave,
Till from the trumpet's mouth is pealed

The blast of triumph o'er thy grave.

NOTES.

Page 13. — Poem of the Ages.
In this poem, written and first printed in the year 1821, the Author has
endeavoured, from a survey of the past ages of the world, and of the suc-
cessive advances of mankind in knowledge, virtue, and happiness, to jus-
tify and confirm the hopes of the philanthropist for the future destinies of
the human race.

Page 50. — The surface rolls and, fluctuates to the eye.
The prairies of the West with an undulating surface, rolling prairies, as
they are called, present to the unaccustomed eye a singular spectacle when
the shadows of the clouds are passing rapidly over them. The face of the
ground seems to fluctuate and toss like the billows of the sea.

Page 51. the prairie-hawk that, poised on high,

Flaps his broad wings, yet moves not.
I have seen the prairie-hawk balancing himself in the air for hours to-
gether, apparently over the same spot ; probably watching his prey.

Page 51. . These ample fields

Nourished their harvests.
The size and extent of the mounds in the valley of the Mississippi, indi-
cate the existence, at a remote period, of a nation at once populous and la-
borious, and therefore probably subsisting by agriculture.

Page 52. the rude conquerors

Seated the captive with their chiefs.
Instances are not wanting of generosity like this among the North Ameri-
can Indians towards a captive or surviver of a hostile tribe on which the
greatest cruelties had been exercised.

23»

272 NOTES.

Page 89. — Her maiden veil, her own black hair, &c.
" The unmarried females have a modest falling down of the hair over
the eyes."— Eliot.

Page 94.— 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 predic-
tions. The independence of the Greek nation, which it foretold, has come
to pass, and the massacre, by inspiring a deeper detestation of their op-
pressors, did much to promote that event.

Page 102. — 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 small stones, erected, according to
the tradition of the surrounding country, by the Indians, in memory of a
woman of the Stockbridge 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 for-
mer 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 Moun-
tain 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 her
self. In company with a female friend she repaired to the mountain, deck-
ed out for the occasion in all her ornaments, and, after passing the day on
its summit in singing with her companion the traditional songs of her na-
tion, she threw herself headlong from the rock, and was killed.

Page 107. — 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 sol-
itary road passing between the mountains west of the village of Stock-
bridge. 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 stop-
ped 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 considerable sum of money in his

NOTES. 273

possession. Two ill-looking men were present, and went out about the
same time that the traveller proceeded 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 years
afterward a criminal, about to be executed for a capital offence in Canada,
confessed that he had been concerned in murdering a traveller in Stock-
bridge for the sake of his money. Nothing was ever discovered respecting
the name or residence of the person murdered.

Page 111. — Chained in the market-place he stood, &c.
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 exhibited in the market-place, his ankles still adorn-
ed with the massy rings of gold which he wore when captured. The refu-
sal of his captor to listen to his offers of ransom drove him mad, and he
ilied a maniac.

Page 118. — And stoops the slim papaya, &c.

Papaya— papaw, custard-apple. Flint, in his excellent work on the
Geography and History of the Western States, thus describes this tree and
its fruit :—

" A papaw shrub hanging full of fruits, of a size and weight so dispro-
portioned 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 us 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 know more of the
matter, I have ventured to make my western lover enumerate it among the
delicacies of the wilderness.

Page 122. — 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

274 NOTES.

revolution. The British troops were so harassed by the irregular and suc-
cessful 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 127.— Love and Folly.— {From La Fontaine.)
This is rather an imitation than a translation of the poem of the graceful
French fabulist.

Page 129.— Fatima and Raduan.
This, and the following poems, belong to that class of ancient Spanish
ballads by unknown authors, called Romances Moriscos — Moriscan roman-
ces 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 133. — Say, Love— for thou didst see her tears, &c.
The stanza beginning with this line stands thus in the original : —
Dilo tu, amor, si lo viste ;

i 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 composition
as this old ballad, but I have preserved it in the version. It is one of those
extravagances which afterward became so common in Spanish poetry when
Gongora introduced the estilo culto, as it was called.

Page 135. — These eyes shall not recall thee, &c.
This is the very expression of the original. No te llamardn mis ojos, &c.
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 ad
dressed his lady by the title of " green eyes," supplicating that he may re
main in her remembrance.

, Ay ojuelos verdes !
Ay los mis ojuelos !
Ay, hagan los cielos
Que de mi te acuerdes !

NOTES. 275

Page 143. — 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 considerable beauty.

Page 151.— 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 Provensal poets were indebted to
the authors of Greece and Rome for the imagery of their poems.

Page 153. — The Love OF God. — (From the Provensal of Bernard Rascas.)
The original of these lines is thus given by John of Nostradamus, in his

lives of the Troubadours, in a barbarous Frenchified orthography :—
Touta kausa mortala una fes perira,
Fors que I'amour de Dieu, que tousiours durara.
Tous nostres cors vendran essuchs, coma fa l'eska,
Lous Aubres leyssaran lour verdour tendra e fresca,
Lous Auselets del bosc perdran lour kant subtyeu,
E non 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'Arles 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, lou Ton, e la Balena,
Monstres impetuous, Ryaumes, e Comtas,
Lous Princes, e lous Reys, seran per mort domtas.
E nota ben eysso kascun : la Terra granda,
(Ou l'Escritura ment) lou fermament que branda,
Prendra autra figura. Enfin tout perira,
Fors que PAmour de Dieu, que touiour durarli.

Page 154. — The Hurricane.
This poem is nearly a translation from one by Jose- 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.
M3

276 NOTES.

Page 177. — Sonnet — William Tell.
Neither this, nor any of the other sonnets in the volume, with the ex-
ception of the one from the Portuguese, is framed according to the legiti-
mate Italian model, which, in the author's opinion, possesses no peculiar
beauty for an ear accustomed only to the metrical forms of our own lan-
guage. The sonnets in this collection are rather poems in fourteen lines
than sonnets.

Page 191. — The Conjunction of Jupitek 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 226.— The Burial-Place.
The first half of this fragment may seem to the reader borrowed from
the essay on Rural Funerals in the 4th number of the Sketch Book. The
lines were, however, written more than a year before that number appear-
ed. 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.

Date Due

V

410646

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