The poetical works of William H. C. Hosmer

Eternal Reason! Effluence from God!
All hail to thy regenerating power!
On crimson fields where guilty men have trod
Thou pourest down, to purify, thy shower.
Old systems, rotten with pollution long,
Before thy rising star are waning fast;
In palace-chambers, at the feet of Wrong
The gage of bloodless battle hath been cast.
Moans in this dreary wilderness of woe
By thee are changed to music soft and low,
For thou art parent of ennobling deeds,
Binding up broken reeds;
Dull Ignorance hath heard thy loud appeal;
His soul begins to feel
Faint throb of immortality at last—
A vibratory motion that precedes
The rending might of Truth's electric shock,
That soon will crush his gyves, as powder blasts the rock.

EPODE II. a.

Bright essence of all purity, whose mansion
Is in the hall of every human heart;
Agent that giveth thought sublime expansion,
A day-beam from the great White Throne thou art.

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Echoes that shake our mortal prison-bars,
Gentle forewhisperings of future life,
Of perfect bliss beyond the holy stars,
When ended turmoil and this fever-strife—
Are emanations from that well of wells
Where dread Omniscience utters oracles;
As gush sweet waters from a mountain spring,
And cool the valleys, summer-parched, below,
Companioned by the zephyr wandering;
So all that scarred earth boasts of good and fair,
Her green spots in the desert of despair,
To thee, to thee we owe!

STROPHE a. I.

When man's immortal nature yearns
From low desires of dust to flee,
Proudly before him moves and burns
A glowing column reared by thee:
Thou art his monitor within—
A wakeful warder on his spirit's wall,
When the persuasive tongue of sin
Chants in his ear some dulcet madrigal.
Thrilled by thy voice his harp the poet strings,
Clouds from his golden pathway driven,
While sailing upward on ethereal wings
He lives awhile in heaven:
Prompted by thee his blade the patriot draws,
And throws the sheath away—
Philosophy tracks consequence to cause,
And fills the caves of ancient night with day.

STROPHE b. II.

Calm element of light in human kind!
As Dian sways the pulses of the sea,
Tuning its tide to strains of harmony,
Soon will thy beams control the deep of mind.

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Prophetic murmurs on the wind are borne,
Signs are abroad, and banners are unfurled:
Be comforted, ye wretched ones that mourn,
Another morn is dawning on the world!
Mysterious hands are lifting up the veil,
And clank of breaking chains is heard afar—
Robbed of his crested helm and polished mail!
In myrtle bower reclines the slumbering god of war.

ANTISTROPHE. a.

A fructifying radiance gilds the gloom,
And precious seeds of peace are springing up;
For Evil, Right is scooping out a tomb,
And Joy is dropping balm in Sorrow's cup;
The windows of the Future, partly raised,
Reveal the foreground of a view unmarred
By one deforming object, and high bard
On a recovered paradise hath gazed:
Love will yet melt the hardened ice
That chills the breast of Avarice;
Wolves on the trail of Want will cease to prowl,
And Hate will lose his black, appalling scowl;
Earth, full of years and graves, will wear once more
A lustrous, primal beauty on her brow;
From her green face, with flowers enamelled o'er,
One stainless altar rise, and round it bow
A rosy brotherhood of glorious forms;
The sun, from his blue watch-tower in the sky,
Will look on land and sea with golden eye,
Rejoicing in the flight of clouds and driving storms.

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SOLOMON'S JUDGMENT.

SUGGESTED BY A PICTURE.

The painter's art has well portrayed the scene—
The mighty monarch of majestic mien,
The pleading mother, and that hardened one
Who falsely cried—“The living is my son!”—
A warlike figure of gigantic height
Towers in the foreground, terrible to sight;
His right hand lifting high the fatal blade,
While in his left he grasps the child dismayed;
Ready, with muscle braced and swelling vein,
The little trembler to divide in twain.

Mark—on the features of the woman vile,
Who said—“Divide it”—blended guilt and guile;
Although, demanding tributary tear,
The corse of infant innocence is near;
A blighted flower that on her bosom lay,
A thing of life and gladness yesterday—
The playmate that its little hand had fed:
A favorite dog, true only to the dead.

So much of wildering beauty charms the gaze—
So much of life upon the canvas plays,
That colors match the power of spoken word:
Hark! are not tones of earnest pleading heard
A voice that cries aloud in accent wild—
“In no wise slay—give her the living child!”
Those touching words, and that beseeching tone
Could flow from fond, paternal lips alone;
And the king said—“The sword shall not destroy—
She is the mother—give her back the boy!”

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HEAD QUARTERS OF WASHINGTON,

WHEN NEW YORK WAS EVACUATED BY CLINTON.

It is a structure of the olden time,
Built to endure, not dazzle for a day:
A stain is on the venerable roof
Telling of conflict with the King of Storms,
And clings to casement worn and hanging eaves
With thread-like roots the moss.
Gray shutters swing
On rusted hinges, but the beams of day
Dart with a softening radiance through the bars.
Colossal domes of chiselled marble made,
Religion's fanes, with glittering golden spires,
And Mammon's airy and embellished halls,
Wearing a modern freshness, are in sight;
But a cold glance they win from me alone.

Why do I turn from Art's triumphant works
To look on pile more humble? Why in thought
Linger around this ancient edifice?
The place is hallowed—Washington once trod,
Planning the fall of tyranny, these floors.
Within yon chamber did he bend the knee,
Calling on God to aid the patriot's cause,
At morn and in the solemn hour of night.
His mandate, pregnant with a nation's fate,
Went forth from these plain, unpretending walls.
Here towered in warlike garb, his stately form,
While marshalled thousands in the dusty street
Gave ear to his harangue, and inly vowed
To die or conquer with their matchless Chief.

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Methinks at yon old window I behold
His calm majestic features—while the sound
Of blessing rises from the throng below.
Have not the scenes of other days returned?
Do I not hear the sentry's measured tramp,
Clangor of mail and neigh of battle-steed,
Mingling their discord with the drum's deep roll?
No! 'twas a dream!—the magic of a place,
Allied to memory of earth's noblest son,
Gives form and seeming life to viewless air.

Relic of our Heroic Age, farewell!
Long may these walls defy dissolving time,
Mock the blind fury of the hollow blast,
And woo the pilgrim hither, while a voice
Comes from the shadowy caverns of the past,
Full of instruction to a freeman's soul—
A mighty voice that speaks of Washington,
And prompts renewal of stern vow to guard
Pure fires that on my country's altar glow.

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JUDGMENT.

Ezekiel, in the valley, when the bones
Of a great army moved, with life endowed,
While reconstructed skeletons arose,
Wearing the raiment of the flesh again,
Felt not a deeper awe than chills my heart
While looking on this picture.

Ye, who heed
No warning in the spoken word, draw near,
And tremble in the presence of your Judge,
Who sits enthroned upon the Holy Hill!
Dim is the lustre of midsummer noon
Compared with radiance streaming from his crown.
His calm, unalterable gaze is fixed
Upon a sea of tossing heads below,
And trumps are blown, and angels on the wing:
Green graves are opening, and their tenants throng,
Aroused from heavy slumber, to their doom.
Pale ashes of men martyred for the truth,
Scattered by wildly-wafting winds abroad
In other ages, gather and take form;
And dusty particles, dissevered long,
Meeting—to change and be disjoined no more,—
Attract to its old home the wandering soul.

From sandy wastes, dark woods and polar fields—
The gorges of gray mountains, and deep caves
That open their grim portals in the sea,
To Judgment march the tribes of humankind,

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From Adam to the last-born of his line.
A summons, piercing Earth's old heart, is heard;
Wearing the signet faith can give alone,
In pity turn the faces of the just
On Sin and black Despair, whose looks denote
Unutterable agony and woe.
Regardless of the gold beneath his feet,
The miser lifts a supplicating glance;
Tearing a blood-stained garland from his brow,
With frantic gesture lost Ambition prays;
The ties of nature, rudely broken, wake
Wailing more loud than ocean's wildest roar—
The separating Angel, in mid air,
To right and left extends his beck'ning arms.
The guilty mother to her spotless babe,
Decked for the bowers of bliss in robe of light,
Clings with fierce grasp in vain—and from the side
Of his tyrannic master bounds the slave,
To bear his palm-branch to the gates of heaven.
The poor man, who, with God and virtue, walked
Upon a thorny pathway to his grave,
Is greeted with glad welcome by the saints:
No more will Pomp—a trembling beggar now—
Treat him with cold disdain, or hear unmoved
His tale of wrong. The children of his love,
Starved! when a fellow-worm, in tinsel clad,
Trampled on law, both human and divine,
To rob him of his right to toil for bread:
But, lo! the scattered household round their sire
Flock after parting long, and seem to say:—
“Rejoice, dear father! we will feel the pangs
Of hunger, thirst, and pinching cold no more.”

Suggested by a painting.

279

HUCKNALL TORKARD.

[“Every sight and sound seemed calculated to summon touching recollections of poor Byron. The chime was from the village spires of Hucknall Torkard, beneath which his remains lie buried.”]—

Irving.

Oh! what a power in sights and sounds about
Earth's hallowed ground—eloquent battle-fields,
Wrecks of monastic pomp, or crumbling halls—
Sad, haunted places, where heroic veins
Have poured their crimson out in honor's cause,
Or lonely grave that holds some mighty heart
In voiceless custody.

Such thoughts were thine,
Immortal pilgrim from our western world!
When Hucknall Torkard, on the breeze of morn,
Sent from its gray and venerable spire
A deep-toned mellow chime:—another voice
Found echo in the chambers of his heart
While listening, with charmed ear, to that old bell—
A still mysterious voice that told of bard,
At rest beneath the pavement of the church,
Who needed not heraldic blazonry
To make his name undying.

On the spot
Through dim, stained glass of gothic window poured
Attempered, softened light—oh! contrast strange
To wild and dazzling radiance that around
The noble bard of Britain fell in life;
Warming the buried grandeur of the past,
Till dim, dismembered empires from their sleep,
Re-clothed with majesty, arose once more,
And icy gyves, by the pale tyrant forged,

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Dropped from the bony arms of buried power,
Dissolved like sunlit dew.

A landscape fair
Before the vision of the pilgrim spread,
In all its features whispering of peace.
The vale of Newstead, with its silver waves,
Tall patriarch oaks in which the rook found home,
Lawns populous with hardy English flowers,
Memorials of knighthood and the monk,
And hamlets sending up blue, smoky wreaths,
Were objects unto which poetic heart
Might cling through changing years, and never feel
The burden of satiety:—and yet
The wayward lord of such an Eden bright
Went forth in youth to battle with the world,
Its passions and its perils—feel the shaft
From bow of ambushed slander darkly sent—
Hear the loud cry of envy's craven brood,
Eclipsed in brightness by his young renown,
Or read the lying verse of scribbling hate,
Until his heart, by nature kind, became
A fount, like Mara, bitter:—then he roved
Far from his household gods and princely towers—
His genius waking wonder in all lands,
While an abiding sorrow made the locks
That clustered round his glorious forehead gray,
And woke, alas! although his years were few,
A yearning for the shroud.

Oh! that his life
Beneath the shades of Newstead might have passed—
No chord of his unequalled harp deranged,
Wedded to one in boyhood's hour adored
With love that knew no limit to its strength—
His Mary—Annesley's bright Morning Star.

281

HEATHER BLOSSOMS.

[Written on receiving at the hands of Miss McL---n a few sprigs of heather plucked at the foot of Old Ben Nevis, in the valley of Glencoe.]

And was your birth-place at the base
Of Old Ben Nevis, beauteous flowers?
On your bright leaves I still can trace
The loveliness of by-gone hours.
Thanks to the lass who gave the bard
These sweet memorials of a land
Where flourish, though the soil is hard,
A race of open heart and hand;
Where Bruce has fought, and Ossian sung,
And lyres in every glen are strung—
Where streams that down the mountains pour
Have tongues that tell of other times,
While splintered rock and ocean-shore
Shame the tame scenes of softer climes—
Where stormy cairns yet tower to show
Where heroes perished long ago,
And battle-fields, in song renowned,
Make moor and mountain hallowed ground.

And were ye brought across the sea,
Ye heather blossoms, to awake
Such kindling memories in me,
And rouse wild longings to forsake
These western groves, and tread the land
Of plaid and pibroch, harp and brand?
Ah! while I look upon these leaves,
A darker web witch Fancy weaves;

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For blood your sister-blossoms nursed
When clansmen tried in vain to rally,
And Vengeance like a night-cloud burst,
While Murder bared his steel accursed
In green Glencoe's romantic valley.
Full many moons have waxed and waned
Since war your birth-place redly stained,
But blood still crying from the ground
Seems clinging both to flower and stalk;
And though your leaves give out no sound
Of crime and woe, they more than talk.

Though dimmed the brightness that ye wore,
And paled your tints for evermore—
A mighty spell is yours to speed
The poet's soul across the main,
While martial lay and warlike deed
Chase slumber from his throbbing brain.
Ye jewels from “Auld Scotia's” breast,
Blest be the hand that gave, thrice blest.

283

THE NIGHT-BLOOMING CEREUS.

A lighted lamp in the green-house hung,
And thither thronged the old and young,
The birth of a wondrous flower to mark,
That blooms when the world in shadow lies,
And, ere the matin of the lark,
Droops, hangs its beauteous head, and dies.
A plant, without a leaf, was seen
Upcoiling like a serpent green;
And the chain-swung cresset showering down
A stream of radiance, rich and full,
Disclosed a stem of reddish brown,
Adorned with a wavy fringe-like wool,
And bearing a bud about to burst
By the balmy breath of evening nursed.

The pealing cannon rends the sky,
And tremble bells in the turret high,
When a royal heir the million hail,
And clearly rang on the perfumed gale
A startling noise like a glad salute,
When the pulsing and expanding heart
Of the cactus broke its bonds apart,
And the listeners round stood charm'd and mute.
A dazzling halo round it gleamed—
A type of purity it seemed,
While the broken casket of the gem
Was changed to a starry diadem.

284

A spotless crown the lily wears,
But a tenderer hue the cactus bears,
And the white rose in her fragrant bower
Sat veiled, outshone by a fairer flower.
Its cup, inlaid with glistening gold,
Was meet for the elfin queen to hold,
When bright, nectarean wine is poured
By waiting fays at her dainty board;
And in form had more of antique grace
Than foliated, classic vase
That modern art to rival tries
In vain beneath Ausonian skies;
Its clear, transparent depths displayed
A delicate and greenish shade,
That a fanciful poet would declare
Was like in hue to a mermaid's hair.

Its leaves of pure and pearl-like white
Woke dreams of innocence and Heaven;
Oh! why was such a gem to night,
And not to rose-lipped morning given?
That mother nature might impart
A lesson to the breaking heart,
And on the cloud of sorrow lone
A gleam of loveliness be thrown—
That eyes, all dim with tears, might see
An emblem fair of hope unfold,
Telling of glory yet to be—
Of bliss, by mortal voice untold,
In a land that is stranger to mildew and gloom,
Basking in light, and forever in bloom.

This flower makes an audible report when it bursts its sheath. Strange that a thing so beautiful should so love the night!

285

THE QUIET ARBOR

“Hence let me haste into the midwood shade,
And on the dark green grass, beside the brink
Of haunted stream, that by the roots of oak
Rolls o'er the rocky channel, lie at large.”

When study pales my visage, and I feel
Oppressive languor chaining heart and brain,
Away from toil and books I often steal,
Exploring haunts where Quiet holdeth reign.
I love the wild, the picturesque—and when
Her nest of moss the roving linnet weaves,
And the low thorn is beautiful with flowers,
I seek my favorite glen,
While warm winds wanton with the twinkling leaves
And pass in pleasant idleness the hours.

Where a dark arbor, by the mingling boughs
Of two gigantic hemlock trees, is made,
I rest my limbs, and with wild shout arouse
The ruffed grouse from her cover in the shade.
The tapping flicker does not keep aloof,
But plies his noisy bill above my head,
To greet my coming, while the summer heat
Falls on the verdant roof
That canopies my green, luxurious bed,
With the fresh odors of the forest sweet.

I lie and listen to the lulling tones
Of the clear brook that works its winding way,
Far down through brush, and over mossy stones,
The green marge wetting with its silver spray.

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The path is steep and perilous that leads
To the cold, flashing waters—and few dare
Descend to quaff refreshment from their flow;
For thick, entangling weeds
In the loose soil seem matted to ensnare
The foot of him that ventureth below.

In the rich bottom of the dale, a grove
Of sylvan giants woos the roving eye;
The topmost limbs wave not their leaves above
The shrubby brow of the declivity.
Sometimes in musing indolence I stand,
And drink in rapture from the peaceful scene,
Or call up old rememberings from sleep;
Then pluck with careless hand
The ripe red berries of the winter-green,
That blush like rubies on the verdant steep.

I watch the wild bees, from my cool retreat,
Hum tunefully around the blue harebell,
Before they enter to extract the sweet
That lieth hidden in each fragrant cell.
The small ground-squirrels leave their dwellings dark,
In the black, slaty soil, and gambol oft
On an old oak with star-moss overgrown,
And reft of branch and bark;
While the fierce hawk forsakes his realm aloft,
And settles on the blasted pine, his throne.

Where the broad banks slope gently downward, grow
The sassafras and other fragrant trees;
And the bright lilies of the wave below
Give nods of recognition to the breeze.
In mild accordance with the quiet scene,
Beat tranquilly the pulses of my heart;
While fancy populates the place with fays,
In robes of dazzling sheen,

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Who dance to merry music and depart,
While other fairy visions cheat the gaze.

Around the sapling, like a verdant belt,
The claspers of the honeysuckle twine;
The Dryads of Argos never dwelt
Within a bower more beautiful than mine:
The humming-bird is near me on the wing,
And the warm breeze with dulcet tone is stealing
Through the green plumage of the hemlocks old,
A spiritual thing;
While butterflies round marshy spots are wheeling,
Clad in their dazzling liveries of gold.

The dusky lord of knife and hatchet roves
Near my wild haunt of loveliness no more;
He saw, amid his old ancestral groves,
Throng pale invaders from a foreign shore—
Then heard thy sylvan monarchs, one by one,
With all their leafy diadems laid low,
And sought an undiscoverable lair
Toward the dim setting sun,
With empty quiver and a broken bow,
And gloomy brow contorted by despair.

The game he hunted craftily is gone,
And meadow-grass conceals his ancient trail;
The flock is feeding where his camp-fire shone,
And rang his whoop of triumph on the gale:
His implements of battle and the chase
Are often found near my romantic bower,
For the rich scene about it is allied
To legends of his race;
And mournful traces of his day of power
Make classic grove, and glade, and river-side.

Frost, washing rain-drops, and the plough, lay bare
The rude graves of his sires on hill and plain,

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Exposing their white secrets to the air,
And the rough foot-fall of the whistling swain.
When Autumn robes the forest in a dress
Of many colors, he returns no more,
To pay due homage to ancestral dust
From distant wilderness;
The wave no longer flashes with his oar,
And crusted is his tomahawk with rust.

His wood-land language cannot wholly die,
While swift Conesus rolls in rippling glee
Between broad, swelling banks of verdant dye,
To mix his waters with the Genesee.
These tall old hemlocks tell of other days,
When the red warrior rested in their shade,
The painted ruler of the scene around:
And the far hills, that raise
Their wooded tops, by summer lovely made,
In marks of ancient Indian rule aboud.

When the life-stream is frozen in my veins,
And hollow are my features with decay,
I fondly hope my cold and stiff remains
May not be hidden from the light of day,
In the dark yard where hundreds hide their dead;
For I would rather have a pleasant grave
Beneath the roofing of my arbor green,
With wild grass overspread;
While far below sing bird and gurgling wave,
Through the dense, rustling thicket, dimly seen.

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LAMENT FOR SUMMER.

A softened light falls on the hill's misty head,
And voices of mourning cry “Summer is dead!”
In the depths of the wood there are signs of decay,
And the green of the meadow is fading away;
Round pools that the rain-storm hath left in the street,
A golden-winged bevy, the butterflies meet—
A delicate blue is erased from the sky,
And the beard of the thistle is sailing on high.

Glad mother of beauty, lost Summer, wert thou—
A rosy tiara encircled thy brow;
Dew, fresh from the starr'd urn of night, was thy wine,
What face in the lakelet was glassed fair as thine?
Festooned by the ivy—with lattice supplied—
Thy hall in the green wood was airy and wide,
Bird, breeze, leaf and streamlet discoursed there in glee,
And the Genius of flowers spread a carpet for thee.

The nymph that we worshipped in mould hath been laid,
There is gloom in the fields, on the sun's disc a shade—
The cricket, in sable habiliments dress'd,
Is piping a dirge near the place of her rest;
Low winds murmur prayer for the sleeper's repose,
The locust sad note on his clarion blows,
And hollow-voiced spirits that whisper of dole,
Throng nightly around her funereal knoll.

Death came to thee, Summer, in loveliest guise,
All bright was thy smile when he curtained thine eyes—
Though deep in thy bosom was planted his dart,
There was bloom on thy cheek—there was warmth at thy heart,

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As gentle Autumnus bent over thy bier
He whispered “Awake thee—arise, sister dear!”
So life-like were tints that each feature retained,
Though the wine of thy fleeting existence was drained.

Where bruised by the wheel and armed hoof of the steed,
Blooms on by the wayside the lowly may-weed;
Yon dove-flock is gleaning each kernel of grain
That falls from the creaking and o'erloaded wain:
In glossy black coat sits the clamorous crow
On the top of tall oak, and he prophesies woe
While the first withered leaves of the forest are shed
On the newly-made grave of the loved and the dead.

When coral-lipped Summer breathed mournful adieu,
A landscape enriched by her smile was in view—
The cheek of the cloud was with violet tinged,
And an edging of azure the forest-top fringed;
Light airs passing over the dewy buckwheat,
Perfume bore abroad that was grateful and sweet,
And bees in the blossoms that whitened the field
Found nectar more pure than Hymettus can yield.

Mourn, mourn for the peerless and jovial-hearted
To the shadowy climate of silence departed!
Ere south had the passenger-pigeon retired,
Or gone was the robin, young Summer expired;
Dew-webbed is the stubble and pasture at morn,
And rubies are set in the crown of the thorn—
The boughs of the orchard with fruit are depress'd,
But cold lies the clod on the Slumberer's breast!

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AUTUMNAL MUSINGS.

An opening in the cloud!
And sunlight, gushing tremulously through,
Drinks up the white, thin shroud
That spread where lately shone the summer dew.

The sky is dark again;
And, roaming sadly in the wood-land path,
I deem that grove and plain
Lie in the shadow of celestial wrath.

The pleasant leaves are dead,
And make sad music when the north-wind stirs
The branches overhead,
And gathers them to forest-sepulchres.

The crow, in accents harsh,
Gives voice to Sorrow in his olden haunt;
But nigh the reedy marsh
I hear no more the black-bird's merry chaunt.

The brook no longer winds
In silver beauty by the homes of men,
And, full of laughter, finds
A green concealment in the shrubby glen.

But melancholy tones
From the worn, pebbly channel faintly rise,
Like low, despairing moans
That leave maternal lips when childhood dies:

And well the brook may mourn;
For the bright leaves that shaded from the sun
Its tripping wave, are torn
From the dark, wind-toss'd branches, one by one:—

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And on yon herbs that made
Its margin beautiful, the hoary frost
A blighting finger laid,
And their green witchery of hue is lost.

The flowers no longer raise
Their cups of fragrance, courted by the bee;
But the blithe squirrel pays
Enriching visits to the walnut-tree.

Dry twigs beneath my feet
The secret of my neighborhood betray,
And from her still retreat
The partridge flies on whirring wing away.

What teachers are the oaks,
With their torn mantles waving in the blast;
While the black raven croaks
A dirge for beauty in the dust at last!

How sweetly do the skies,
And the wide earth that withers far below,
Though tongueless, sermonize
On that great change we all must undergo!

The distant hill up-towers,
With its gray top in smoky verdure clad;
And, robbed of sunny flowers,
The meadows round look desolate and sad.

What eastern monarch owns
A robe of richer color than these leaves
That speak in rustling tones,
And fall in rainbow flakes when autumn grieves?

Though blest the distant coast,
Where grow the flowering lemon and sweet lime,
No foreign land can boast
The passing beauty of our autumn-time.

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THE OLD YEAR.

When a year ends its mission, nature's harp
Is tuned, methinks, to notes of mournfulness—
The leafless wood is filled with dirge-like sounds,
Unheard at other times—and on the beach
Of lone blue lake, or ocean's wilder strand,
The waves send up a melancholy roar,
As if bereaved of something that they loved;
Snow, newly fallen, on the wintry waste,
Lifted in whirling masses by the gale,
Is shaped by fancy into ghostly forms
Treading the dance of death—and air-borne clouds
That brush the mountain's top, whose surging pines
Make music for the dark procession meet,
Seem like a funeral escort following
The Old Year to his grave.
Oh! not unmourned
By winged sprites, believe the fabling bards,
Though mortal tongue no lamentation raise,
Vanish the seasons with their varied charms—
Their flowers, their fruits, their many-colored groves,
And fireside joys, when howl the blasts of night.
Another wreck, with treasure in her hold,
Hath reached the port of dark eternity,
Furling her ragged canvas, nevermore
To brave the treacherous shoal, the hidden rock.
Her deck was crowded with a laughing throng
When merrily the voyage she began,
Flapping her white wing like some joyous gull
Disporting on the bosom of the brine.
Not all outlived the bark that bore them on—

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Some perished when no cloud was in the sky,
And air was balmy with the breath of flowers—
And others, heart-chilled by unfriendly gales
That blew from Want's inhospitable coast,
Isles of complaining sorrow, dark with yew,
And over ice-fields, by Misfortune owned,
Lashed to the plunging plank, have disappeared.
Many are floating in a vessel launched
An hour agone to stem the tide of time,
Their tongues full loudly shouting, while she scuds
Before the breeze—“Health to the Outward Bound!”
On! on! though fair the weather be, or foul,
Thou restless rover on a troubled sea!
Ah! with a gallant bearing, like thine own,
The wreck, of which I spake, once walked the waves;
Exultant Hope was at the helm, and Joy
Her topmast with a painted streamer decked,
And now her cruise is o'er—her keel at rest.
The freight she bore, alas, was like thine own!
The golden visions of romantic youth;
Fancies of girlhood, delicate and sweet;
The growing selfishness of frosty age;
Love's cherished jewels, and majestic plans
Engendered by ambition's burning brain;

The coffin and the cradle, stowed away
In her deep hold, with toys and mourning weeds,
In the same varnish glittered side by side;
Pale winding-sheet, and bridal-garment, packed
In the same trunk together, were on board;
The myrtle and the cypress intertwined
In a strange wreath their foliage, and oft,
By tolling bell, the lover's lute was drowned.

On to thy sunless haven, fated bark!
Beauty, the waker of a wondrous spell,
Manhood, rejoicing in his lusty thews,
And childhood, warbling like a lark at morn,

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Must perish by the way, but pause not thou!
Twelve moons will wax and wane before thy place
Of everlasting anchorage is found;
And in that space of time the world may wear
An aspect that it never knew before.
The bonds are snapping, one by one, that bind
The beaten slave unto a laboring oar:
The lifted veil unfolds a brighter scene
Than the dark back-ground of the mournful past;
Preluding notes of a triumphant song,
Rousing besotted nations, on the wind
Wander like spirits that will not be laid.
The human soul, a mirror darkened long
By passion's mist, and vapor black and dense
Uprising from the fens of ignorance,
Shall be unclouded as it was of yore,
Ere mildew fell on paradise—again
Its surface flashing back the light of heaven.
Old poets feigned that the revolving months
Were in obeyance to Biformis wise,
Who forward looked, and backward threw his glance.
Watch by Time's mighty outward gate he kept,
A janitor of grave and reverend mien!
Who aided, with his hand, the faltering steps
Of each out-going, palsy-shaken Year,
While in rushed blithe successors, with a bound.
Thereby unfolded was a startling truth;
For Life, and his wan, shadowy brother, Death,
Exit and entrance at one door-way find.
Outlasting generations of mankind,
The tallest Titan of the woods must fall,
And turn again to inorganic mould,
Retaining, though complete the ruin seems,
The rudiments of form and majesty,
And principle of efflorescence still.
Despair not, laborer for human weal!

296

Though perish, one by one, thy golden hopes;
Ashes remain in which some living spark
May veil its brightness, destined to illume
Cimmerian darkness with electric gleams.
Despair not, mourner, though the work of change
Is with the pale departed going on!
Despair not, dying maiden, while the leaves
Are paler growing in thy blighted rose!
The perishable flesh will waste to dust,
But through the portals of Decay will stream
A dazzling blaze of loveliness once more.
Transmuted by inevitable laws,
Loathsome putrescence will soon beauteous be,
The crumbling wreck become a fabric fair.

297

NEW-YEAR MUSINGS.

Another year of bloom and blight
Is dead, with darkness for a shroud—
Gone, like some phantom of the night,
Gone, like the shadow of a cloud.
Wild polar spirits chime a dirge,
And, mingling with the dreadful roar,
I hear old Ocean's angry surge
Beat time upon the frozen shore.

Love, count thy jewels!—not a few
Have vanished from thy casket frail,
More false than diamonds of the dew,
Or rounded drops of summer hail.
Look, Hope! upon thy cherished flowers,
So bright of hue twelve moons ago!
May will not wake them with her showers,
Nor warm them with her genial glow.

Ambition! what is left thee now,
Too proud to beg, too brave to moan?
Scorn points to thy dishonored brow—
Hate taunts a rival overthrown.
Mad builder on a treach'rous bank,
Washed by a fierce devouring stream,
How thy tall, misshapen towers sank,
Poor frame-work of a frantic dream!

Ho! Avarice! halt a little while,
And hold communion with thyself—
But banish that complacent smile
While gloating o'er ill-gotten pelf.

298

Thy poor allottery of time
Is drawing near its darkening close,
And awful is old age when crime
Gleams, hell-like, through its gath'ring snows.

Give back to Woe the little all
Wrung by thy hard, exacting hand;
The king of hearse and night-black pall
Will not be bribed by golden sand.
Give back to Want the lowly shed,
By law-craft and its wiles made thine;
Give back, extortioner, the bread
For which her pleading orphans pine.

Children of grandeur! know ye not,
While merry over Christmas cheer,
That, weary of their wretched lot,
A beggar'd crowd were starving near;
That mothers, while chill night came on,
To garrets, dens, and cellars crept,
And found the last poor fagot gone,
While shivering infants round them wept?

Votaries of mirth! were ye aware,
While moving in the graceful dance
To notes of some enlivening air,
And warmed by beauty's beaming glance,
That Genius, with his bleeding feet,
And war with famine doomed to wage,
Was wandering, homeless, in the street,
Rejected by a coward age?

To Worth give not a groat away—
The public goose let Barnum carve:
Enrich the humbugs of to-day,
But let the heirs of Fulton starve.
Give the poor soldier, maimed in fight,
Allowance scant of bitter bread,

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But thousands, in a single night,
To some famed cantatrice instead.

Let Valor in his nameless grave
Commingle with ensanguined mould;
The surplus of your earnings save
To load Jack Harlequin with gold.
The passport of the “Upper Ten,”
Though borne by knave, or downright fool,
Must be obeyed by vulgar men,
For fashion, not the sage, should rule.

Another pilgrim, faint and worn,
Has reached the caverns of the Past,
While Winter winds his icy horn,
And trooping demons ride the blast.
To some he brought a golden shower,
Sweet bridal joys, and home-delights;
Pearls, wrested from the clutch of power,
Bright happy days, and peaceful nights:

To others he has brought despair,
And wreck upon the stormy waves;
Flight from oppression's bloody lair—
Chains, scaffolds, broken hearts, and graves.
But, Hungary, thy chosen chief
Will back in arms ere long return;
The skies give promise of relief—
Air is alive with voices stern:—

The northern bear his brood may wake,
But they shall gnaw thy heart no more;
But on his own grim carcass make,
When roused the pack, a meal of gore.
Back, savage, to thy deserts dread,
Where night her umbrage loves to fling!
The British Lion lifts his head—
The Western Eagle flaps his wing.

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And, Poland, may this new-born year
Thy glad redemption usher in,
While perish, smit with mortal fear,
The vassals of anointed sin.
Walk, tyrant, with a guarded tread—
Let not your pulse too proudly beat!
The heavens are darkening overhead,
And earth is mined beneath your feet.

Though shades of martyrs haunt thy shore,
Isle of the blue, embracing sea!
There is deliverance in store,
A place in freedom's hall for thee.
Thy tears of blood shall yet be dried,
Thy funeral sackcloth thrown away,
While robed in splendor, like a bride,
The beams of joy around thee play.

Another wave upon the beach
Has dashed its freight of good and ill;
Our hands abroad we vainly reach,
In quest of those whose hearts are still.
Another mile-stone we have gained—
The goal of rest is drawing nigh,
And sadly is the vision pained
By pictures that once charmed our eye.

Oh! sooner rake in ashes cold
For letters that have fed the blaze,
Than seek to find the bliss of old,
The transports of our younger days
Enough, though hushed the voice of glee,
If in our breasts contentment calm
Sits, like a halcyon on the sea,
Dispensing an oblivious balm.

301

NEW YEAR FANCIES.

Time's belfry trembles with another knell!
Another year hath vanished like the snow
That wastes beneath young April's melting glance.
The forest, naked to the lightest twig,
Is now a mournful instrument of sound,
From which the blast, a wild performer, calls
Mysterious music, swaying its old boughs,
And a deep Spirit Voice in unison
Chants this wild hymn, in memory of the lost.

HYMN.

To the sunless land of death
The poor, white-haired Old Year
Hath gone with his children twelve,
Brave sons and daughters dear:
And the sides of the wooded hill
Are threshed by the Storm King's flail,
And rusheth through the glen,
With a hollow sound, the gale.

Bright openings in the cloud
Cheered the Old Year's dying days,
While he thought of the summer flowers,
And of autumn's purple haze;
And a dream “that such things were,”
Though it bathed in light his heart,
Was a call from another world,
And a warning to depart.

302

Last born of a little flock
Wert thou, December wild!
And, shuddering, looked thy sire
On his dark, ill-boding child;
For a fiend in the Old Man's ear
Had screamed a warning loud,
That the twelfth one of the band
Would bring him to his shroud.

More wan his visage grew
When the luckless reign began,
And a chill crept through the veins
Of the venerable man:
And how heartless was thy laugh
When descending hail and sleet
On the palsy-shaken form
Of the bowed old Pilgrim beat.

On the dead and shrivelled leaves
With a trembling step and slow,
Craving refuge from the storm,
Marched that hoary man of woe;
And he roved through church-yards bleak,
Reading names he loved the best;
Then in faltering accents prayed
For a couch of endless rest.

Now he lieth stark and mute,
With the mighty ones of old;
He hath gone with all his joys
And his sorrows manifold;
But seed by the Old Year sown
Will in other hours uprise,
And the plants of evil bear,
Mixed with blossoms for the skies.

303

THE WITCH.

[FROM AN UNPUBLISHED TALE OF SHETLAND.]

The beldame on the waves below
Flung the dark contents of her chalice,
Dimming the brightness of their snow,
With scowl denoting demon-malice,
And bosom cold to mortal pain—
Then, making circles with her wand
Sang in a low, mysterious strain
The power of bard to paint beyond.

Ministers of vengeance leave
Gloomy grot and sunless cave!
Ere the dewy reign of eve
Death must triumph on the wave:—
Habited in robes of wrath,
Let your follower be Grief!
Guide his vessel on the path
Leading to this fatal reef;
Word, with insult fraught, of me
He hath spoken daringly,
And a leader claims the skill
Of her troop to work him ill—
He must drown!

Spirits, who beneath the deep
Darkly build the wrecking rock!
Wake the dreaming storm from sleep,
And the doors of safety lock!
Fleetly, on their palfreys white,
Swept the Fatal Sisters by
His old castle yesternight,
Shrieking out—“Thy doom is nigh!”

304

Genii of the clouds! array
Arching sky in black to-day;
For the tongue of leader dread
To her ghastly troop hath said—
He must drown!

Though far below the haunted crag
Sang moaningly the frothy surge,
Erect and demon-like, the hag
Stood on its beetling verge;
While sunlight gave the mountain, brown
And verdureless, a golden crown,
Her gaze was fixed upon a sail
That lightly flew before the gale;
And meaningly the cliffs around
Gave back her laugh of wild delight,
The curlew starting with the sound,
While faded mast and spar from sight.

Not well could pen portray the face
And figure of that grim, weird woman;
One, gazing, would have thought the race
She darkly sprang from superhuman.
The garment round her shoulders cast
Was by a silver brooch made fast;
And, crested by a raven feather,
A bonnet muffled up her head,
Dark with the stains of time and weather;
Her shrivelled neck was bare,—and thread,
Whose coloring was caught from night,
Depended from a distaff light,
That near her lay, with noxious weeds,
On which the dew yet shone in beads,
And plants of power that flourish best
When plaintively the night-wind grieves—
When day has faded in the west,
And other flowers have shut their leaves.

305

Low on the forehead of the crone
The hair in grisly masses grew;
Her lips were shrunken, and the bone
Of her lean cheek shone clearly through
The parchment-like and wrinkled skin,
That lay in furrows long and deep:
Like some foul votary of sin,
Just risen from a dreamless sleep,
And merry with a fearful mirth
By reason of return to earth—
Exulting that foul charm again
To generate disease and pain
Was in her keeping, stood the hag
Surveying ocean from the crag
The glad bird hushed its warbled strains
When flitting by.—Within her veins
The fountains of vitality
Long in appearance had been dried,
Though the red twinkle of her eye
Debility of frame belied;
And fiercely by the fire of hate
Her glance at times was lighted up.
In one hand, to unravel fate,
She held an old enchanted cup,
Whose handle cunningly resembled
The knotted snake in act to spring,
While lightly in the other trembled
A wand of magic fashioning.

Of freestone made and granite block,
A mossy structure capp'd the rock,
And stood as if the wind and rain
Of centuries had beat in vain
On rugged roof and side of stone
With hanging lichen overgrown.
The lintel of the cot was low,
And piping winds could come and go

306

Through fissures in the granite gray,
Defying tempest, time, decay.
The regal pine, that loves to toss
Its plumage on the mountain head,
Proud perch of eagles! in the moss
Of ages richly habited,
Grew not in stately beauty there,
Green banners flinging to the air;
But the lonely spot was a fitting home
For the mystic being of my story;
Beneath lay ocean, flecked with foam,
And round were piled,
In grandeur wild,
Rocks with the flight of ages hoary.
Above, ribbed with fragments of porphyry stone,
The mountain raised its leafless cone;
And, wearing channels deep and wide,
The torrent came down its precip'tous side.
Murmurs, born in caverns dark,
Came up where the lonely crag was rifted;
And reefs, to wreck the gallant bark,
Above the wave their edges lifted.
Against the coast, with dark rock bound,
The waters struck with earthquake sound,
Or, rushing on, to madness toss'd,
In cold, unlighted caves were lost.
No leafy shrub, with blossoms hung,
Rich odor on the light winds flung;
Nor bush with dewy berries bright
The small birds tempted to alight;
And not one blade of grassy green
Gave freshness to the barren scene;
But meet was the place of for its occupant old,
Communion with spirits of evil to hold.

307

THE MEMPHIAN MUMMY.

“O, I could pass all relics
Left by the pomps of old,
To gaze on this rude monument
Cast in affection's mould.”
Mrs. Hemans.

Daughter of Egypt, on thy shrunken face
The hues of life and health no longer glow;
And change hath written on thy coffin-case
Those words of mournful import—“long ago.”
The light, in thy unseeing eye, is dead—
Thy teeth no longer shame the ocean pearl:
The dewy freshness of thy lip hath fled,
And gone thy pride of curl.

The debt of nature myriads have paid,
And o'er them closed Oblivion's misty wave,
Since weeping friends thy breathless form arrayed
In the sad vesture of the starless grave.
Those hollow eyes with pleasure may have beamed,
Or tears, perhaps, that dusky cheek have wet;
Upon thy brow, for aught sage knows, hath gleamed
Some queenly coronet.

Perchance thine ear, so very dull and cold,
The mystic lyre of Memnon often heard,
When sunrise tinged the morning sky with gold,
And all its strings melodiously stirred.
An infant may have slumbered in those arms,
That hang so still and nerveless by thy side;
Perchance some Pharaoh, yielding to thy charms,
Made thee his royal bride.

308

The breathing statue and the speaking bust
Of all their grace and beauty have been reft,
And dome and tower have crumbled into dust
Since thy freed soul its mortal prison left.
Although the rock, for many ages, hid
Thy rigid features from the light of day,
Thou standest up, like Egypt's pyramid,
Defying stern decay.

Amid the chords of some love-kindling lute
Those taper fingers may have often strayed;
Thy tongue, which hath for centuries been mute,
To Apis or to Isis may have prayed.
When ancient Memphis was the seat of power—
When mirth and music reigned within her walls,
Perchance of throngs thou wert the worshipped flower,
That sought her princely halls.

The yellow sunlight falls upon thee now,
But cannot melt the icy chain of death;
The zephyr's wing is fanning thy dark brow,
But thou art reckless of its balmy breath.
When joy held empire in thy stony breast,
Hadst thou no haunt upon the Nile's green shore,
To muse upon his waters, when at rest,
Or listen to their roar?

Did ever cross thy mind the chilling thought,
While drinking rapture from the vernal gale,
That e'er thy form by strangers would be bought,
And made the theme of many an erring tale?
When the last trump shall animate the tomb,
And call the dead from out the sea and earth—
Maiden, thy spirit will its dust resume,
Far from thy place of birth.

309

THE SEXTON OF TIME.

The windows were fastened, and bolted the door—
One mouldering brand threw faint light on the floor,
When, followed by twelve heavy beats of the clock,
A spirit unseen at my casement did knock;
“Who is here?—who is here?”—with a shudder I cried,
And a voice, hollow-toned like the night-wind, replied:

“The sad, withered heart of that traveller old,
The gray-headed Year is now silent and cold;
On a pallet of straw wan and wasted he lies,
No warmth in his veins, and no light in his eyes;
I come, hither called, moody Sexton of Time!
From my cavernous home in a mystical clime.

“A king, many months, did he rule in the land,
And the sceptre of empire befitted his hand;
In June his proud palace with azure was hung—
Through its picturesque halls witching melody rung—
Rich emerald carpet each floor overspread,
Embroidered with blossoms, to soften the tread.

“Oh! where shall I trench a receptacle deep;
Where find for the pilgrim a chamber of sleep!
Oh! not by the wayside, for over his grave
A banner of white would the storm-demon wave,
And frolicsome steeds, ringing bells on the blast,
While Mirth held the reins, would be hurrying past.

“Oh! not in the woods would I build him a tomb—
Gone, gone are their crowns, and no violets bloom;
In their desolate depths not a warbler is seen,
The brook hath no murmur—its margin no green,

310

And the sobbing of winds, and the creaking of boughs,
From rest might the heart-broken slumberer rouse.

“He dropped, causing deeper the verdure to grow,
Bright dew where the lost and the lovely lie low,
And sent golden sunshine, and pattering showers,
While bright grew the desolate grave-yard with flowers,
But earth, once so fair by his agency made,
Will furnish no cell where his bones may be laid.

“Dark bearers will come at the blast of my horn:
His corse shall be gently to Shadow-Land borne,
And the Sexton of Time will a sepulchre build
In its valley by winter, the tyrant, unchilled;
While the newly-crowned Year, a wild rioter, laughs
At the wassailing board, and a full bumper quaffs.

“Revel on!—revel on! with the youthful and gay.
Proud heir of the fallen! thy locks shall grow gray,
Though the days of thy life inexhaustible seem,
They will melt like the dew—they will pass like a dream;
From spring-time to winter the journey is brief,
And the fields of delight stretch to deserts of grief!”

The voice died away, and a trumpet was blown—
I looked from my window in terror, I own,
And phantom-like forms, by the snow-light, beheld,
A dim figure leading them, hoary with eld,
The funeral it seemed of the friendless Old Year,
For borne, in their midst, was a shadowy bier.

311

TRIUMPHS OF PEACE.

From palace, cot and cave,
Streamed forth a nation in the olden time
To crown with flowers the brave
Flushed with the conquest of some far-off clime,
And louder than the roar of meeting seas,
Applauding thunder rolled upon the breeze.
Memorial-columns rose
Decked with the spoils of conquered foes,
And bards of high renown their stormy pæans sung,
While Sculpture touched the marble white,
And, woke by his transforming might,
To life the statue sprung.
The vassal to his task was chained—
The coffers of the state were drained
In rearing arches, bright with wasted gold,
That after generations might be told
A thing of dust once reigned.

Tombs, hollowed by long years of toil,
Were built to shrine heroic clay,
Too proud to rest in vulgar soil,
And moulder silently away;
Though treasure lavished on the dead
The wretched might have clothed and fed—
Dragged merit from obscuring shade,
And debts of gratitude have paid;
From want relieved neglected sage,
Or veteran in battle tried;
Smoothed the rough path of weary age,
And the sad tears of orphanage have dried.

312

Though green the laurel round the brow
Of wasting and triumphant war,
Peace, with her sacred olive bough,
Can boast of conquests nobler far:
Beneath her gentle sway
Earth blossoms like a rose—
The wide old woods recede away,
Through realms, unknown but yesterday,
The tide of empire flows.
Woke by her voice rise battlement and tower,
Art builds a home and Learning finds a bower—
Triumphant Labor for the conflict girds,
Speaks in great works instead of empty words;
Bends stubborn matter to his will,
Drains the foul marsh, and rends in twain the hill—
A hanging bridge across the torrent flings,
And gives the car of fire resistless wings.
Light kindles up the forest to its heart,
And happy thousands throng the new-born mart;
Fleet ships of steam, deriding tide and blast,
On the blue, bounding waters hurry past;
Adventure, eager for the task, explores
Primeval wilds, and lone, sequestered shores—
Braves every peril, and a beacon lights
To guide the nations on untrodden heights.

313

THE MIGHT OF SONG.

[“I was in the hall of the castle, disguised as a harper from the wild shores of Skianack. My purpose was to have plunged my dirk in the body of the ‘M'Auley with the Bloody Hand,’ before whom our race trembles; but I saw Annot Lyle, even when my hand was on the hilt of my dagger. She touched her clàrsach (Highland Harp) to a Song of the Children of the Mist. The woods in which we had dwelt, pleasantly rustled their green leaves in the song, and our streams were there with the sound of all their waters. The fountains of mine eyes were opened, and the hour of revenge passed away.”]—

Legend of Montrose.

Disguised as a harper,
I stood in the hall,
And loud was the clatter
Of arms on the wall.
Dark, dark grew my brow, for the sheen of their blades
Was dim with the blood of our old men and maids.

The scourge of my people,
The Red Hand, was near
And whispered the ghosts
Of the slain in mine ear—
“Shall a foeman be safe while a Son of the Mist
Wears the dirk of his ancestors chained to his wrist?

“Shall terror the veins
Of the fatherless freeze,
While the bay of the black hound
Comes down with the breeze?
Shall our hearth-stones be roofless, and Ronald forget
In the blood of the monster to cancel the debt?”

“No! no!—by the bones
Of the dead we have sworn
Ere night fall the Laird
For his brother shall mourn:

314

With the slaughter of kinsmen his tartan is red,
And the plumes of our chief grace his bonneted head.”

Toward the weaponless slayer
I made but one stride,
With hand on the hilt
Of the dirk by my side,—
When, thrilling my heart to its innermost cell,
On mine ear a wild burst of rich melody fell.

At length my glance rested
On Annot the fair,
Whose smile vies in brightness
The gold of her hair;
To a song of our race her light clàrsach was strung,
And, bathing my cheek, dropped the tears while she sung.

I saw our own streams
Glide in beauty along,
And the voice of their waters
I heard in the song;
The rustling of leaves, and wild carol of bird
In glens where my forefathers slumber, I heard.

My hand the dark hilt
Of my weapon forsook,
For my frame, like an aspen,
With sorrowing shook;
And my childhood came back with its innocent shout,
While the fire of revenge in my bosom went out.

Harp. Vide Macleod's Gaelic dictionary.

315

THE DEAD HUNTER.

Here, here at last I've found thee
Torn by the beast of prey—
The dim old forest round thee,
Thy couch the dark wet clay.
From lip and cheek have faded
For aye the tints of life;—
Soiled is the belt I braided
With the red rain of strife.
I told thee yestermorning
That foes lay ambushed near,
For borne was note of warning
Unto my dreaming ear
From the far Spirit Land.

No more thine arms will rattle
Light bracelets in the dance—
Thine eye no more in battle
Flash forth indignant glance.
My voice that once could cheer thee
Thrills not that bosom now;
Thy bow lies broken near thee,
And blood-stained is thy brow:
With pace the moose outspeeding
To hunt the antlered herd,
Thou wentest forth unheeding
The sadly-whispered word
Of the far Spirit Land.

Oh, bitterly my nation
Will mourn thy timeless fall,
For who can fill thy station
Within the council-hall?
My cone-like lodge is lonely—
The fount of joy is dry,

316

For life was pleasant only
When thou, dead chief, wert nigh!
My tree of hope is blighted,
Its trunk is in the dust;
But we will be united
Ere many moons, I trust,
In the far Spirit Land.

A dwelling, cold and narrow,
Must now the strong arm hide
That best could wing the arrow,
Or the light paddle guide;
The muttering storm is hiding
With veil of gloomy dye
The day-god lately riding
With lustrous pomp on high;
But while the cloud is shedding
Cold rain-drops on thy breast,
Thy warlike ghost is treading
The chase-grounds of the blest
In the far Spirit Land.

The wolf stalks by thee heeding
Thy fatal aim no more—
The doe and fawn are feeding
Near thy lone couch of gore.
The quivered band will never
Thy war-shout hear again;
The hand is stilled for ever
That once piled high the slain;
But, thick as bees that cluster
In hollows of the wood,
Thy clan for combat muster,
While a wild cry for blood
Thrills through the Spirit Land.

317

BLAKE'S VISITANTS.

[_]

[“Blake, the painter, forgot the present in the past. He conceived that he had formed friendships with distinguished individuals of antiquity. He asserted that they appeared to him, and were luminous and majestic shadows. The most propitious time for their visits was from nine at night till five in the morning.”]

The stars shed a dreamy light—
The wind, like an infant, sighs;
My lattice gleams, for the queen of night
Looks through with her soft, bright eyes.
I carry the mystic key
That unlocks the mighty Past,
And, ere long, the dead to visit me
Will wake in his chambers vast.

The gloom of the grave forsake,
Ye princes who ruled of yore!
For the painter fain to life would wake
Your majestic forms once more.
Ye brave, with your tossing plumes,
Ye bards of the pale, high brow!
Leave the starless night of forgotten tombs,
For my hand feels skilful now.

They come, a shadowy throng,
With the types of their old renown—
The Mantuan bard, with his wreath of song,
The monarch with robe and crown.
They come!—on the fatal Ides
Of March yon conqueror fell;
For the rich, green leaf of the laurel hides
His baldness of forehead well.

318

I know, though his tongue is still,
By his pale, pale lips apart,
The Roman whose spell of voice could thrill
The depths of the coldest heart—
And behind that group of queens
Bedight in superb attire,
How mournfully Lesbian Sappho leans
Her head on a broken lyre!

That terrible shade I know
By the scowl his visage wears,
And the Scottish knight, his noble foe,
By the broad claymore he bears.
That warrior king who dyed,
In Saracen gore, the sands,
With his knightly harness on, beside
The fiery Soldan stands.

Ye laurell'd of old, all hail!
I love, in the gloom of night,
To rob the Past of his cloudy veil,
And gaze on your features bright.
Hah! the first bright beam of dawn
On my window redly plays,
And back, to their homes of dust, have gone
The mighty of other days.

319

UNDINE.

“Thy themes—
Subjects of old romance, and ocean's realm,
A spacious province, where the wandering thought
And 'wilder'd fancy, erring, may be lost,
Are without limit.”—
Simms.

I have brought, I have brought,
In my pearl-studded car,
Proud spoils for the lost one,
From grottoes of spar—
To shroud her cold bosom
A raiment of flowers
That blush, fading never,
In coralline bowers.

I have brought, I have brought
From the stillness of cells,
Whose roofs are encrusted
With rainbow-like shells,
Bright gems to inweave
Her long tresses of gold
That lie on a forehead
Pale, pulseless and cold.

When the blue, upper waters
From slumber arise,
And Death paints with ominous
Sable, the skies—
When the tall bark contends
With the storm-fiend in vain,
Her home will be quiet
Far down in the main.

Her wave-girdled couch,
When the water-snake trails,
Will flash with the glitter
Of rainbow-like scales—

320

And here amidst forests
That never knew blight,
The dolphin will leave a
Broad pathway of light.

Though dead is the pulse
In her death-frosted veins,
I will guard, from the tooth
Of decay, her remains—
And preserve by the might
Of a wonderful charm,
Her freshness of cheek and
Her fullness of arm.

When months, years and ages,
Like shadows, have fled,
Her lip shall retain its
Voluptuous red;
And beauty will dimple
Her face with a smile,
When the palace lies low,
In her own native isle.

Sweetly mournful shall steal,
Through the waters by day,
From the hall of the wave-sylph
Some heart-piercing lay;
And delicate sprites,
In the red coral bower,
Will chant for the lost
Maiden, dirges of power.

Nigh her couch of repose,
The blue shark will be made
By the magical wand of
Dread Undine afraid—
For I am the spirit
Whose mystical sway
The hell-guided agents
Of ruin obey.

321

THE LOST DAUGHTER.

“As the earth when leaves are dead,
As the night when sleep is sped,
As the heart when joy is fled,
I am left lone, alone.”
Shelley.

All lonely is thy hearth,
Dusk shadows round it fall,
And tones of love and mirth
Are hushed within thy hall.
Her lips have drank the brine;
Her pulse is cold and still;
A mournful lot is thine,
Though jewels of the mine
And gold thy coffers fill.

The church-yard turf below
Her sainted mother lies,
And there spring up and grow
Bright flowers of varied dyes;
And sorrow for thy child
Less desolate would be,
If near that mother mild
Her grave-mound was up-piled
Beneath the same old tree.

For thee the dawn is bright,
Eve gemmed with stars in vain;
Thou mournest for a light
That ne'er can shine again:
Thy garden bowers with grass
And weeds are overrun;

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The friends of old, alas!
Ungreeted by thee pass,
For thou with earth hast done!

By night her eyes of blue
Upon thee sweetly gleam,
But morning proves untrue
The brief but blissful dream;
Her lute no longer rings
To dust and silence wed,
And to its shattered strings
The spider's drapery clings—
Drear sign that she is dead.

With mutter sad and low
Why read those lines—her last—
Then with a cry of woe
Interrogate the blast?
The star of hope grows dark,
And ocean's barren shore—
With straining eye to mark
Some home-returning bark—
Is paced by thee no more.

Cheer up! the sands of life,
Old man, are running fast;
The fever and the strife
Will terminate at last!
Beyond time's drifting strand
An everlasting rock
Towers in a radiant land,
And round it, hand-in-hand,
Will meet love's scattered flock.

323

BYRON'S FAREWELL.

Sweet Mary! I have looked again
Upon thy speaking face,
And only did the wreck remain
Of former bloom and grace;
A fearful blight was on the rose
That once thy beauty wore;
Pale token that within had froze
Joy's fount, to flow no more.

The babe that nestled in mine arms
And sported on my knee,
Inherited those matchless charms
Once prized so much in thee;
And boyhood, with the sunny tress,
That bounded through the door,
Woke a drear sense of loneliness,
A thought that all was o'er.

Why am I sad? The light is gone
That cheered my darkened way;
The star, when night was coming on,
That turned my gloom to day:
We parted, and no tear was shed,
For love's wild dream was o'er;
I think of thee as of the dead;
Lost, lost for evermore!

My soul retains thine image yet,
Though bliss is in the grave;
As splendor falls, when the sun is set,
On purpling wood and wave;

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For perished joy I will not weep,
Affection crushed deplore,
Though memory in mourning deep
Is clad for evermore.

Thine was a witchery of mien
That found its type in charms
By the painter drawn of Love's own queen
Springing from Ocean's arms;
And siren music, that ensnared
Frail barks, though far from shore,
Was discord, to the voice compared
That I must hear no more.

A face of pensive sweetness long
Will haunt my troubled dreams,
When couched, in the mystic land of song,
On banks of golden streams:
I gazed on thee as Tasso gazed
On high-born Leonor,
And like the bard, by passion crazed,
Must hope for peace no more.

My sail is flapping in the bay,
The breakers foam and roll,
And airy voices shout “Away!
Away! poor troubled soul!
The wine-cup cannot waken mirth,
An Eden lost restore;
Away, away! on English earth
Thy feet must tread no more!”

325

THE TRIAD.

My first-born! I have marked in thee
A soul that loves to dare—
Wild winds across a stormy sea
Thy bark of life will bear.
Young eaglet of the household-nest,
Turned sunward is thine eye;
A pulse is in thy little breast
That beats full strong and high!

I tremble when I hear thee speak
In tones of clear command;
Ambition's flush is on thy cheek,
His iron in thy hand.
Oh! guard thy ruling passion well,
Or wrecked thy bark will be;
Alone can virtue ride the swell
On glory's troubled sea.

More bright than gift of fairy land,
My second born, art thou!
The breath of Heaven never fanned
A lovelier cheek and brow.
An angel art thou, child, sent down
To cheer my darker hours,
And gifted with a spell to crown
E'en Grief's bowed head with flowers.

Daughter!—(Love's most enchanting word)
Thy voice is music's own,
And ever like the note of bird
Announcing winter gone.

326

June gave thee birth, and in thine eye
Her azure I behold;
On that soft cheek her roseate dye
In those bright locks her gold.

My last born! if I read aright
The language of thy glance,
Thou hast a soul to drink delight
From streams of old romance.
Each nerve is delicately strung,
And through thy little heart,
When minstrel-lay is played or sung,
Wild thrills of rapture dart.

A star, of ray benign and clear,
Presided at thy birth,
And filled, in slumber, is thine ear
With music not of earth.
Thy bolder brother's prayer will be
To sway the fitful throng—
Thine, gentle boy—“Enough for me
The golden lute of song!”

327

JACK'S BURIAL.

[“Shall we fill the maintopsail, sir?” demanded Mr. Leach, after waiting a minute or two in deference to the Commander's feelings, “or shall we hook on the yard-tackles, and stow the launch?” “Not yet, Leach—not yet: it will be unkind to poor Jack to hurry away from his grave so indecently.” *** “The boats, sir?” “Let them tow awhile longer. It will seem like deserting him to be rattling the yard-tackles, and stowing boats directly over his head.”]—

Cooper.

“All hands!” cried the captain, “to bury the dead!”
When dipped into ocean the sun's disc of red;
And the west with those soft, pearly tints was imbued
That paint morn and eve of a low latitude.

Stretched eastward a coast lined with hillocks of sand,
Dread bound of a waste, uninhabited land;
In other directions the briny swell heaved,
Its gloom by the skies' shifting color relieved.

While passengers gathered, all mournful of look!
And post at the gangway each officer took,
Old Salts, with whom long he had furrowed the wave,
Round the corse of poor Jack mustered silent and grave!

Astern had they seen, with a thrill of dismay,
The blue, gliding shark on the watch for his prey—
And a spell of repose on the vessel was cast,
With her courses hauled up—topsail laid to the mast.

In hammock, a shroud for bold sea-rover meet,
Poor Jack lay enveloped, with lead on his feet—
A stain on the cloth to beholder betrayed
The deep wound beneath by war's messenger made.

When burial-service was solemnly read,
And lingering word of farewell had been said,
By signal the body was loosed from the plank—
A dull, heavy plunge, and forever it sank!

328

“Shall we fill the maintopsail?” demanded the mate,
“Or hook on the yard-tackles?” “Wait awhile, wait!
Unkind it would be, on our homeward-bound track,
To hurry away from the grave of poor Jack!

“A mark of respect to our comrade we owe
Who sleeps in a tomb without record below,
Far away, far away from the land of his birth,
And the spot where his fathers rest sweetly in earth!

“His dangerous station he kept at the wheel,
Though sounded his knell in the musket's loud peal;
And grasping the spokes, to yon star-flag that flew
With blue wing on the gale, died the mariner true!”

“The boats, sir?” hoarse voice of the officer cried,
“Let them tow awhile longer!” his captain replied;
“It would seem like deserting him—canvas to spread,
Or rattle the yard-tackles over his head!”

The fast-closing day grew more gloomy of dye—
Moaned sadly the waters—clouds met in the sky,
As if sympathized nature, in aspect and tone,
With the sorrow-touched hearts of those mariners lone!

329

OUR PIONEERS.

“Fortes ereantur fortibus et bonis.”

Thanks to the son of art whose hand
Has nobly labored to portray
The features of that gallant band
Who pioneered for us the way.

Bold forest-tamers! they have scared
The wild beast from his savage den—
Our uplands to the sunshine bared,
And clothed with beauty hill and glen.

And never in the battle's van
Have men at death more calmly smiled
Than our first settlers who began
The work of culture in the wild.

The perils of a frontier life
They braved with breasts of iron mould,
And sternly waged victorious strife
With famine, thirst, and pinching cold.

They vanish from us, one by one,
In death's unlighted realm to sleep,
And, oh! degenerate is the son
Who would not some memorial keep:

Whose sordid heart yearns not to save
A transcript of their reverend faces,
When the dark curtains of the grave
Have closed around their coffin-cases.

The car of steam is thundering by
The place where blazed their cabin-fires.
And where rang out the panther's cry
Thought speeds along electric wires.

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They toiled, that WE the prize might share—
They conquered, that WE might possess,
Converting to our Eden fair
The terrors of the wilderness.

The bard, with soul to beauty wed,
Is filled with rapture to behold
The portraits of the mighty dead
That crowd the galleries of old.

While the weird light of painting warms
The pictured canvas on the walls,
Attended by majestic forms,
The solemn past unlocks its halls.

I deem those hearts of little worth,
In view of such a pageant bright,
And lodged in frames of common earth,
That wake not to a wild delight.

Lo! Power resumes his ancient reign—
Wrecks change to cities on the shore;
All that was dead revives again,
All that was lost is found once more.

The martyr at the stake still bears
Unflinching witness to the truth,
And freedom's scarred apostle wears
The glory of a second youth:—

And the “gray fathers” who have laid
An empire's deep foundation here,
In life-like tints should be portrayed
When generations disappear.

While heirs to win as pure renown,
By their example taught—endeavor,
Their honored faces should look down
From consecrated walls forever.

Suggested by a view of Kimble's Pioneer Portrait Gallery, Rochester.

331

THE OLD WHITE STORE.

“Old faces glimmered through the doors,
Old footsteps trod the upper floors.
Old voices called me from without.”
Tennyson.

A whisper comes from the Old White Store,
No longer sought by the busy throng,
“Entrance seek at some other door,
These walls to the worm Decay belong!
Pass on, and pause not, child of sin,
You would purchase naught that he keeps within!”

Unscared by smoke, the weary bird
Its wing on the chimney-top may fold,
And shuffling feet are no longer heard
Crossing the door-sill as of old:
When the night-blast shakes its crazy walls,
In mildewed flakes the plaster falls.

Moss on the sloping roof is green,
And the cornice wears a dusky tinge;
Thick and red may the rust be seen
On window-bar and grating-hinge;
And Ruin traces, with cloudy line,
His own sad name on the faded sign.

In summer-time the swallow flies
Through broken panes of the sash decayed,
But hurries back to the free blue skies,
As if of fearful shapes afraid;
And weeds display their sickly leaves
On window-ledge and rotting eaves.

The ceiling, damp and white with mould,
Hath lost the paint of other days;

332

The crumbling bricks of the hearth are cold,
Once bright with the crackling fagot's blaze;
And trails, where unclean things have crept,
Furrow the dust of floors unswept.

Dark shelves are draped with cobwebs gray,
Once laden with goods and costly wares;
And wood-worms work their spiral way
Through mouldering boards and cellar-stairs;
Counter, and desk, and broken stool
Tell a touching tale of Time's misrule.

Grass shoots up near the portal wide,
But spell hath the place to waken thought;
Garments there for the blushing bride,
And winding-sheets for the dead were bought:
In sunken graves tall nettles grow,
And bloom from the bride fled long ago.

When came the holidays of yore,
Flocked thither merry girls and boys,
For a famous place was that Old White Store
For tempting gifts and glittering toys;
And the farmer, there, full bags of grain
To market brought in his harvest-wain.

The shingles, weather-browned and worn,
Wild winds lift up and bear away,
As, one by one, the locks are torn
From a head with age and sorrow gray;
And the cheerful homes of the living near
Comport but ill with a place so drear.

How lone is the Old White Store at night,
When lamps at the village casements gleam,
And sparks that emit a ruddy light
From the roaring smithy upward stream!
Divided reign a fearful pair,
Darkness and silence, are holding there!

333

TO TORQUATUS.

HORACE, ODE VII. BOOK IV.

Snows are dissolved;—now herbage to the plain,
And foliage to the trees return again.
Earth's courses change, and with diminished tide
Along their banks the rivers gently glide.
The sister Graces, in the joyous dance,
Naked, together with the Nymphs, advance;—
The year, and rapid flight of pleasant day
Warn us that earthly things soon pass away.
To cold the zephyrs mitigation bring,
And summer follows close upon the spring,
Dying when fruitful autumn sheds his stores,
Then back comes sluggish winter to our shores.

The waning moons their wasted lustre mend;
But when to nether regions we descend,
Where Tullus, Ancus, Æneas are laid,
Naught we become but mouldering dust and shade.
Who knoweth that the gods to-morrow's space,
In his brief sum of days, will give a place?
Good things of earth, that with a friend we share,
Escape the greedy clutches of an heir.
When once consigned, Torquatus, to the tomb,
And Minos shall have sealed our awful doom,
Nor eloquence, nor family, nor worth
Can you recall from darkness unto earth.
Not even Dian, back to life and light,
Can call Hippolitus from death and night.
And Theseus has no power in twain to rend
Hell's chain that fetters Pirithous, his friend.

334

FAIR MARGARET

[A LEGEND OF THOMAS THE RHYMER.]

[_]

[I am indebted to Hugh Cameron, Esquire, of Buffalo, N. Y., for this strange and strikingly beautiful legend. Mr. C. informs me that it has long formed a part of the fire-side lore of his own clan; and from a remote period has lived in the memory of Scotland's peasantry. He expressed surprise that men of antiquarian taste, in compiling border ballads and tales of enchantment, had not given “Fair Margaret” a conspicuous place in their pages; and at his suggestion I have attempted to clothe the fanciful outlines of the original in the drapery of English verse. The Elidon tree referred to in the poem, was the favorite seat of Thomas the Rhymer, and there he gave utterance to his prophecies.]

Old yews in the church-yard are crumbled to dust,
Deep shade on the grave-mound once flinging:
But oral tradition, still true to its trust,
Her name by the hearth-stone is singing;
For never enshrined by the bard in his lay
Was a being more lovely than Margaret Gray.

Her father, a faithful old tenant, had died
On lands of Sir Thomas the Seer—
And the child who had sprung like a flower by his side,
Sole mourner, had followed his bier;
But Ercildoun's knight to the orphan was kind,
And watched like a parent the growth of her mind.

The wizard knew well that her mind was endowed
With sight mortal vision surpassing—
Now piercing the heart of oblivion's cloud,
The Past, in its depths, clearly glassing;
Anon sending glance through the curtain of dread
Behind which the realm of the Future lies spread.

He gave her a key to decipher dim scrolls,
With characters wild scribbled over;
And taught her dark words that would summon back souls
Of the dead round the living to hover:

335

Or oped, high discourse with his pupils to hold,
Old books of enchantment with clasps of bright gold.

The elf-queen had met her in green haunted dells,
When stars in the zenith are twinkling,
And time kept the tramp of her palfrey to bells,
At her bridle-rein merrily tinkling:
By Huntley Burn oft, in the gloaming, she strolled
Weird shapes, that were not of this earth, to behold.

One eve came true Thomas to Margaret's bower,
In this wise the maiden addressing:—
“No more will I visible be from this hour,
Save to those sight unearthly possessing;
But when I am seen at feast, funeral or fair,
Let the mortal who makes revelation beware!”

Long years came and passed, and the Rhymer's dread seat
Was vacant the Elidon tree under,
And oft would old friends by the ingle-side meet,
And talk of his absence in wonder:
Some thought that, afar from the dwellings of men,
He had died in some lone Highland forest or glen:

But others believed that in bright fairy land
The mighty magician was living—
That newness of life to worn heart and weak hand
Soft winds and pure waters were giving;
That back to the region of heather and pine
Would he come, unimpaired by old age or decline.

Astir was all Scotland! from mountain and moor,
With banner-folds streaming in air,
Proud lord and retainer, the wealthy and poor,
Thronged forth in their plaids to the fair;
Steeds, pricked by their riders, loud clattering made,
And, cheered by his clansmen, the bag-piper played.

336

Gay lasses with snoods from the border and hills
In holiday garb hurried thither,
With eyes like the crystal of rock-shaded rills,
And cheeks like the bells of the heather;
But fairest of all, in that goodly array,
Was the Lily of Bemerside, Margaret Gray.

While Ayr with a gathering host overflowed,
She marked with a look of delight
A white-bearded horseman who gallantly rode
On a mettlesome steed black as night,
And cried, forcing wildly her way through the throng,
“Oh, master! thy pupil hath mourned for thee long!”

Then, checking his courser, the brow of the seer
Grew dark through his locks long and frosted,
And making a sign with his hand to draw near,
Thus the lovely offender accosted:—
“By which of thine eyes was thy master descried?”
“With my left I behold thee,” the damsel replied.

One moment he gazed on the beautiful face,
In fondness upturned to his own,
As if anger at length to relenting gave place,
Then fixed grew his visage like stone:—
On the violet lid his cold finger he laid,
And extinguished forever the sight of the maid.

337

CAROLAN'S PROPHECY.

[_]

[It is related of Carolan Twalogh, the Irish Handel, that in his gayest mood he could not compose a planxty on a Miss Brett, the daughter of a noble house in the County of Sligo. One day, after a vain attempt to compose something in honor of the young lady, in a mixture of rage and grief he threw his clàrsach aside, and, addressing her mother in Irish, whispered:—“Madam, I have often, from my great respect to your family, attempted a planxty to celebrate your daughter's perfections, but to no purpose. Some evil genius hovers over me; there is not a string in my discordant harp that does not vibrate a melancholy sound—I fear she is not long for this world.” Tradition says that the event verified the prediction. See sketch of Carolan in the Edinburgh Encyclopedia.]

The castle hall is lighted—
Its roof with music rings,
For Carolan is sweeping
The clàrsach's quivering strings;
And catching inspiration
From faces fair around,
His voice is richer far than gush
Of instrumental sound.

Of Erin's banner, green and bright,
Of Tara's mighty kings,
Who never to invader knelt,
Exultingly he sings;
And on the glittering sands that edge
The blue and bellowing main,
Beneath the blade of Bryan falls
The yellow-bearded Dane.

The master touches other chords—
His brow is overcast—
And tears from his old, withered orbs
Are falling warm and fast:
In soul he looks on Athunrée,
Disastrous field of gore!
The glory of O'Conner's house
Expires to wake no more.

338

As died, in mournful echoings,
The wond'rous strain away,
Approving smile and word requite
The minstrel for his lay;
And by the hand of high-born maid
The golden cup was filled,
Commotion in a heart to hush
By grief too wildly thrilled.

When tuned to lighter airs of love
His harp of magic tone,
Quoth Carolan—“What bard will not
The sway of Beauty own?
Kind hostess, I will now compose
A planxty, promised long,
In honor of thy daughter fair,
Oh! matchless theme for song!”

A few preluding notes he woke,
So clear and passing sweet,
That, timing to the melody,
The heart of listener beat;
But when the white-haired bard began
His tributary lay,
The soul of music from the strings
Wild discord drove away.

Thrice, with the same result, his hand
Upon the chords he laid—
He turned the keys, but harsher sound
The trembling clàrsach made:
In honor of the mother, then,
A planxty he composed,
And perfect was the harmony
Until the strain was closed.

Then other ladies urged the bard
To celebrate their charms,

339

But he replied—“No rapture now
My fainting spirit warms;
By shadows from another world
My soul is clouded o'er—
Oh! would that I might never see
The light of morning more!”

“What gives a paleness to thy cheek,
Meet only for the dead—
What sorrow weighs upon thy heart?”
His noble hostess said:
The minstrel whispered in reply—
“The daughter of thy heart,
Before the flowers of summer-time
Are faded, will depart.”

Ere morning dawned, old Carolan
Went sadly on his way;
To bid green Erin's Flower farewell
He could not, would not stay;
But sought, ere vanished many days,
That lordly hall again,
And through its gateway, moving slow,
Defiled a funeral train.

340

A BRUMAL RHYME.

[“There never was a truer rhyme. Let us cast nothing away, for we may live to have need of such a verse.”]
Shakspeare.

Crossing the dreary wold
Speeds by a wild, weird form—
Below is the frozen mould,
Above the blackening storm;
And, hark! a chant—while the crinkling rime,
And swaying, groaning boughs keep time.

The flowers are in their graves—
The leaves lie dead around,
And the silver feet of waves
Are motionless and bound:
Not a bird flaps wing on the biting gale,
And the gray oaks glitter in frosty mail.

Over the wintry waste
Of many a ruined soul
Despair stalks onward, ice-encased,
While above the black clouds roll,
And mutters—“Peace is a blighted thing—
Not a bird of joy is on the wing!”

No beam of hope illumes
The darkly-frowning sky—
In pale and frozen tombs
The shapes of beauty lie,
And founts where Pleasure quaffed of yore,
Congealed to marble, flow no more.

341

LITTLE BESS.

[_]

[The subject of the following lines was born one bright day in the month of March. “The color of our lives,” says Hazlitt, “is woven into the fatal thread at our births: our original sins and our redeeming graces are infused into us; nor is the bond that confirms our destiny, ever cancelled.”]

Fitful gusts, o'ershadowed arch,
And chill rains belong to March:
But relaxed his visage sour—
Shot mild radiance from his eye,
And his lip forgot to sigh
When unclosed our youngest flower.

No wood-nymph, with kirtle green,
Tripping through the woods was seen;
But the landscape's look forlorn
To a golden smile gave place,
Lighting up earth's darkened face,
When my little Bess was born.

Eight brief moons have waxed and waned
Since our flock a fourth one gained
In this fairy of a girl,
With the lily's snow endowed,
Showing, when she laughs aloud,
Through rose-lips a gleam of pearl.

Like a sunbeam breaking through
Winter's pall of sable hue—
Or a moon-flash on the brine
When the blast no longer raves
Racing o'er its waste of waves,
Camest thou, sweet daughter mine!

342

Not a leaf the forest cheered,
Scarce one grass-blade had appeared,
But so lovely was the day
That the squirrel of the ground
Left his den with frolic bound,
Thinking of the reign of May.

Day of birth, so bright and warm,
In a month of cloud and storm,
Augurs that our little Bess
Was in mercy sent to light
Dreary sorrow's coming night
With a ray of happiness.

343

THE FORSAKEN.

SUGGESTED BY A PICTURE.

“Do any thing but love;
Or if thou lovest, and art a woman,
Hide thy love from him whom thou dost worship.”

She was the scion of a gentle race,
And wealth and beauty were her queenly dower;
Her form was fashioned in the mould of grace,
And many owned her love-inspiring power;—
On one alone, with breast devoid of guile,
The maiden flung the sunlight of her smile

Perchance some daughter of a brighter clime
Had fired his bosom with a quenchless flame;
Suspicion hinted that a life of crime
Was darkly ended by a death of shame;
And Hope no longer, to her trusting heart,
Could dreams of bliss and happiness impart.

The maiden stood, in bridal robes arrayed,
On a lone rock that overhung the wave;
The breeze of evening with her ringlets played,
And to her cheek a glow of beauty gave.
She knew within her breast, convulsed with pain,
That peace could never rear a shrine again.

The thunder rolled along the vaulted sky,
The murky cloud sent forth a pinion flashing,—
The sea-bird blended its appalling cry
With the wild music of the billow dashing,—
But trembled not her finely moulded form
While holding converse with the angry storm!

344

Her hollow cheek had lost its rose-like red,
A broken heart, she knew, could be healed never;
Far down, where Ocean sepulchres his dead,
She longed to still its fitful throbs forever,
And wildly thought her long-lost mariner
Would slumber sweetly side by side with her.

At times she called upon her absent lover,
But to her voice the winds and waves replied;
She knew that pain and sorrow would be over
By one wild plunge beneath the yeasty tide:
Her funeral dirge the tempest-spirit sung,—
Of death regardless, from the rock she sprung!

345

WHISPERINGS OF CONSCIENCE.

[_]

[“No more on me will fall the hues of sunset or the shades of evening—no more the sweet coolness of the twilight air—no more the vesper song of birds. Farewell, ye shady seats, and ye rich and hanging boughs—turf altars of the heart, and Druid groves of love! The dew of heaven and the breath of the fragrant earth may restore freshness to the flower, but they have no balm for the withered heart!”]

There are times when, kindred meeting,
Stern and gloomy I appear,
And each fond and joyous greeting
Falls unnoted on my ear.

In their songs I find no sweetness,
In their looks no sunshine warm,
And I turn away with loathing
From each fair and well-known form;

For my thoughts, attuned to sadness,
Dwell on dreams for ever flown,
And I leave the hall of gladness
For my chamber cold and lone!

Ghosts of precious moments wasted
Haunt the temple of my soul,
And deep voices of upbraiding
In mine ear alarum toll.

Then I wildly think how altered
Would have been my earthly lot
If my foot had never faltered,
If my heart had fainted not!

If, when counsel most I needed,
With my passions uncontrolled,
Warning whispers had been heeded
From loved lips now pale and cold.

346

On the sea of life benighted,
I have sought with careless oar
Traitor-fires by evil lighted
On the wreck-encumbered shore;

And though ruin frowned before me,
And my bark was torn and tossed,
While the bitter surf washed o'er me,
And black demons shouted “LOST!”

Yet nor wind nor wave I minded,
But, with Conscience hushed and scared,
And an eye by Pleasure blinded,
To Destruction's portal steered.

Oh! I am to madness driven
While the past I thus recall,
Knowing that the wrath of heaven
On the guilty head must fall!

347

A VOICE FROM GLEN-MARY.

Sweet Lady! when the glen I sought
That bears, and long will bear thy name,
Of thy sad history I thought,
Forgetful of a brighter fame;
The wild-bird singing in the tree,
Each rustling leaflet spoke of thee.

Thy cottage-home hath lost the light
That gladdened it in other hours;
Its vines are withered, and a blight
Hath fallen on thy once-loved flowers;
I crossed its threshold, and within
There was a gloom to-night akin.

Cold was the hearth, and on the wall
Gray web-work had the spider hung,
And solemn as a knell, the fall
Of feet through each apartment rung:
The south-wind sighed through open doors,
Lifting the dust from unswept floors.

The features of yon view remain;
The waves flow on, the mountains rise;
Dawn wakes, and twilight brings again
Her gentle dews, and star-lit skies;
But here no more will voice of thine
Fill air with song at day's decline!

Ah! nigh in soul perchance thou art,
Though far away thy grave is green,

348

For clung the tendrils of thy heart,
While living, to this lovely scene:
And slumbers here thy first-born child,
Within a tomb undrest and wild.

'T is not unmeet that shade of one,
So young and fair, through lawns like these
Should wander, when the day is done,
And burden with its plaint the breeze;
Or visit at lone midnight's hour
Glen-Mary's cot and wasted bower.

349

MUSINGS.

The fleeting hours, the fleeting hours,
They pass like dreams away—
Pale blight hangs on the nectar'd flowers
That opened yesterday—
The low wind like a mourner grieves
While shaking down their faded leaves.

Where is the laurelled son of Mars
A nation greeted yester morn,
The hero of an hundred wars
On his proud charger borne?
The tongue of chivalry is dumb—
The requiem was the muffled drum.

Where is the young, bewitching belle
Who dazzled yesterday the sight;
Whose matchless beauty from his cell
Might lure an anchorite?
Where are her thrilling pulse and lute?
The grave will answer—both are mute!

Where are the pale-browed heirs of thought—
The bard—the orator—the sage—
Who yesterday a wide world taught,
And dignified their age?
Their great ambitious hearts are cold,
And fellowship with dust they hold.

Then ask me not for false renown
To waste away the midnight oil—
Though grandeur and a gilded crown
Are the rewards of toil:

350

Pure jewels and the types of power,
What are they in the dying hour?

Or, rather urge me to forsake
The vanities that here have birth,
And, in the morn of being, break
Base bonds that bind to earth,
And bridge, while yet a thing of breath,
With trusting hope the gulf of death.

351

LAKE WYALUSING.

[_]

[This lake lies in a circular basin, on the top of a thickly wooded mountain in Northern Pennsylvania. Nothing in water scenery surpasses it in features of the picturesque.]

Joy like a wave o'erflowed my soul,
While looking on its basin round,
That fancy named a sparkling bowl
By hoop of fadeless emerald bound,
From which boon Nature's holy hand
Baptized the nymphs of mountain land.

It blushes in the morning's glow,
And glitters in the sunset ray,
When brooks that run far, far below
Have murmured out farewell to day:
The moonlight on its placid breast,
When dark the valley, loves to rest.

Wheeling in circles overhead,
The feathered king a war-scream gave;
His form, with pinion wide outspread
Was traced so clearly on the wave,
That seemingly its glass was stirred
By flappings of the gallant bird.

Nor far away were rocky shelves
With the soft moss of ages lined,
And seated there a row of elves
By moonlight would the poet find:
Fairies, from slumber in the shade
Waking with soft-voiced serenade.

352

The waters slept, by wind uncurled,
Encircled by a zone of green:
The reflex of some purer world
Within their radiant blue was seen—
I felt, while musing on the shore,
As if strong wings my soul upbore.

Lake, flashing in the mountain's crown!
Thought pictures thee some diamond bright—
That dawn had welcomed—fallen down
From the starred canopy of night;
Or chrysolite, by thunder rent
From Heaven's eternal battlement.

353

THE ROYAL PINE.

Three cheers for the Pine, the Royal Pine,
Throned high on the hill's green brow;
While ranks of trees, in the rushing breeze,
Below like vassals bow;
When the hue of wine, at day's decline
Bepaints the solemn west,
A golden crown on his brow falls down,
Though the vale in gloom is drest.

With a heated brow, beneath his bough
The red man oft hath lain,
Worn out with toil, while his antler'd spoil
On the velvet moss lay slain;
And beneath his shade the Seneca maid
Hath warbled her wood-land lay,
While braiding flowers, and counting the hours
That kept her chief away.

When winter reigns, and the river chains
With fetters chill and white,
In the cold thin air, with branches bare,
The tall oak pains the sight;
But, on the hill thy banner still
Flings out defiance high,
Though no tint of green in the glen is seen,
And the blast comes growling by.

Long life to the Pine, the voiceful Pine,
Who mourneth for the past,
When the morning breeze sweeps his emerald keys,
Or the fitful midnight blast;

354

My thoughts, when I hear, in moonlight clear,
His surge-like anthem rise,
Are of seers of eld who, on hill-tops, held
Communion with the skies.

Three cheers for the Pine, the Royal Pine!
Though lord of a region grim,
The tempest loud, and the eagle proud
Are friends who talk with him.
May he lift his head, by well-springs fed,
In sunshine and in shower,
And his plumage green by the bard be seen
While the gray old hills up-tower.

355

MY OWN DARK GENESEE.

They told me southern land could boast
Charms richer than mine own:
Sun, moon, and stars of brighter glow,
And winds of gentler tone;
And parting from each olden haunt,
Familiar rock and tree,
From that sweet vale I wandered far—
Washed by the Genesee.

I pined beneath a foreign sky,
Though birds, like harps in tune,
Lulled Winter on a couch of flowers
Clad in the garb of June.
In vain on reefs of coral broke
The glad waves of the sea;
For, like thy voice they sounded not,
My own dark Genesee!

When Christmas came, though round me grew
The lemon-tree and lime,
And the warm sky above me threw
The blue of summer-time;
I thought of my loved northern home,
And wished for wings to flee
Where frost-bound, between frozen banks,
Lay hushed the Genesee.

For the gray, mossed paternal roof
My throbbing bosom yearned,
And ere the flight of many moons
My steps I homeward turned;

356

My heart, to joy a stranger long,
Was tuned to rapture's key,
When ear the murmur heard once more
Of my own Genesee.

Ambition from the scenes of youth
May others lure away
To chase the phantom of renown
Throughout their little day;
I would not, for a palace proud
And slave of pliant knee,
Forsake a cabin in thy vale,
My own dark Genesee.

357

LAY OF A WANDERER.

A FLORIDIAN SCENE.

Where Pablo to the broad St. John
His dark and briny tribute pays,
The wild deer leads her dappled fawn
Of graceful limb and timid gaze;
Rich sunshine falls on wave and land,
The gull is screaming overhead,
And on a beach of whitened sand
Lie wreathy shells with lips of red.

The jessamine hangs golden flowers
On ancient oaks in moss arrayed,
And proudly the palmetto towers,
While mock-birds warble in the shade;
Mounds, built by mortal hand, are near,
Green from the summit to the base,
Where, buried with the bow and spear,
Rest tribes forgetful of the chase.

Cassada, nigh the ocean shore,
Is now a ruin wild and lone,
And on her battlements no more
Is banner waved or trumpet blown;
Those doughty cavaliers are gone
Who hurled defiance there to France,
While the bright waters of St. John
Reflected flash of sword and lance.

358

But when the light of dying day
Falls on the crumbling wrecks of time,
And the wan features of decay
Wear softened beauty like the clime,
My fancy summons from the shroud
The knights of old Castile again,
And charging thousands shout aloud—
“St. Jago strikes to-day for Spain!”

When mystic voices, on the breeze
That fans the ruling deep, sweep by,
The spirits of the Yemassees,
Who ruled the land of yore, seem nigh;
For mournful marks, around where stood
Their palm-roofed lodges, yet are seen,
And in the shadows of the wood
Their monumental mounds are green.

An old Spanish fort.

359

TO MY WIFE.

Mother of my children! listen
While the moon above is bright,
And the starry watchers glisten—
Jewels on the brow of night.
Thou hast waited, pale and lonely,
For my coming, late and long.
Oh! mine own thou art—mine only—
And the muse that prompts my song.

In my dreams angelic faces
Look on me, though far away;
Happy smiles and infant graces
Round soft lips and dimples play:
And my little flock they gather
Closely round my vacant chair,
With a yearning wish that father
Would come back their sports to share.

On the bosom of her mother,
Like a rose-bud, Florence lies,
Looking at her little brother,
With his large, blue, sparkling eyes:
Near, some book of story reading,
Sits my daughter, eldest-born,
And blithe Charlie by is speeding
With a laughing look like morn.

Oh! how fragile and uncertain
Were the hopes that once were ours,
But beyond life's sunset curtain
We will find unfading flowers.

360

Till that closing hour, together
We will wander hand in hand,
And, though fair or foul the weather,
Live and love, by sea and land.

While I know for me that nightly
Lifted is thy voice in prayer,
Beats my laboring heart more lightly,
And the landscape looks more fair:
Pray that I may soon caress thee,
While affection's accents flow,
Once more to my bosom press thee,
And celestial rapture know.

361

DANDELIONS.

Dandelions of the velvet lawn,
Golden brooches on the plaid of May;
Living tints of beauty ye have drawn
From the noontide of some cloudless day!

A prolific sisterhood are ye,
Blooming in the common paths we tread,
Giving lustre to the grassy lea,
Growing on the green mounds of the dead.

Tulips nod on longer, fairer stems;
Blue-bells swing more gracefully in air,
Roses boast far richer diadems—
Gayer dress the jewelled lilacs wear.

Wherefore then so dear are ye to one
Finding sweet romance no more in life,
Struggling on beneath a clouded sun,
Daily covered with the dust of strife?

Drinking gladness from the gentle rain,
Looking upward to yon concave blue—
Faded chaplets ye recall again,
Worn by May-time when my years were few:

When I plucked ye in my rural walks,
While the ground-bird framed her nest and sung;
Piping gayly on the hollow stalks,
Changing them to ringlets with my tongue.

When ye graced with yellow dots no more
Pastures old, through which I loved to stray,
Filmy globes of silver that ye bore,
With a breath I used to blow away.

362

Emblems were they of delusive schemes
Wildly shaped in boyhood by my brain,
Passing joys, and evanescent dreams,
Perished, never to revive again.

Some at rest beneath the turf of spring,
Dear to me in those enchanted hours,
Back with looks they wore in life, ye bring;
Back with shouts, and laughter wild, ye flowers!

363

THE MORNING STAR OF ANNESLEY.

[“The chamber, like all the other parts of the house, had a look of sadness and neglect; the flower-pots under the window, which once bloomed beneath the hand of Mary Chaworth, were overrun with weeds; and the piano which had once vibrated to her touch, and thrilled the heart of her stripling lover, was now unstrung and out of tune.”]—

Irving.

With pale, high brow Childe Harold oft
To this neglected chamber came,
And heard, in accents low and soft,
His first love syllable his name.

Beneath yon window, pots of flowers
Untended give their sweets to air,
That well repaid, in former hours,
With blush and fragrancy her care.

Yon instrument, unstrung and still,
Will chime no more with warbled words;
Her hand hath lost the witching skill
To wake its passion-breathing chords.

Where gifted Harold stood, I stand,
And view bright walks extending wide,
Where oft he wandered, hand-in-hand,
With her who should have been his bride.

And eloquence that hath no tongue,
Is breathing from yon antique wall,
For often hath it sweetly rung
With her light step and gleesome call.

The Poet-Lord of Newstead here
Drank love undying from her gaze—
Love that, in many an after year,
Gave mournful sweetness to his lays.

Where are they now?—the bard is tost
No longer on a stormy sea;
And death conceals, in hall of frost,
His “Morning Star of Annesley.”

Byron's name for Mary Chaworth.

364

A POET'S WISH.

Mine be a pretty country lass,
With soft transparency of cheek,
Through which, like red wine in a glass,
The blushes eloquently speak
Of charms that will outlive the rose
Worn proudly by the city belle,
When, full of vanity, she throws
Round burning hearts her spell.

Mine be the company of books,
And one fair girl to read my lay;
A smiling cot that overlooks
Some lone lake stretching far away,
Whereon my boat, with sail of white,
At times can wander from the strand,
While glad waves in a song unite
With low winds from the land.

To gird my dwelling I would spare
Old giants of the forest dim,
For I am one who cannot bear
The prostrate trunk and cloven limb;
In hunting vesture I would brace
My sinews on the hills at morn;
The red fox or the roe-buck chase
With hound and mellow horn.

When Glory lights her dazzling torch,
Peace vainly mourns her perished dove;
The breathings of ambition scorch
The flowers of innocence and love.
Let others mix in worldly strife,
Self-wasting meteors to shine;
The calm, sequestered walks of life,
Unvexed by storm, be mine!

365

THAT OLD SONG.

Sing on! I love that olden lay,
Though mournful are the notes and wild,
It drives the haunting fiend away—
It thrilled me when a child.
Long buried gold the past reveals—
Charmed by the magic of that strain,
My weary heart refreshment feels,
And I am young again.

Sing on! the land of shadows now
Hath raised its curtain dark and dim,
Back comes my sire with furrowed brow,
That smile belongs to him.
Each old, familiar word invokes
The phantoms of the pictured past,
And sighing through ancestral oaks,
I hear the midnight blast.

Sing on! for, borne on music's tide,
My soul floats back to other days—
From dust rise up the true and tried
To greet my yearning gaze:
And she, meek violet that grew
In rosy boyhood's Eden lost,
Springs up as if her eye of blue
Had never known the frost.

Sing on! sing on, entranced I hear,
While bloom once more earth's perished flowers;—
A mother warbled in mine ear
That song in other hours;
And when the sad refrain is breathed,
Her gentle spirit hovers nigh—
Fond arms are round the wanderer wreathed,
Kind voices make reply.

366

THE DOOMED ONE.

There is on that sweet young face
A dread but dazzling whiteness,
And in that eye of love I trace
A wild, unearthly brightness.
By faithless man betrayed,
The world seems dark before thee,
And soon, in hall of silence laid,
Will the green turf blossom o'er thee.

Thy voice is sadder now
Than the wind-harp's wail at even,
And victim of a broken vow,
Thine only hope is heaven.
Nor mineral of earth,
Nor balm of leaf or blossom
Can tune again to throb of mirth
The chords of thy torn bosom.

Old songs, the precious keys
To memory's golden treasures,
Have lost their magic power to please,
Though sang to touching measures.
By friendly lip in vain
Is soothing language spoken,
For ruined is the fine-wrought brain,
And thine o'er-tasked heart is broken.

Thy darkest doom, oh earth!
For that cold, base deceiver,
Who calls the star of affection forth,
Then dims its light forever—
And when the mortal goal
He reaches unforgiven,
For aye may his polluted soul
Feel the withering curse of heaven.

367

FOREST CAROL.

I breathe more free and deep
With my foot on the forest-ground,
When winds awake from sleep
The huge, old Titans round:
I love the organ's peal
In fanes upreared by art—
But nearer God I feel
In the green-wood's leafy heart.

To every bush a tongue
Is given by the breeze,
And a thousand harps seem hung
High on the mossy trees:—
From oak, and elm, and pine,
Comes whispering a voice,
Saying—“Thine ear incline,
Sad poet, and rejoice!”

The cloud forsakes my brow,
And grief's wild throb my soul,
While murmuring leaf and bough
Mock ocean's distant roll;
True time my pulses beat
To notes of joy and love,
With moss beneath my feet,
And the swinging boughs above.

The shade of woods I seek,
When tired of strife with men—
Old voices comfort speak
In thicket, glade and glen;
I love the organ's peal
In fanes upreared by art—
But nearer God I feel
In the green-wood's leafy heart.

368

MY STUDY.

I love the circuit of thy narrow bounds
While my pale lamp gives light,
And, unattended by tumultuous sounds,
Presides the holy night.

A quiet nook for reverie thou art
In the dim hour of shade,
When that wild, wondrous instrument, the heart,
Is lulled and tranquil made.

My books—old friends that know not frigid change—
When come the evil days,
Unfold their lettered treasures, rich and strange,
To my enamored gaze.

While folly wastes, in lust and midnight wine,
Manhood and moral health,
True wisdom seeketh jewels in the mine
Of intellectual wealth.

Haunt sacred to retirement and to thought!
At midnight deep and lone,
Within thy hallowed precincts I have caught
Gleams of that world unknown,

Where the soul harbors when this life is o'er,
And closed our war with time,
And the hushed belfry of the heart no more
Rings with a numbered chime.

369

THE DESERTED HALL.

To a mortal heart how humbling
Is a view of yon old hall,
Into dust and darkness crumbling,
While rude winds shake roof and wall.
Moss is round the casement spreading,
And no more the windows blaze
When the weary day is shedding
His last red and quivering rays.

Under the neglected arbor
Foxes in the night-time bark,
And the bat and spider harbor
In its chambers drear and dark.
Weeds, about the door-stone growing,
Whisper of decay and blight—
On the hearth no ember glowing
Sheds a warm and cheerful light.

Near the ruin is a river,
And the waves while flowing on,
From their lips of crystal, ever
Breathe that word of mourning—GONE!
Round the place old poplars cluster,
And the leaves give out strange tones
When the moon flings pallid lustre
On the roof and basement stones.

Saddened and deserted dwelling!
Of a wronged and broken heart,

370

While the dirge of hope is knelling,
Oh! a mournful type thou art!
Flowers of love, untimely perished,
In its barren realm lie waste,
Like thy garden-grounds once cherished
By the moulding hand of taste.

Creatures that haunt places lonely
In thy empty halls are bred,
And that HEART is peopled only
By the shadows of the dead.
As yon moon, with look subduing,
Lights the home of days gone by,
In that heart—a nobler ruin—
Sadly glimmers memory.

Suggested by a moon-lit view of a mansion in ruins upon the Susquehanna, at Owego.

TO AN INEBRIATE.

The price of kingdoms was the pearl
A queen dissolved in wine,
But thou art wasting in the cup
A gem of ray divine.
The deed of Egypt's daughter proud
Is foolish styled alone,
But thou art perpetrating crime
That fiends should blush to own.

God's glorious gift—the deathless soul,
Is lightly held by thee;
The brand of SLAVE is on thy brow,
Poor wretch! misnomer'd FREE.
Oh! wake thee from thy trance of sin,
And knock at mercy's door—
Dash down! dash down that hell-drugged bowl
And be a man once more.

371

FIR-CROFT.

Sweet Fir-Croft! nestling at the feet
Of uplands ever green,
When high the pulse of summer beat,
Before me spread thy scene.
Pines on the hill, like watchmen placed
Thy fields below to guard,
The background of a picture graced
That chained the glance of bard.

The deep-voiced Susquehanna through
The foreground swiftly rolled,
And sunlight on his bosom threw
A flood of molten gold;
A river of more varied charms
Wild wind hath never swept,
And in his bright, embracing arms
Full many an islet slept.

I looked upon thy fountain bright
That round a coolness flung,
And fancied that each beam of light
With radiant pearl was strung.
Brooks, welling forth from rocks up-piled,
Woke echoes on their way,
As if a thousand naiads wild
Were racing through the spray.

My blessing, Fir-Croft, on thee rest,
And on thy worthy lord!

372

May sorrow ne'er within his breast
Awake one jarring chord!
The dust of earth's great battle-ground
Dims not thy landscape fair,
And in thy quiet shades I found
A spell to conquer care

The wood-paths up thy mountain-side
That led to quiet bowers—
Thy meadows, laughing in a wide
Embroidery of flowers—
Thy rushing and romantic streams—
Each glen—each fairy knoll—
Will oft be visible in dreams
To bathe in bliss my soul.

The country-seat F. H. Pumpelly, Esq., upon the bank of the Susquehanna.

A CHARADE.

My First is often heard
By the lip of children spoken,
And we murmur out the word
When earth's dearest tie is broken.
My Second gives delight
To the desert pilgrim jaded,
In isles of verdure bright,
By the graceful palm o'ershaded.

My Whole to memory brings
One in the kirk-yard lying,
Whose wild and wailing strings
Woke melody undying:
A bard whose tender strain
The snooded maiden treasures,
While Norse-kings live again
In his more heroic measures

373

THE IRISH MOTHER.

“They shall hunger no more.”—
Revelation, vii. 16.

I heard the lament of a poor Irish mother,
As watch by the forms of the famished she kept;
The wan, wasted features of sister and brother
Were bathed by the drops she had uselessly wept:
Oh! sweet was her lay for the burden it bore—
“They shall hunger no more.”

While winter's rude wind through each cranny was sighing,
The last blackened crumb to my first-born I gave;
I opened my veins when my youngest was dying,
Aroused by a mother's wild instinct to save—
The lips of my darling are wet with the gore—
She will hunger no more.

Food flung by the fox-hunting lords of this nation,
With prodigal hand, to their hounds, would subdue
In many a hovel the pangs of starvation,
And thankfulness waken that pomp never knew:
Poor babes! I regret not that anguish is o'er—
Ye will hunger no more.

While famine the flesh on their bones was consuming,
It crazed me to hear their low moans night and day—
No brand on the desolate hearth-stone illuming
Their couches of cold, musty straw with its ray;
Now calmly they rest, side by side, on the floor—
“They shall hunger no more.”

374

Oh! dark is the cloud that impends over Britain!
The wrongs of the wretched make barren her soil:
That country with curses should ever be smitten
Where perishing Want is forbidden to toil—
Where Hunger kills more than disease or the sword,
And white handed Sloth finds a plentiful board.

EVERGREENS.

Come to the House of Prayer,
Where willing knees to Providence are bowed,
For earth is mantled in a snowy shroud,
And seems no longer fair;
And though we cannot view
The violet peeping from the velvet sod,
Maidens have decked the holy House of God
With wreaths of emerald hue

Sin-smitten mortals, come!
The green festoons that do the walls adorn—
Fresh as when watered by the dews of morn—
Are eloquent, though dumb;
For the leaf-laden bough
That Winter fades not with his frosty breath,
Is like the spirit, living on when death
Touches with ice the brow.

Come to the House of Prayer,
Poor human toilers in this world of strife—
Gaze on those emblems of eternal life,
And learn a lesson there;
For those green garlands tell
The dying Christian of a brighter shore,
Where blinding tears will dim the eye no more,
And shapes Angelic dwell.

375

THE WARNING.

[“The spirit of an ancient ancestor of the McLeans of Lochbury is heard to gallop along a stony bank, and then to ride thrice around the family residence ringing his fairy bridle, and thus intimating approaching calamity.”]—

Walter Scott.

The plaided Chief, with dog and gun
Strode forth from his castle old
When the first bright beams of the morning sun
Crowned the far-off hills with gold.
Through mist that wrapt the mountain-side
He tracked his dangerous way,
The red-deer, king of a desert wide!
In his heathery lair to slay;
But he came not back to his blushing bride,
At the clouded close of day.

When heavy night began to lower,
And western skies were dim,
She looked abroad from the highest tower,
With an earnest gaze for him:
Dishevelled was her golden hair,
Her visage wan of hue,
And listened long that lady fair
For short or shrill halloo—
But no sound came on the wafting air,
And the darkness deeper grew.

“Why comes he not? why, comes he not?”
The weary watcher said;
Then started back,—for the night-wind brought
A barb's impatient tread;
She knew by the ring of the bridle-rein,
And a wailing sad and low,

376

That the soul of a famous chieftain slain
In battle long ago,
From the “Silent Land” had been called again,
A messenger of woe.

Fear, bloodless fear, a hand of ice
Did on the lady lay,
For no mortal horseman galloped thrice
Around the castle gray;
And a horrid thrill through her bosom ran
While the blast this warning bore—
“Mourn! for the hounds of a hostile clan
Have drunk their fill of gore.”
Back to his home, a living man,
McLean returned no more.

AN AUTUMN THOUGHT.

Like the depths of the wood when October is cold,
By the sting of the frost turned to purple and gold,
Are the virtues of heart, sad and tender, that owe
All their beauty and brightness to sorrow and woe.

Like the pine on the mountain unchanged by the frost,
When the beech-tree and maple their verdure have lost,
Is the heart of a friend that is steadfast and true
When the tears of misfortune our pathway bedew.

377

WHEN THE WILD LOVE OF FAME.

When the wild love of fame, with its anguish and fever,
No more in my soul kindles withering fire,
And this sensitive bosom is pulseless for ever,
And wrapped are my limbs in their funeral attire,
Bear not my pale relics where thousands are sleeping
In clustering graves near the populous mart—
Where the dew-fall of eve the dark cypress is steeping,
And stones rise in pomp, hewn and polished by art.

Oh! bear my cold corse to the brow of the mountain,
Where cedar and pine groves may over me wave—
Where the day-god may fling from his luminous fountain
A blushing farewell, when he sets, on my grave;—
Where the scream of the panther, while darkness is reigning,
And the long, mournful howl of the wolf may be heard,
And night summon forth, while the sad moon is waning,
From oak-hollowed dwelling her anchorite bird

A tomb by the deer and the war-eagle haunted
Is meet for a lone one who hateth the crowd;—
A tomb where a dirge for the dead will be chanted
When lightnings flash death and the thunder is loud.
Some friend, from the heat of the stag-chase reposing,
While his indolent hounds flap their ears in the shade,
By the mossed rock of granite rude letters disclosing,
Will know the wild spot where the minstrel is laid.

University of Virginia Library

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

ODE.

EPODE I. a.

SOLOMON'S JUDGMENT.

SUGGESTED BY A PICTURE.

HEAD QUARTERS OF WASHINGTON,

WHEN NEW YORK WAS EVACUATED BY CLINTON.

JUDGMENT.

HUCKNALL TORKARD.

HEATHER BLOSSOMS.

THE NIGHT-BLOOMING CEREUS.

THE QUIET ARBOR

LAMENT FOR SUMMER.

AUTUMNAL MUSINGS.

THE OLD YEAR.

NEW-YEAR MUSINGS.

NEW YEAR FANCIES.

HYMN.

THE WITCH.

[FROM AN UNPUBLISHED TALE OF SHETLAND.]

THE MEMPHIAN MUMMY.

THE SEXTON OF TIME.

TRIUMPHS OF PEACE.

THE MIGHT OF SONG.

THE DEAD HUNTER.

BLAKE'S VISITANTS.

UNDINE.

THE LOST DAUGHTER.

BYRON'S FAREWELL.

THE TRIAD.

JACK'S BURIAL.

OUR PIONEERS.

THE OLD WHITE STORE.

TO TORQUATUS.

FAIR MARGARET

[A LEGEND OF THOMAS THE RHYMER.]

CAROLAN'S PROPHECY.

A BRUMAL RHYME.

LITTLE BESS.

THE FORSAKEN.

SUGGESTED BY A PICTURE.

WHISPERINGS OF CONSCIENCE.

A VOICE FROM GLEN-MARY.

MUSINGS.

LAKE WYALUSING.

THE ROYAL PINE.

MY OWN DARK GENESEE.

LAY OF A WANDERER.

A FLORIDIAN SCENE.

TO MY WIFE.

DANDELIONS.

THE MORNING STAR OF ANNESLEY.

A POET'S WISH.

THAT OLD SONG.

THE DOOMED ONE.

FOREST CAROL.

MY STUDY.

THE DESERTED HALL.

TO AN INEBRIATE.

FIR-CROFT.

A CHARADE.

THE IRISH MOTHER.

EVERGREENS.

THE WARNING.

AN AUTUMN THOUGHT.

WHEN THE WILD LOVE OF FAME.