Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

In vain the bard will ride on wings of fire,
And glowing fancy guide his flaming path,
In vain he wields the sabre of his wrath,
If lovely truth cannot a ray inspire;
The meteor dazzles in its gleaming ire,
And crimson havoc flies upon its trail,
But beauty smiles, and bids the planet hail!
That glows, but lights not vestal nature's pyre.
The bard may stand, like Nero, o'er the flame
That wrapt in ocean-blaze imperial Rome,
And strike his lyre to yelling myriads' doom,
But virtue, honour, execrate his name.
Though others stand on towering Helicon,
And flush in glorious lyric victory,
Religion, virtue, truth, are paths for me,
Though a vile molehill be the fane that's won.

“OH THAT THE DESERT WERE MY DWELLING PLACE.”

'T was thus of yore the Minstrel sung,
When wo was rankling in his breast,
But oh! extatic beauty flung
A veil o'er grief, and he was blest;
For me no ray of pleasure gleams,
No seraph smiles, no hope appears,
Dark, dark, lone Sorrow haunts my dreams,
And Misery blasts my orient years.

Oh! he who sighs had once a heart,
That beat responsive unto glee,
But Fate—ah! no—Man sped the dart—
Hope withered in its revelry:—
Affection wrung—the heart's deep core
Rent—cankered by misfortune's bane,—
The aspic's venom in each pore—
Who would not quit this scene of pain?

Caressed, deserted, lauded, curst—
Met with a smile, and then a sneer—
From friendship comes the rapier thrust,
And blooming love and faith are sear;
And fiends have long beset my path
In cherub-robes, but demon hue.
But virtue scorns their vaunted wrath,
And worth appals their covert view.

Time was, when hope flew smiling by,
When waved Love's pinions on the breeze,
When tranquil breathed the bright blue sky,
And rustled green the laurel-trees:
In sooth, then rung my roundelay,
O'er mead, and pure waves hyaline,
My descant then was blithe, but nay—
The contrast wrings this heart of mine!

Grief cries, our life's a bitter boon;
Love is the nuncio of despair,
Youth smiles in beauty—but too soon
Vengeance awakes from misery's lair!
The long dark lashes of the lid
Secrete an eye, whose glance is flame,
Deep, deep, within corroding, hid,
A spirit burns, no power can tame.

O'er mirth's unruffled lineament
Grief fiercely drives her redhot share,
Each feature's now by smiles unbent,
And ebon-throned sits fell despair;
Oh once as blithe as mountain-roe,
Bright skies were childhood's canopy,
Now tainted is each breeze with wo,
And scorching is my panoply.

Around the halo of my prime
Misfortune winds her sable shroud,
And brambles throng the mount I climb,
And threat'ning lowers the sulph'rous cloud;

The thunderstorm of Fate hath broke,
And blasted fortune's shrivelled reed,
And I have quailed beneath the stroke—
Nemesis will avenge the deed.

Beneath the ornate vestment's glow,
Lurk thoughts no mortal ear can learn,
Dark dash the lava floods of wo,
Ah! fiery billows roll and burn;
The mimic smile, like osprey's wing,
Hides the deep death-wound of our fate,
The dying swan doth music fling,
On Nature's ear inanimate!

The pensive reverie cannot soothe
Demoniac agony's dire thrill,
Nor pleasure fill the void of youth,
That loves to tread the greenwood hill;
The leafless wilderness of soul,
Where e'en hath died the shrubbery,
Sighs not o'er nature's direst dole,
But gazes in stern apathy.

In Naxian bowers, in Daphne's grove,
Where fairy nymphs in wanton mood,
Perfume the pinions of blithe Love,
And beauty charm'd the solitude,
On her velvet roseous bed,
Ariadne smiling lay;
While phantom cherub-minstrels sped,
In blooming coronals of bay.

But ah! an asp, with venom sting,
Unheeded stole upon her breast—
And now Elysium's withering,
The flowery mansion of the blest.
And thus, beneath a cold world's frown,
The sympathetic soul expires,
Nor ocean-flood could whelming drown
The hopeless heart's corroding fires.

O I have known our life's extremes,
Elate with rapture, merged in wo—
Lured by fancy's fitful beams,
And scorch'd by passion's fiery glow.
And I—what boots it now to tell
The woes that madden manhood's brain?
No tongue will notes of pleasure swell,
No hand assuage my writhing pain.

Life is a mighty masquerade,
Conflicting scene of varied woes;
We enter on the promenade,
And toil awhile, and greet the close;
The phantom sprites that cross our way,
The gilded visions that beguile,
The glittering pageants light that play,
Allure us on—forsake—and smile.

O, that the desert were my home!
Cerulean skies would list the tale
Of bitter grief—and I should roam
No more, nor hear lone sorrow's wail;

Then man no more would desecrate
His heaven-born powers in calumny,
And I no more indulge a hate,
That's nurtured now by misery.

The magic landscape, woodland green,
Romantic grove, and blushing mead,
Where nature winds her mantling screen,
And rural minstrel tunes his reed,
The chequered shade, the sylvan bower,
The green wood's tinted drapery,
Would soothe the minstrel's vigil hour,
And shield him with their tapestry.

Beneath the bright blue sky's arcade,
From flowery arbour, oh! my gaze
Would hang upon the stream's cascade,
Gemmed by the sun's long-lingering rays;
And when the twilight melts away,
The pensive-pleasing queen of night
In beauty, through the milky way,
Impels the charioteer of light.

On every crannied cliff sublime,
On every roscid emerald spray,
Below, the rill's symphonious chime,
The feathered minstrels wake their lay;
The lark aloft in hymnic strain,
With carols hails the orient sun,
And Philomela's starry reign
Brings spirits down, by music won.

And o'er yon isles, where dwell the blest,
Hesperian groves of myrtle spread,
And Tempe's vales, once fondly prest
By her, beneath whose wanton tread
All Nature sprung to living bloom,
Wane in their pride, compar'd with fields
Where glory gilds the reckless tomb,
And death a heav'nly pathway yields.

Alas! the thrills of rapture thwart
Their own devotion—wane, expire—
The ray that sports around the heart,
Is but an ignis-fatuus fire;
The mists, that fled at Phosphor's glow,
And melted from the ruby heaven,
Condense in clouds of noon, that throw
Their sheeted flame athwart the even.

Sweet on the jocund ear of youth,
Aerial strains of music float,
But spurns the Æolian harp their truth,
And feeling strikes a different note;
We quit the arena of dire strife,
But flee in Tisiphone's pall;
We writhe—and wring—and curse the life
For ever twined with sorrow's thrall.

So Fancy cheats us of our wo,
Perchance an hour of bitter pain,
But ah! she sends a rush-light glow
O'er cells, where gloom and darkness reign;

The desert void of love and soul,
Man cannot fill—by tempests driven,
We hope and quake, court peace, and roll,—
Nor cease until we rest in heaven.

CANZONET.

O tell me not of frantic hours,
That follow pleasure's tread;
Nor deck the amaranthine bowers,
For hearts, whose ardour's fled.

Display no more the festive mirth,
When darkness draws her veil,
For revel teems with hideous birth,
Blasphemous cries, diseases pale.

The hell-kite flaps her raven wing,
And fiends ride on the gale,
Infernal choirs exulting sing,
And tramp the burning vale.

The dome, where thousand ideots wait
To feast their souls with mimicry,
The scenes that worldly hearts dilate,
Dispand no luring charms for me.

The swelling notes that peal along
The vaulted roof of majesty,
The choir, that chant the sacred song,
And raise the soul to ecstasy;

The embowering groves of solitude,
Where crystal waters chiming flow,
Where the mind in pensive mood
Hangs on the scenes of heavenly glow;

Alone are joys that swell my breast,
And fan devotion's fire,
Charms, that blazon virtue's crest,
And tune an angel's lyre.

Like the vapours that expand
A limpid stream, o'er Afric's plain,
Deluding e'er the wretch, whose hand,
Grasps the shade, and finds it pain;

The fickle god of pleasure rears
The joyous cup of revelry,
But ah! the chalice swims with tears
Wrung from the eye of agony.

The barbed dart of black despair,
Twanged from the bow of madness,
Will pierce the bosom debonair,
And rankle in its sadness.

Then wish me, O, a lone recess,
Where scenes illusive fade,
Where smiles the seraph happiness,
Irradiate through the glade.

There contemplation will survey
The jasper fields of light,
And pleasure through the live-long day
Will wear her vestments bright.

There will we twine a living wreath
To parted friends—and be forgiven,
Imbibe the glowing Spirits' breath,
And make our bosom—heaven.

CANTICLE.

The Monarch Minstrel swept along his glory-breathing lyre,
And mute were peopled walks; above hung the celestial choir;
He mourned the apostate renegade, and Nature o'er his urn,
Amid the cypress grove, leaned musingly, a father's love to learn.

Zion and Hermon smiled with love, and beauty linger'd o'er—
Carmel hung list'ning—Sharon bloomed, and Siloe's pearly shore
Heard echo tread, with tinkling feet, the flowery dale of Palestine,
While the cherub throned Shechinah gleamed with dazzling rays divine.

But myrtle, cassia, willow-groves sigh to those strains no more,
For lone, and sad sounds pilgrim tread on Jordan's desert shore,

And started coils the aspic lord, as human shadows flit
Across the pathless plain, where wrath the fires of Justice lit.

Vengeance bared the gory arm, and prostrate lay the battlement,
The sovereign drove his burning car—hushed was revel's merriment—
Crackling roof and pillar fell, and ocean-flames were curled
Around Moriah's godlike fane, and glory thence was hurled.

The vollied blast in havoc raged—wide rolled the dark red flood—
Wild Famine stalked in frantic wrath, with all her maddened brood;
The quailing, shuddering yell arose loud o'er the tombless dead,
And, with his red neck clothed in thunder, shook the courser's tread.

Ages have fled in time's career, but Mockery's held her reign
O'er moss-grown walls, and sunken gate, o'er palace, and bright fane,
Where bitterns shriek mid ruins, and the fierce hyenas howl,
Where satyrs dance, and vultures teem, and hoots the solemn owl.

But hark! o'er Salem's broken shrines, o'er Judea's olive grove,
The slumbering lyre of ages breathes mellifluous notes of love;
And, O Columbia! thou art blest, who first awoke the strain
Thy zealous Angel will prolong o'er many a blooming plain.

Lord of bright mercy and of love! thy Chosen will return,
And from the mosque the minaret no more shall flaming burn;
Sinai's thunders will be hushed—the Iris of Salvation
Blend its hues with Judah's star, and Nature bow in adoration.

Angel, messenger, missionary.

RELIGION.

AN ALCAIC ODE.

Pure ray of love divine,
That brightly gilds the mirrored wave of time,
Deign in my breast to shine,
And tune the soul to harmony sublime!
In labyrinthine maze
The terrene feelings are for ever lost,
Till Piety's bright rays
Blazon the gloom, where mind's tumultuous tost.

The cloister's dreary cell,
Where Superstition kindles wanton fires,
And strikes the dirge, and knell
Of holy love, that thrills the warbling wires;
Or, gay saloons, where pride,
Displays with mirthful pomp its grand eclat,
Or, where the passions ride,
Like whirlwinds, when the murky tempests draw
Their clouds along the sky;
Or, domes, where mimic love, or, madness reign,
And wrought to ecstasy,
With fancied bliss, or agonizing pain,
Attention silent hangs
On every look, or gesture, sad or wild,
And feels fictitious pangs,
That rack the breast by sensual love beguiled;
Or, yet the splendid hall,
Where folly in her frolic pranks too light,
Swings through the mazy ball,
Nor leaves much myst'ry for the festal night;
Religion ne'er illumes.
Her flights are not the visions of a brain
Wrapt in monastic glooms,
Her steps ne'er press the flowers of the plain,
Where aspics throng the rose;
Her glory's not th' ephemeral charms that rise,
When midnight revel throws
His frantic mirth upon the darkling skies.
Sublimer is her path
Sketched with the pencil of celestial glow;
No wild and madd'ning wrath
Strews victims round and loves the purple flow;

Soft, placid, and serene,
Each feature seems the counterpart of Heav'n,
Though pensive be the mien,
By no tornado is the bosom riv'n.
The luring scenes of mirth
Suit not the tenor of her even way.
'Tis but the charms of worth
On which her smile will lingering delay;
For, hope, on golden wing,
And starry plumes, awaits her gentle hest
And faith doth incense bring
From bright Elysium radiate and blest.
To Israel's royal Bard,
In sorrow's thrall, her silvery shield she gave,
And waved the rich reward,
To deck his hoary head beyond the grave.
No pleasure is denied
That suits the soaring majesty of mind,
The futile vaunts of pride
The low-born, grovelling, and base senses bind;
When, 'mid the galaxy,
The starry host in blended splendour gleam,
The Heaven-directed eye
Sees worlds, that well a stainless soul beseem.
Thence she directs its flight
To where the Empyrean burns sublime,
Where angels, robed in light,
Wake high devotion with harmonious chime;
Or, pensive pleasures sweet
Attend the holy, Heaven-descended maid,
Where waning glories greet
The western skies, and beaming light has paid

Its full diurnal debt;
Can no mild pleasure soothe the aching breast,
Nor musing comfort yet,
When life's last billow laves the realm of rest?
Religion wears a smile—
'Tis not the laugh of bacchanalian swine,
Nor yet the leer of guile;
It is the sweet enchanting glow divine,
Cheerful, not airy swell
Of grateful joy to earth's indulgent King;
What tongue can ever tell
The fragrant charms such beams of mercy bring?
O! lovely ray of light
Pure from the bosom of the Lord supreme,
Irradiate my sight,
And warm my heart with fire of seraphim!
When mortal sorrows rise,
And blast the pleasures of a joyous heart,
O point me to yon skies,
Where holy joys eternal peace impart;
Nor let me grief repress,
'Till mind shall canker with the bane it bears,
'Till none remain to bless,
And none, whom blessing, would assuage my cares.
But, oh! when fortune smiles,
And earth is robed in most attractive hues,
Display sin's covert wiles,
And point the vision in its wand'ring views;
An asp 'neath roseous bed
Will shed its poison ere the sting is known,
And fancy oft has bred
Visions, for which e'en life could not atone,

Then, O Religion pure!
Be thou my balm when grief inflicts the wound,
Though sorrow will endure,
Mem'ry of worth will waft perfumes around.
When glowing days shall dawn,
Direct my vision to the source of good;
And when my thread is drawn,
May glory be my theme and praise my luscious food.

IDEAL BEAUTY.

Autumnal twilight lingered o'er
The pearly bed of ocean's stream,
And dimly flung around the shore
The dull expiring solar beam,
That dwelt awhile to mark the track
Of the full sun's refulgent glow,
While waning glories, rolling back,
Illumine all the vale below.

O how I love from towering height
To see the sunbeams melt away,
When jarring winds have sped their flight,
And lights, receding, dimly play
Upon the clear wave tranquilly;
Then mem'ry ushers long-lost dreams,
Clothes airy forms with many a die,
And spreads around extatic beams.

The heart and soul with love expand
When thought flies back on objects dear,
A soft delight, and beauty bland
Steal o'er the mind, and brightly wear
Vestures, that charm when fancy reigns,
And other seasons gilded throng;
Alas! bright reason never deigns
To sanction half the poet's song.

O incense breathed in every breeze,
When youth was sporting on with love,
The vista still can sadly please—
It oft recalls the absent dove,
That raised its soul-delighting strain,
Or warbled forth the tender sigh,
Soothing the heart of wo and pain
With pure and dulcet melody.

See! evening lingers on yon height,
And balmy breezes waft perfume
From flowers, that scent the robe of night,
And spread afar their glowing bloom,
To deck the woodland's vermeil bowers,
Where oft is heard the woodnote wild
Soft stealing o'er the vesper hours,
To charm the ear of fancy's child.

The ideal shades of beauty bring
Visions, that wo will oft beguile,
Dreams often wake the warbling string,
And shed an animated smile

O'er the sad mien, that woes depress;
But oh! my Marietta's voice
My saddest sorrows could repress,
And cause my senses to rejoice.

But where art thou? In skies serene;
The sapphire walks resound the tread
Of thy infantile foot—the scene
Throws a bright halo round the head
Of beauty, robed in living light;
Pellucid, amber streams along
O'er golden sands roll ever bright,
And murmur sweet their undersong.

Ah! can immortal spirits view,
From heaven's bespangled portals high,
The grovelling friends, who oft renew
The sad lament, and heave the sigh?
Can mind such rapt'rous converse hold,
And shed on earth an Eden's bloom,
Or, linger on those streets of gold,
Nor pass the vale, nor heed the tomb?

Alas! that monumental stone,
Amid the lonely-weeping willows,
Points out the path of life alone,
Through deep affliction's stormy billows.
Yet thou, my charm, my earthly heaven,
Nor sin, nor grief, nor sorrow knew,
To thee alone the palm was given,
Ere yet the battle-trumpet blew.

And now, when years have rolled away,
And the gale sighs o'er beauty's dust,
Imagination brings the day
When tender chords of love were burst;
On the dim mirrored wave of time
Affection pure delights to dwell,
And by the rill's symphonious chime
List airy strains, that rise and swell.

Yon levant crescent's silvery glow
Sheds a pure light along the sky,
And, as the curling breezes blow,
It gems the stream of emerald die;
And bright'ning, as the sheeted blaze
Fades on the western skies of blue,
The lunar beams through rack and haze
Glitter o'er gilded dales of dew.

So blithesome scenes of earthly bliss
Fly, marshalled in the train of time,
The melting shade receives a kiss,
And seeks afar a better clime;
While pensive mem'ry o'er the scene
Of blasted joys hangs, fondly dwelling,
And time and distance, prone to wean,
Roll on the tide, the current swelling.

Vivific phantoms cheer the soul,
As cresset lights the wand'rer's way,
The brightest beams of glory roll
From the dun scatt'ring clouds of day;

The glowing woodbine loves the shade,
And flings perfume through brambles rude,
And heaven's most holy esplanade
Is nature's silent solitude.

O sainted shade! the sacred haunt
Of cheerless hours thy grave shall be,
Nor shall my glowing spirit vaunt
A nobler guerdon oh! than thee,
A form to me beyond compare;
But oft thine ear will catch a groan,
Or, heart-fraught sigh for one so fair,
Or yet, a lyric benison.

Thou wert as calm as this mild eve,
When nature smiles to view her form,
Thou wert as pure as dews, that give
Effulgence to the rose of morn;
From purity thy spirit rose
To realms as sheen as yon bright sky,
Where glory o'er devotion throws
An etherial ecstasy.

O could I mount on wings sublime,
Or tread the wavy floods of light,
My lyre would charm the ear of time,
And warble strains of high delight;
Then would I seek some quiet shore
Sacred to thee and lovely Eve,
Then mirth should grate my soul no more,
And blighted love no longer grieve.

THELYPHTHORA.

She was the guerdon of a mother's years—
The lovely, artless, pure Elvira—tears
Unconscious when she sighed at some sad tale,
Bedewed the manly cheek—and when all wan and pale
Her mien, and red her brimming eye,
The adamantine heart would melt, and spy
The noiseless, but triumphal reign of love,
Whose sway, unable to repel, it did approve.
The extatic flame through each wild trembling nerve
Wrought thrills of rapture, until nought could swerve
The revelling, abstracted gaze—raptured thought
Would sketch in fancy all that charms, but ought
Of its creation, like the crescent's beams
Before the full meridian sun, whose gleams
Illume earth, was lost in bright reality.
On earth a paragon—I saw the nymph
Glide, like the cygnet on translucent lymph;
Or, like a Naiad on the crystal lake,
While from the coral wave each pearly flake
Was glittering in the sunbeams: o'er the lawn
Of roseate flowers, Aurora of the dawn;
Love and the graces chased her airy tread,
And drew their radiance from her deep-blue eye;
Remorseless guile and sensual flatt'rers fled
Her pure cherubic presence, destiny
Had thrown her panoply around her—worth
And innocence, the rather, mused, that all
In man was nature's fairest, noblest birth;

And mortals, like herself, above the thrall
Of reckless and lascivious mirth; yet
Frantic pleasure lingered around her path,
And laid her toils illusive—and beset
The guileless victim with phrenetic wrath;
The viper, unknown, near her bosom lay,
And flung its baneful poison in the heart
Of youth, and innocence and beauty—yea
In the deep core fell misery's barbed dart.

A magic charm enthroned her marble brow,
And raven ringlets, o'er her neck of snow,
Waved in their pride, like aerial fays,
Diana's train in Daphne, whose chaste lays,
Symphonious, breathed the notes of love; she trod
The smiling mead with winning grace—the sod
Shed forth an exquisite perfume beneath
Her dew bespangled foot—and her pure breath
Lent auxiliar fragrance to the breeze of morn;
And O, the damask-rose upon its thorn
Spread not to nature more attractive hues,
Than all her blending charms; Arcadian dews
Fell not more light, nor brighter gilded fields
Where Cytherea roved; honied Hybla yields
Not richer stores; but unobtrusive souls
Sway voiceless in their sphere; the amulet controls
Stern destiny, yet lies beneath the vest,
Whose varied folds enshroud the Druid's breast;
The massive wheels of empire roll, and earth
Obeys the viewless power that guides; their birth
The glorious energies of time and light,
Of worlds, and systems, hierarchy bright,

And sentient animation, owe to Him,
Who dwells in majesty, but far and dim,
Above idea, in unrecounted state;
Yet whose least nod is the decree of Fate.

She loved the bowering arbour, and would gaze
From the flower-twined lattice, when the rays
Of noon delicious grottos crowned, and played
With fervour o'er the full tapestried shade;
And she would catch the last long-lingering beams
Of solar glory, and in waking dreams
With measured, solemn pace, through Paradise
Would rove, enamoured of the laughing skies,
Herself as bright and pure; and swelling strains
Of minstrelsy came floating o'er the plains,
When the gay songsters of the grove did wing
Their bower-ward flight, and dulcet carols sing
Amid the tufted blossoms of the grot,
Nor leave on the parterre a tainting blot.
In sooth, she was a lovely nymph—and wore
A heart, that would beseem a brighter shore,
Where whelming billows break not—and pure truth
And loveliness arrayed the mind of youth
With blissful charms—but forms of earthly mould
Attract to ruin—the fair flower, unrolled,
Too oft is shivered by the ruthless blast—
Nor doth it, like the mimosa twined fast
With every fibre round the unbending stalk,
Shield its own glory, when the tempests walk
Upon the loud tornado; to repel
The dire assault, the harbinger of hell,

The soulless libertine; religion's shield
Must hang around the virgin—she must wield
The dread falchion of virtue—nor despair
If hell's unpeopled, and the tainted air
Is loaded with exulting demons—the hand
Of faith will send the fell, but pow'rless band,
With fury back to their own dungeon—there
To writhe in tenfold hotter flames—and where,
Nor worm shall cease to gnaw, nor fires to burn,
Stern justice doomed their mansion, past return
To glory and to life. Alas! the soul
Of sweet Elvira, formed though in the mould
Of heaven, deigned not piety's control.
She had been nursed in virtue,—had unrolled
The volume graved by Deity—but the wave
Of cool Bethesda had ne'er laved her heart;
And she found no warm bosom for a grave,
But one,—cold,—drear,—forsaken,—far apart.

She loved and was beloved—disease obeyed
Her lenient hand; as bending o'er she stood,
Like some bright angel of cherubic grade,
Heaven's messenger of love to man, the mood
Of feverish, and insensate madness fled,
And quiet sleep, a banquet to the frame
Tortured and scorched, o'er wearied senses sped;
A mother's benison upon the name
Of her attendant child oft caught her ear,
And at each start, and groan, she would attend
The reckless, restless sleeper, and would wear
An unruffling softness as she did bend

O'er her; while the full crystal tear her eye
In sweet, heavenly sympathy bedewed;
And when, with a long-drawn, and heart-fraught sigh,
The parent awoke, and her slow pulse shewed,
The fond caress, and glowing fervour shed
A dazzling beauty o'er each feature bright
With an extatic passion from heaven bred;
And sketched the picture of a child's delight.

She was the portraiture of all that lives,
And banquets in the warmest heart—but charms
All unadorned, and by herself unprized,
For mind vaunts not fair clay—but rather strives
To shield its powers, had flung (alas! love warms
But cankers oft the heart, that is surprized,
And stung to madness, unappeased but by
The ruin of fair name and chastened worth;
For the fell simoom is the lustful eye,
And irreligion teems with stygian birth;)
A fatal fascination round her, and
Engendered deep infernal stores of wrath.
The dread hour came—reason fell—mis'ry's brand
Pierced the heart's recess—and across her path
Flew the red lightning—she was desolate.
The fairest flowers are soonest blighted—chaste
Woman's honour falls—and dies for aye—fate
Drops the black curtain—and the scene is past.

TO MYRRHA.

O dost thou seek to know why mirth
Harsh grates upon my soul—
Dost fondly ask, why joyous earth,
And all its charms, like vapours roll?

Perchance thou'st seen the wand'rer tread
O'er lawns, where flowers embalm the gale,
While caustic lightnings vengeance shed,
Deep thunders burst and woodlands wail.

The cresset gleams through forests far,
But points the startled pilgrim's way
O'er marshes, fens, and thorns, that war
With every step towards safety's ray.

Dost think, my love, the wanderer stoops
To cull the flowers while terrors fly,
As the gaunt vulture rapid swoops
With fury to his revelry?

Toils he to weave a bridal wreath,
Twines he the amorous gay festoon,
While o'er the nuptial couch stern death
Terrific bends, and blights his boon?

Alas! where nature dictates gives,
Wisdom and truth attend our path;
Where reckless, wanton pleasure strives
With heaven, burst the bolts of wrath.

The maudlin hall, the sportive dance,
Blasphemous jeer, ignoble vaunt,
Before him spread a dire expanse,
Whose mandates high his wild soul daunt.

Cheered by the light, for errors sad,
The distant rays e'er fire his eye,
Till, veiled in raptures ever glad,
Hope blooms in bright reality.

The breathings of the ardent soul
To brighter worlds are given,
Where purest streams of glory roll
Amid the golden walks of heaven.

THE GRECIAN CROSS.

“Et a chi ferma in contra i suoi vestigi,
Per lui del corso tuo la fama aggiunge.”—
Tasso.

From Pyle's proud brow the bright banner waves,
And Freedom her crest in Thermopylæ rears,
And silver-tinged Salamis the battlement laves,
Where the Genius of Glory the red panoply wears,
Whose sheeny effulgence, mid battle and war,
Shed a glittering halo round the patriot's path;
While cuirass and morion, from the thunderer's car,
Shot the flames of destruction o'er the dread falchion's wrath.

The green-turbaned Emir sheaths his ataghatan,
For the crescent is hurled from the glory-crowned arch,
And dark frowning Destiny 'neath her imperial ban
Hath laid Paynim prowess in victorious march;
The minaret shivers on the proud trophied mosque,
O'er fragile Al-Sirat

Al-Sirat—the bridge that, in Mahommedan Pneumatology, leads to Paradise.

rings the votaries' tread
Of the prophet's dark Houris,—they leave the Kiosk
The gory symar

Symar—a shroud.

of the Mussulmaun dead.

O Freedom her Sparta, 'mid Thracia's drear wild,
With human-girt battlements of victory builds,
And her lone craggy mountains, in majesty piled,
Rear a monument to shades, that glory's beam gilds,
And will blazon, when pyramids, where diadems rust,
Shall scatter their fragments, and unhallowed be trod;
But the laurel-wreathed warrior from his prison will burst
O'er the death-circled field, and the blood-reeking sod.

The fierce Janizar wields his powerless brand,
And his false comboloio

Comboloio—rosary.

cons the desp'rate vizier
And in vain rings the tophaike

Tophaike—musket.

o'er ocean and strand,
For dim is the vision when the bright banner's near;
In the harem no more dark-haired almas

Almas—the beauties of the Seraglio.

give zest
To the vine-crowned board of Miramolin supreme,
The usher Meuzzin cries amaun to the blest,
And red are the fires that round revelry gleam.

But fays, fauns, and dryads on Peneus play,
And age-slumb'ring Tempe awakens again
In renovate bloom, when the lyre's magic lay
Breathes the wild tones of freedom, and the conqueror's strain;
Rich Arcadia smiles, and the Cyclades spread
Their bright golden wings round the clime of renown,
And Hymettus his sweet honied treasures will shed
O'er Morea, ransomed Grecia's glory and crown.

O'er the tombs of her tyrants the bright cross shall wave,
O'er the Dey's shroudless corse the armada sails,
O'er Moslem destruction the pæan of the brave
Shall be echoed by Sirocco, when it mournfully wails
Mid grandeur's drear ruins; but Astræa resumes
Her untrophied mansion, and her wand will control.
For the bright Star of Judah the long night illumes,
And the sunbeams of glory cheer the ethnical soul.

THRENODY.

Who has not known in being's lonely hour
An aching void of pleasure and of soul?
When friendship, love, and beauty lose their charms,
And dark creation's scanned with baleful eye;
When joy, or grief, or love, or hate, is lost

In the mind's starless desolation; when
Edens odoriferous shed unprized perfume,
And all the beauty-crowned habitants seem
Ruin's pestiferous harpies; when clouds
Of blackness shroud the empyreal throne
Enamelled but with scathing fires of wrath.

Balm is shed on adamant, for the soul
Shrinks from perception—unallured, unwrought
By all that's lovely, to unveil the gloom
Of its mis'ry terrible—dark, dormant,
Desolate, as slumbering chaos, ere
Creation's choral hymn, when raven time
Spread his fleet pinions to the pauseless blast,
Awoke the emulgent empyreuma,
And, with ethereal worth, and symmetry,
Buried volcanic fires, whose quenchless flames
Pour hottest lava o'er the hopeless breast.

Can ought, decked in the world's habiliments,
Awake, and renovate, or bright beams shed
Through the drear palace of the sunless soul?
Pleasure! assay thy vaunted magic powers,
Proclaim thine orgies bacchanal, and wear
The veilless robes of mirth; no chalice,
Brimming with luxurious bane, forbear;
Hold grasping dalliance with each wanton form
That flits across thy path, and oh! invoke
The sable shield of hell to consecrate
Thy hall, and hang a dreadless battlement
Around thee! The heart is lone, sick, and sad,
Amid the full hilarity of mirth;

The flushed cheek, and red eyeball's glare, unlike
The rosy-winged morn, are but the fires
That canopy the thunderbolt—portend
The death-encircled tornado, and shroud
The daring, and heroic wanderer.

Descend, Nemesis, blighted honour shield,
Avenge thy votary, and in crimson gore
Unstain polluted dignity; sabres
Flash in battle's glory, and gild the shrine
Of a proud nation's grandeur; and the din
Of havoc is unheeded, when the world
Derives her freedom from ensanguined fields;
But, when the hands, that fondly clasped in youth,
Wield demons' falchions; when the bosoms,
That throbbed with fondest love, are bared to dye
The gory shaft; when the once mingling breath
Of friendship taints the impassioned fury.
Of unhallowed wrath; indignation walks
The welkin, deep and endless shame attends
The bloodhound—heaven and earth's anathema.

O sapient reason! from thy earth-girt throne
Wield the imperious sceptre of dominion,
And recall the golden visions of the pride,
And dignity of man, that scorns to crouch,
And stoop to morbid mental gloom: paint scenes
That stretch beyond the future's sable veil
With glowing fancy's crayon, and awake
The soul unconscious of primeval worth,
Can fitful rays through the deep dungeon's grate

Illume the darkness of the felon's cell?
Or will it rather point the straining eye
To solitude forlorn, and visible?

Rise, O fancy! wave thine airy pinions!
Enamoured graces float along thy track;
Love sheds emollient powers, and o'er the mind
Holds sway unrivalled; lo! the heart dilates,
The soul, enchanted, lights the lowering gloom,
And lucid splendour glows upon the mien.
Alas! the evanescent, and ephem'ral glare
Was but the flash, that lit the dun, dark night,
Which lowers the deeper for the gilded guile.
Strike, O Music, heaven-descended maid!
The thrilling wires of the symphonious lyre,
Wake the soul's celestial harmonies, and thrill
Each trembling fibre, and responsive nerve,
Till pealing anthems vaulted roofs rebound,
And e'en the walls seem bending o'er to hear.
Like fabled ethnic libertines, who stand
Immerged in floods, that lave the sacred shore,
And view the embowering groves, and hear the choir
Angelic tune their golden lyres, and raise
Their heavenly notes till the empyrean rings
With melody ethereal, and pæans grand,
But ne'er can mingle with the votive throng;
So sinks the heart, whose youthful accents breathed
Philanthropy and sweet adoration
Unmingled with a thought unholy, or
Unheeding, to the Sovereign of all worlds;
But mangled by the wretch, whose impious name

Shall live in infamy, or forgotten sink
To its own native nothingness, each core
Is petrified, and made the dread abode
Of dissocial, hopeless, rayless misery.
The beauty tunes her harp, the bard his lyre
Of pleasure, and the hero winds the trump
Of glory—not for him, if pleased in life,
Most happy with the muse of his sad strains,
With misery fraught, and not misanthropy.
Nor wealth, nor pomp, nor power, a moment gild
Of life's delirious turmoil; mind toils,
Hearts freeze, hands grasp, love flies, and worth expires;
Still the insatiate thirst's unslaked for gold.
Some human souls are an odious compound
Of clay and foul corruption; and the flame
Of holiness lives and burns like the torch
In hydrogen; the heartless recusant,
Who knows no God but self, no charm but earth,
No breeze propitious, but whose pinions waft
The treasures of a world to him, enjoys
His little day—and dies—and leaves a gilded curse
Behind him. Then be his pathway mine,
When the soul divests itself of being,
And clay reigns empress over kindred worms.

Come philosophic wisdom, then, unfurl
Thy sable vestments, and unroll thy lore,
And loose thy learned stole, and soothe the wretch,
Whose joys are blasted by a graceless world—
“Stem mountain billows when the lurid sky
And quaking earth are blending—steer thy bark

In the rude tempest's wake, and hope for peace,”
Is all the solace Pallas yields to man.

But lo! on Zion-hill a banner waves,
And radiant glories beam, and bliss-crowned choir
Invoke the effulgent Deity, and wear
The jewelled diadems of paradise,
And wave the embossed censer of perfume,
And tune the hallowed cymbal to his praise.
And there the pilgrims of earth's troublous way
Shout their triumphal hymn—the anthem high
Of pure, unsullied, grand, unbondaged state.
Faith's halcyon and undazzled mien shall glow
In full fruition—Hope, on golden wings,
Shall mingle with the lauding hosts around
Jehovah's veilless throne, where Messiah
With mien extatic and benign, shall reign
In majesty and love, through boundless space.
For earth religion has descended, crowned
With the unseen glory of the Being
Whose dazzling mien was veiled in darkness erst
On high; she is our guardian angel
O'er this vast, trackless, desart of despair;
She heals the wound, where rankle sorrow's shafts,
And o'er the heart pours Gilead's sacred balm.

HYMN.

Ere creation heard thy mandate,
And vast spheres with love were beaming,
Ere rays of glory from thy state
Along the concave blue were gleaming,

Ere startled chaos heard the sound
Of harps, that did his cell disclose,
Thou wert supreme, unseen, unbound,
Ψυχη κοσμου, Ζωη, Φως.

Ψυχη κοσμου, Ζωη, Φως. Psuche kosmou, Zoe, Phos. Anglice—O Thou, the Soul, Life, Light of the World.

Grandeur throned thine awful brow,
Mercy waved her golden wand,
As mingle fires on thy arched bow,
With mellow, tinted beauties bland;
Pomp, and power, and glory beam
O'er thy mien, where pity throws
A veil to hide the fiery gleam—
Ψυχη κοσμου, Ζωη, Φως.

Upon thy spirit-cinctured throne,
Or, veiled by bright-winged cherubim,
Where hyssop-sprinkled lambs atone,
And glory's rays o'er temples gleam:
Or, in the holiest solitude,
Where the balmy light breeze blows—
There is thy empire, supreme good,
Ψυχη κοσμου, Ζωη, Φως.

The viewless heaven is thy abode,
But thy breath pervades all spheres,
Insensate nature worships God,
And veils her mien when he appears;
When the skies, like vapours, rolling
Unfold the dome, where glory glows,
Thou shalt be, though knells are tolling—
Ουρανον Ψυχη, Ζωη, Φως.

Ουρανον instead of Ουρανου—heaven.

FAREWELL.

The refluent sun flung his mantle of gold
O'er childhood's cloud-wrapt mountain,
And his bright tinged full tapestry rolled
O'er the crystal chiming fountain;
And there when the green waving meadows expanded
Beneath the fond eye, and the dell,
Where the rose, vermillion, and woodbine were banded,
Echo caught our last, long farewell!

And its tones seemed the requiem of all that was fair,
The notes of the funeral dirge,
The shriek of the dying that had loaded the air,
When had broken the reef-mounting surge;
O! how mutely we hung on the scenes that were glowing
With the tints of our magical day!
And the rill, where we sported in youth, was flowing,
And tinkling the sorrowful lay.

Ere the last fond grasp was relinquished for ever,
The pale crescent gleamed in the sky,
And silent we sat in the high bower, our hearts could not sever,
When the breeze blew summoning by;
'Twas the storm's shivering blast to the dew-spangled flower,
And it bore the fell angel of death,
But the fleet youth hath gone from the bright mountain bower,
And is wafted by Boreas' breath.

He has gone to the land where his hand will grasp
The rose of the tropical grove,
He has gone to the land, where his prize he will clasp
To his breast, but ah! not his true love;
O Immortal! enshield him from a merciless world,
And his sails with calm breezes swell;
Let not his proud soul from dominion be hurled—
Heaven's blessings attend thee—farewell!

EUTHANASIA.

The blushing lily droops in vaunted hour,
And folds its silken drapery beneath
The effulgent sunbeams, but e'en in death
Sheds perfumed incense o'er the woodland bower.
The love-lorn nightingale asserts her power
Of charming nature, when the blackest sky
Enshrouds the world, and forked flashes fly
Athwart the heavens, and shuddering terrors lower.
The swan floats reckless on the crystal lake,
And rears her downy arched neck, and sings
Most musical when each spread pinion flings
The crimson fluid on the pearly flake;
So lies the breathless corse, while yet the flush
Of beauty mantles where the shrouding haze
Of dissolution, and death's amel glaze
Are mingled with the bright and virgin blush

That beamed, the herald of immortal bliss.
A placid smile o'er each fair lineament
Like weeping foliage of the willow bent
O'er the cerulean limpid stream, to kiss
The silvan rill, that chimes a mournful lay,
Glows o'er the ashen cheek, as if the fire
Ethereal, bright, and listless to expire,
Diffusive beams of heaven had shed through clay,
That once had been its loved, and gilded dome.
The lambent glory of the unflown soul,
Enamoured of its fane, sought not the goal
Of heaven, but spread its golden wings to roam
Around its death-cold tenement of fair,
Unearthly beauty; as the melting glow
Of animation fled the cheek of snow,
Poised on the pinions of the viewless air,
The soul from its own full radiance flung
A ruby mantle o'er the pallid mien,
And furled its pinions to resume unseen
Its wonted empire, but the Sovereign hung
His signal banner on the welkin's wing,
And called the mundane recreant away;
Slow sunk the sunbeams of the parting day,
And ling'ring, lengthening, they die, and fling
Their glories e'en on darkness' raven reign,
Till not a bright ray lingers in the road
Of life's last light, the emblem dim of God—
But all is merged in heaven's effulgent train.

ODE TO EVENING.

Yon dim red splendour o'er the wavy flood,
Of mingling hues, proclaims the god of day
His bright, effulgent race
In majesty has run.

Lo! varied dies in sheeny beauty glow,
And blend in one harmonious symphony,—
For viewless angels strike
Their golden wires to laud

The God of nature, from their radiant thrones
In every orb, that in the concave hangs;
And all the glowing blaze
Is but a ray of heavenly fire.

But dim gleams glory o'er the melting pride
Of solar pageantry, and night resumes
Her dusky car, and sways
In Cynthia's silver glow.

How pensive-sweet, chaste eve, beneath the gleam
Of constellations pendant on the sky,
To muse on this lone cliff,
Dark frowning o'er the wave

Of yon glassed crystal lake, where lunar rays
To fancy's frenzied eye enamel forms
We loved, ere wo had wrought
Affection into hate.

Silence, with downy footstep, treads her fane,
Save where the owlet tunes his dreary note
Resounding through the dells,
And distant mountain caves;

Or gloomy bat, that flits on leathern wing,
Or beetle, rushing on the reign of night
From darkling, moss-strewn cells,
Enjoy their destined hour.

The lucent field of pure and waveless lymph,
Pencilled with beauty's soft and blushing tints,
Reflects the solitary's mien,
Where pleasure reigned of yore.

So, raptured friendship, heaven's saturnian boon,
Responds the ardent energies of souls,
By chords of virtue joined
For earth—for time—for bliss.

I love thee, night, raised on thine ebon car,
But beauty lingers round thy hallowed queen,
And, from the woodland hill,
Fans the sweet, noiseless vale;

And round the hamlet, veiled with myrtle groves,
Rustles with Zephyr, when on dewy wings,
He perfumed Flora woos,
And leads the hours with pride.

Love reigns unrivalled in yon noiseless dale,
And mingles heaven with earth's illusive charm
Unknown to envy, hate,
Fell ruin, and his train.

Sleep on yon rural, weary eyelids dwells,
Like the wild cygnet on its breast of down,—
No phantom yields the joys,
That flow from nature's breast.

O soothing, Eve, are thy sequestered scenes,
Where placid peace, and thrilling love unite,
And smiles unearthly blend
With being's seraph gaze.

While spring with lilies scents thy blushing robe,
While summer spreads the wide green-bosomed lawn,
While golden autumn smiles,
And iron winter reigns;

So long, chaste Eve, will I admire thy sway,
And chant thy pæan to the balmy breeze,
And breathe the tale of love
To man—to human kind.

NEPENTHE.

She was a miniature of loveliness.
The glow, and flush of youth and beauty hung

A veil of deep carnation o'er her mien,
And o'er her neck, in gay profusion, fell
Her auburn tresses loose from their egrette.
Her full dark eye shot light and life around,
And Love amid its beams with beauty reigned.
Oft, ere the mists, that cinctured mountain's height,
Melted 'neath sunbeams red from Phœbus' car,
She sought the lone lagoon, where Venus flung
Her virgin blushes o'er the crystal wave;
And there, as nature o'er the mead unrolled
The heaven-graved volume of exhaustless lore,
Calm Contemplation, that celestial nymph,
Whose silent eye beams glory's lambent fire,
Hung on the vault, that spans the pale blue skies,
And gazed, not as the sceptic's eyeballs roll
O'er vacancy, but on the countless gems
That gleam along the bright aerial dales,
Where nature's ardent amateur imbibes
Ethereal fervour, and celestial worth.
Oh! wrapt to ecstacy, in abstraction lost
To earth's rude turmoil, and collisions dire,
She sat, like rich Idallia's queen amid
The flowery groves of Tempe, where Peneus
Wafted on his wave the fragrant odours
Of a godlike feast; but unlike the queen
Of love and beauty, unallured by charms,
Of sensual mould, her angelic soul
Shed forth its notes responsive to the harps
Of spotless, glory veiled seraphic choirs.
Each sound of earth was hushed to grim repose,
Save where the odour-breathing breeze on light

And silvery pinions rustled mid the groves,
Where the lone-musing melancholy bird
Of silence poured its dulcet music forth
To the immortal Sovereign of the spheres;
Whose winning notes through raven night's expanse
Floated on zephyr's soft and dewy wings
Then would she waken from her reverie
Of realms unearthly, and hang on the strain,
Which amorous echo, through each lonely glen,
And dell, and grotto, wafted with delight.
And when sweet Philomel had sung her last
Exulting vigil hymn, the soaring lark
Caught its full echo for her matin song,
And shed her choral carols through the skies;
While beauty's voice the lauding chorus raised
And then Aurora flung her farewell beams
Athwart the sky; and golden-crested morn
Glittered with splendour o'er the roscid vales.
She loved this glorious solitude, and trod,
With downy footstep, the extatic grove,
Reckless, her marble brow, and tresses bright
Gave full effulgence to the glowing beams
That spangled brightest, where the evening dew
Its pure libations had from heaven shed;
As the deep lotus in the thorny wild
Gems the full sunbeams, e'en till hooded Eve
Restore the treasure light had snatched away.

Nature to her had charms unknown to those
Whose dull unheeding faculties are warped,
And wrung for sordid gold; essence holy,

Uncontaminate mingles not with clay,
Love and beauty cheer o'er saddened hours
Not oft, nor long; pure ethereal fire
Illumines not this dark, and godless world.
I muse full oft upon that graceful form,
And heavenly mien, which nature made for bliss;
But baseless charms, and visionary spells
Robe light's viewless phantom with the folds
And curves, that decked her earthly frame; and mute
Expectation foils its own assurance.

Hebrew Melodies.

I.
DAVID'S LAMENT.

In guileless youth, with infant glee,
When rosy smiles and love were blending,
Thou climb'st thy father's lulling knee,
And blessings were ascending;
Thou wert my solace and my joy
From blushing morn to ev'ning dun,
But ah! they slew my smiling boy—
O Absalom, my son, my son!

With glowing eye, and swelling breast,
Thou didst transport thy royal sire,
Who gaz'd upon thee, and was blest,
And sweetly struck his sacred lyre;
Thy voice was music to my ear,
Thy flashing eye the orient sun,
But murky tempests discord bear
O'er thee, Absalom, my son, my son!

When, pillowed on thy mother's bosom,
In slumbers lay the sinless child,
Fond fancy saw the cion blossom,
And at the blissful image smiled;

And blest love mus'd if death in gloom
Should shroud the flower, that zephyr won,
Beauty should deck thy princely tomb—
O Absalom, my son, my son!

But desert rocks are thy cold pillow,
And dreary is the unhaunted wild,
The sighing cypress, nor the willow
Chant a sad dirge o'er my lone child;
From the drear sunless wood is gleaming
No proud tomb of beauty gone,
But the raven bird is screaming
O'er thee, Absalom my son, my son!

The graceless rebels shrink away,
And leave their scoffed lord mansionless,
Minions! they bask in summer's ray,
But to grief's voice are motionless;
Ay—but veiled Zion wakes my wail,—
By plaudits was the prince undone,
And earth shall quake to hear the tale
Of Absalom, my son, my son!

When wreathing incense rolled on high,
And the sin-girt victim bled,
Devotion glistened in thine eye,
And heavenly hope was in thy tread;
Yet, guile beset thy bright path blooming
With the fair flowers of Lebanon,
And all thy glory now is looming,
O Absalom, my son, my son!

O had I died for thee, my child,
For my foot trod the downward vale,
And thou wast young, and wast beguiled
And led along the gore-paved dale!
Forgive him heaven! he sought to rise
On wings plumed for him—but he's gone;
O may sweet peace in yon bright skies
Crown Absalom, my son, my son!

II.
THE DESOLATE FANE.

The mitre's fallen from the brow
Of Judah's holy hierarch,
The fires of heaven no longer glow,
And cincture glory's sacred ark;
The olive circled cherubim
With halcyon mercy no more reign,
Nor Moriah's turrets gleam
O'er heaven-girt Palestine's domain.

Here Desolation builds his dome,
And bitterns shriek his vigil song,
And pelicans mid ruins roam,
And willows moan the dales along;
Amidst the rich and columned halls
The noiseless spider weaves his woof,
And brambles wave along the walls,
And vipers throng the vaulted roof.

The heaven-descended Shiloh came,
Not in the warrior's sheeny car,
Nor 'mid the glory-circling flame,
With wrath his herald through the war;
Nor jewelled crown of bright dominion
Glowed on his brow irradiate!
He rode not on the eagle's pinion,
Lord of battle and of fate.

But, a virgin bore the smiling child,
And his palace was a manger,
His airy walks the desert wild,
And, on earth, he was a stranger;
His aulic throne, the storm-lashed mountain,
His royal banquet nature's store,
His glowing nectar the lone fountain,
And his tomb the voiceless shore.

He came .... and bowed his crownless head,
That wore, ere time to being sprang,
The diadem, whose radiance shed
Glory, and heaven illumed, when rang
The golden wires of countless choirs,
And uncreated piles of light
Were the abode of Calvary's God,
And angels, veiled, beheld the sight.

Again, round Salem glory beams,
From heaven descends her hierarch,
And ev'ry mausoleum gleams,
And a halo lingers round the ark;—

O haunted, holy, Palestine,
All—all thy scenes are consecrate,—
Thy King, thy God, thy Priest divine
Thy towerless fane will renovate.

[III. The Monarch walked his battlement]

The Monarch walked his battlement,
And o'er the sheeny turrets bent,
His harp was strung, and in the breeze was sighing.
And Kedron, in meandering flow,
Was chiming, 'mid the solar glow,
And to their lairs the wild's inmates were hieing.

Below, the curling water played,
And, beneath the myrtle shade,
A diamond eye from raven lids is glancing;
The coral lip, the glossy brow,
The ivory neck, where tresses flow,
Array the form, round which bright love is dancing.

And when the crystal mirrored lymph,
In undulations, saw the nymph
In veilless beauty, as carnation blushing,
It flung a sparkling beam above,
And haloed the sheen path of love,
And through the veins the ardent flood was rushing.

The monarch saw—and felt the glow,
The vivid flame of passion grow,

Like balmy breezes rich ratafia breathing;
The royal mandate flew—and soon
The spotless nymph in the gay saloon
Idallia stood, and soft perfume was wreathing.

And now, amid the battle-shock,
With death in ev'ry falchion's stroke,
The doomed Uriah, like a hero's, warring;
Alas! he crowns the gory slain,
The breathless mountain of the plain,—
The wanton grasp no mortal dread's debarring.

The purple vestments veil the deed,
And rapture wears the trophied meed,
And blithesome reveries joyous hope are beaming;
But the sabre cleaves the cion,
And blackness shrouds celestial Zion,
And quenchless fires around the scene are gleaming.

[IV. Salem! heaven's terrestial daughter]

Salem! heaven's terrestial daughter!
Veil thy glowing mien in blackness,
For thy banner's bathed in slaughter,
And thy glory bright is trackless;
The mighty fall—the shield is cloven,
And the bow is conquerless,
The mantle's rent, in which was woven
The image calm of holiness.

The fell, and painim horde are shouting
O'er the crestless son of glory,
And their Dagon now is routing
Israel on the mountain gory;
Gath! O! echo not the tale,
And hush thy breezes, Askalon,—
The mighty fall—and nature's wail
Is heard along the desert lone.

The lion, when his eye was glowing,
In the battle's fiery van,
And his crimson plume was flowing,
And his foe was wild and wan,
Closed his red balls in stygian gloom;
And by his sire the son is sleeping,
Without a shroud, without a tomb,
And no fond tear the field is steeping.

O! they fought in fame together,
And where the fires of death were flashing,
And they did fadeless laurels gather
Where the floods of flame were dashing;
As they warred, and as they gloried,
As they lived, and as they died,
Where they sleep, with deeds unstoried,
Fall light, ye dews, upon their pride.

[The moon unfurls her blushing sail]

The moon unfurls her blushing sail
Along the bright translucent sky,
And, like the curves of beauty's veil,
The gilded, starry pennons fly;
Night's empress through no sable rack
Majestic scuds her haloed way,
For lucid gleams o'er glory's track
Of pensive splendour brightly play.

The sylphs sport on the argent stream,
That, chiming, laves the pebbled shore,
And o'er the glassy surface gleam
The twinkling lights, that richly store
The sapphire vault, whose radiant dies
Beam heaven's own lambent glory round,
And span, and deck the deep blue skies,
Where beauty reigns, and virtue's crowned.

Enamoured Echo's airy numbers
Are mute along the flower-girt wild,
For the nymph serenely slumbers
On her perfumed couch—and smiled
When love-lorn Philomel's last note
Mellifluous fell upon her ear,
And when angelic strains did float
Along the sky in music clear.

Oh! could my waxen pinions soar,
And ride along the viewless sky,
The eagle's compeer, I would pour
Unheeded strains no more, but fly

With my wild harp diffusing love,
And cull the pure ambrosial flowers,
That amaranthine bloom above,
And tapestry celestial bowers.

O who can love this dull, cold sphere,
Where man brooks nought of heavenly form,
Where waves the pall, and creaks the bier,
Surfeits the viper, gnaws the worm?
Love is deceit, ambition guile,
Fame a bright shadow, beauty dust,
Honour destruction, worth a wile,
Glory is death, and virtue's curst.

But heaven glows in each glen and wold,
When silver-hooded eve hangs o'er,
Nature's pure volume's then unrolled,
And her votarist treasures lore;
Each tinkling rill, in heavenly chime,
Responds the warbling notes of lyres
Touched by pure choirs in bliss sublime,
And raptured mind with fancy fires.

Yet earth is but a vapid sphere,
Ethereal glory's vestibule,
A fire-girt pathway, wild and drear,
A speck in heaven's unbounded rule!
The bright beams of an endless day
Illume not oft our darkling path,
Religion is a wandering ray,
A smile from the mien oft clothed in wrath.

THE RURAL RUELLE.

I have known many sorrows, that corroded the heart,
And have revelled in pleasures, that bound like a spell,
But sorrow to repress, and mild beauty impart,
I ne'er knew a scene like the rural ruelle.

The bright beaming eye, the soft glance of love,
The rich stream of fancy from the clear mental well,
The beauty that dazzles where'er the eyes rove,
All depict the sweet pleasures of the rural ruelle.

The sensitive mind that shrinks from the view,
Like the tender mimosa within its deep shell,
Expands with delight, and a roseate hue,
In the quiet recess of the rural ruelle.

The dull morbid follies and noise of the world,
That o'er a sad heart in mockery dwell;
Wild revel, where reason from dominion is hurled,
Obtrude not their forms in the rural ruelle.

But wisdom, more glorious than rubies or gems,
And music, whose tones make the heart rise and swell,
Like the colours that mingle on the lillied stems,
Delight, and improve the mild rural ruelle.

When grief sits triumphant on her ebony throne,
And the breeze of the morn seems the funeral knell,
The soft stealing tear—mellifluous tone,
Show no desolate heart in the rural ruelle.

The wild blooming grove, where the musical choir
Of nature's wing'd minstrels with their songs o'er the dell,
Teach man whom to praise, hears the sweet woodland lyre
Send its notes from the unadorned rural ruelle.

The libertine, reeling from his revelry high,
Wears a heart ever cankered, a dread living hell;
But we meet, and we part, with a bright glowing eye,
From the innocent joys of the rural ruelle.

SONNET.

The whirlwind raged o'er land and ocean far,
And heaved to heaven the billows of the main,
And swept the emerald forest of the plain,
In one unvaried blast of elemental war.

And, 'mid the tempest, blackening o'er the sky,
The centenary oak in vigour stood,
And spread his hundred arms unto the flood,
Defiance bid, and towered in majesty.

But lo! the giant on the mountain side
Shivered and shattered, in confusion lies,
With trunk and branches wheeling thro' the skies,
Where wrath and terror in their triumph ride.

Yet, O imperial Ruin! it were wise
To be, like thee, by mighty whirlwind broke,
And lie in majesty beneath the stroke,
Of heaven's dire thunderbolt from fiery skies,

Rather than bow exemption dear to crave,
Like the vile osier bending to the wind;
More wise it is to die, and leave a name behind,
Than fawn—and couch—and be a despot's slave.

REMINISCENCE.

Full many a heart with ardour beat,
Full many a gem shone pure and bright,
When love soared on hope's pinions fleet,
And brightly beamed the cresset light
To gild the path, that led to fame,
And blazon worth in glory's pride—
And fancy saw youth's magic name
Exalted, ne'er to be belied.

Exulting, like the fleet gazelle,
Gay, as the lark in vernal skies,
Bright, as the blushing asphodel,
Pure, as the moonbeam's placid dies,
Rich, as ambrosia spread by love,
Sweet, as the nectar Hybla yields,
Visions of honour soar above,
And paint around elysian fields.

We live by fancy—life's a dream—
The luring shadow of despair,
And love is but an idle theme—
As cataracts their channels wear,
Our pleasures wither—wane—and die;
The mien, that beamed with attic grace,
The soul, that fired life's ecstasy,
Kindle no more in glory's race.

We sought the loved and dear caress,
And panted for the same—same gaol,
In fond affection we did press,
And burned the high, congenial soul;
Youth and its pleasures now have past—
And where are all my compeers—where?
Their path is one wide, lonely waste,
Their sunbeams waned in dark despair.

The cypress, yew, and willow bend
Their weeping foliage o'er the tomb,
The mournful dirge, and pæan blend
Their varied notes amid the gloom;
The undulating streamlet laves
The bowering arbour, where they sleep
While the unheeding tempest raves,
And flame-girt billows fiercely sweep.

And O! I love that tufted grove,
And voiceless, solemn, solitude,
Where silence fosters heavenly love,
And lone peace crowns youth's pensive mood,

Far more than pompous pageantry,
Or airy, flaunting, heartless mirth,—
Melancholy! they are to thee
The fairy forms of phantom birth.

O sinful world! allied to heaven,
Where genius bright neglected dies,
Where worth's a bane, and mind is riven,
And blasphemy assaults the skies;
Where high-born virtue cannot charm,
And purity receives a blot,
Where malice stalks in fell alarm—
O foul ingrate! I love thee not.

SCALDIC SONG.

The eagle plumes her noble crest,
And seeks the dales of upper air,
And proudly swells her fearless breast
When gazing on the red sun there;
The fire-crested billow breaks loud o'er the Haaf,
And hushed is the runic wild, revelling laugh,
The storm in blackness shrouds the sky,
Save when liquid fires illume
The murky welkin—and they fly
In forked flashes through the gloom.

The garland is streaming from the mast,
The loose shrouds are shiv'ring, and furies are dancing
And frantic sybils on the blast,
Their baleful eyes in wrath are glancing.

O'er the wild and warring billows,
The frail bark by ice-bergs is rapidly driven,—
Sinks the wreck—and gelid pillows
Bear the inmates—hope is riven;—
But the sybil now is sailing
On the fire flashing wings of the merciless storm,
Though gale and surge are wildly wailing
The last dirge of Arva, of the paragon form;
And the beauty's golden tresses
Mark her form on the phosphoric billows of night,
And, anon, a father blesses
His relic of pleasure, and her guardian bright.

[When tortured life, and visionary schemes]

Non havea pianto, ma che di sospiri
Che l'aura eterna facea tremare,
E cio avenea di duoi senza matiri.—
Dante.

When tortured life, and visionary schemes,
And gilded hopes, and gay illusions wane,
When from the soul the momentary beams
Of joy shed beauty o'er the rack of pain,
And madness of infuriate agony,
No more—when fond affection dies for aye,
And the wrung heart recoils in mystery,
And shrinks aghast from every genial ray
Of love, or beauty, fearful 'tis the flame
Of lowering wrath, the volcan's fire serene
But herald of the lava flood—the name
Of her, who erst did diadem the scene
Of raptured transport, and enthrilling love,

Grates, like a slow-trod funeral dirge, upon
The aching ear—and all the myrtle grove,
That whilom heard the heartless vows, which won
The joyous soul's devotion, and entwined
Each fond delight with heaven, deeply sighs
Through all its platted foliage to the wind,
And hoarsely calls the shade of death to rise,
And, with his darkling shadow, shroud in gloom
The Eden, where the faithless voice of guile
Developed hope illusive; dark the tomb,
But envy, hate, ambition, ire, the wile
Of cunning, and the fires of fury wring
No heart, that slumbers there in grim repose;
Pierced by the poisoned shaft, the venom sting,
Still fond of being, hoping though the close,
Amid the mirth and hum of reckless souls,
Who plume themselves in folly and deceit,
And soan the laws proud Lucifer unrolls,—
And in a miasmatic slime surfeit
Their base souls insatiate—in loneliness,
In dismal solitude, I dwell, unknown
To all the fairy charms of life, that bless
Our wayward, sad existence; the soft tone
Of some inviting voice, that calls from far
The toil-oppressed traveller, when the fires
Of death flash round, and elemental war
Toils on, till nature's wanton bloom expires,
Beguiles, like syrens' music floating o'er
The necromantic strand—or hope appears
In solitary bloom; the sea-girt shore,

When transient tempests roar and blacken, wears
An evanescent robe of terror—love
Glows in the deep blue fields of ether—peace
Floats on her pinions from the arch above;
But, when the clouds in gath'ring rage increase,
And flake on flake, in slow, but awful gloom,
Curtain the heavens in blackness, and portend
The issue terrible; when fires illume
The sky in momentary glare, and blend,
Like death and sin, along the welkin's bound,
With loud, tumultuous torrents; when wrath
Wails in the unremitted blast, and round
The concave, no bright aperture to path
A track for hope salutes the moveless gaze;
When fiery billows, in dread mountain piles,
Sweep heaven, and disclose death—and a dark haze
Veils nature in wild desolation—smiles
Sit not graceful on the frantic mien;
And O! how faint, how feeble is this sketch
To mental agony! the inward scene
Of more than mortal war—O! hope will stretch
Her waxen wings, and find her Eden death;
Eternal death to all terrestrial love!
Our dearest pleasures are the sportive breath
Of fascinating wo; alas! we rove,
The storm-lashed wanderers of a gloomy hour,
Gazing on every fleet, and vapoury sail,
That lives in wild imaginative power,
And ply our highest force and might to hail

A phantom; O it were! a demon band
Of unknown miseries! immerged in gloom,
By hope deluded, shudd'ring when the brand
Of death hangs flashing o'er us—the Simoom
Of envy blighting all but dreary life,
Imagination glowing with the joys
Of youth,—that never can return—the strife
Of worldly pomp pursuing—with the toys
Of more than low infantile manhood lured,
By vaunted ken recked fortune's darling minions,
Our skies by clouds and tempests e'er obscured,
We drag our chains—and plume for death our pinions.

THE ANGEL OF PEACE.

Star of the East! in effulgence glowing
When Persia's magi hung upon thy beams,
And nectared streams of heaven-born ruth were flowing,
And all creation, in the dazzling gleams
Of state imperial, saw the conqu'rer come;
Star of the East! bright herald of the dove,
Thy pensive splendour lit the midnight gloom,
And cheered thy songstress in the olive grove.

Bright Sun of Glory! kindled by the rays
Of constellations mingling through the globe,
A spotless spirit round thy halo plays,
And sunbeams flash from his full gemmed robe.

Thy veilless sheen the lurid pyres will dim
Of false devotion, and idolatry,
And sacred Ganges echo heaven's own hymn,
And the red cross, proud India's banner, fly.

Bright Sun of Glory! lucid fires will gild
The Shach's rich calpac, and the diadem,—
The wailing war-whoop's hushed along the wild.
And loudly ring the songs of Bethlehem;
The ethnic Cachique, and the Inca proud,
Will sleep in glory's festooned cenotaph,
And, wrapt in love's immortal, jewelled shroud,
Invoke a seraph for their epitaph.

The mountaineer o'er avalanches sublime
Impels his pulka, and his matin song
Of heavenly love, and gratitude, doth chime
With the loud hymn of distant land and tongue;
The prince and peasant, lord and slave, unite
In one ethereal jubilee of love,
And time unrolls his covert visions, bright
With fervid bliss—celestial spirits rove

Through blooming dales, where sunbeams love to dwell,
And nature's carmine robe exhales perfume;
Where lucid streams from vine-clad bowers well,
And gales of balm succeed the fell Simoom;
On love's fleet pinions lo! the incarnate God
Deigns to descend and bless apostate man,
O how unlike the awful Lord, who trod
Sinai, and laid the world beneath his ban.

The proud pagodas of the painim clime,
Hid in the bowers of palmetto groves,
Resound the pæan of palanquined chime
No more—the tortured fakeer vainly roves,
To seek the votaries of illusive charms,
And desolate is Brumhu's gory shrine,
On Vishnoo's breast the necromantic arms
No longer flash in luring rays divine.

Bright Sun of Glory! thine it is to gild
The amaranthine blossoms of the East,
To clothe the dark and desert mental wild
With light celestial; and the maudlin feast
Becomes the banquet of a chaste desire;
O! glories blend along the empyreal sky,
With dove-like mercies, as the crystal fire
In alloy glows with brighter purity.

BELLONA.

When the fires of death are glowing
O'er the reeking battle-field,
When the crimson stream is flowing,
And the watchword “die or yield,”
By vollied thunders, trumpets' bray,
And clash of brand and shield is rung;
When the scenes of youth are blooming
Round the pallid warrior's brain,
And the frantic soul is stung
To madness, when the fates are dooming
His gory tomb among the slain;

When the spouse on some high cleft
Breathes forth her vigil orison,
And, of hope, and life bereft,
In frenzy pours her malison
On fell ambition's wanton waste—
When, amid the din of war,
The dreadful shock of death has past,
And moaning murmurs swell afar,
And vict'ry greets her trophied car—
Where the lava floods are dashing,
And the courser's tread, like thunder,
Shakes the red-field, where are flashing
Lightnings caustic, and asunder
Life, and hope, and heart are riven—
Where the crestless morion lies,
And the martial shield is cloven—
Where nothing 'mid the dire scene lives,
Save a dim halo on the wing;—
There in mortal carnage glowing,
I the death-knell love to ring,
And revel where the life-blood's flowing.

[I stood amid the perfumed foliage]

I stood amid the perfumed foliage
Of an Asian bower, tapestried by bloom;
The blushing vine had flung its fruitage o'er
The enamelled dome—and, woven 'mid the robes
Of Flora's iris drapery, had won
The homage of enamoured Zephyr's breath;

The gurgling rill o'er granite calmly flowed,
And laved, in soft meandering undulations,
The tufted bower of amaranthine bloom—
The pure rose distilled its fragrant odours,
And spread its snowy mantle o'er the wave;
The magnolia, with odoriferous breath,
Sprang into life exuberant, and 'mid
Its platted shrubbery lay the waking fawn;
And lilies, like the bright carbuncle, rise
And carpet o'er the velvet lawn, and woo
The aching heart to press their bridal couch;
And there, in gorgeous vestments, blossoms one,
Whose scarlet petals treasure crystal dew,
And ope its rosy bosom to the eye
Of nature's devotee, like the chaste nymph,
Who erst, in rich Hesperian gardens,
Bore the trophied palm of beauty, and drew
Olympian pæans; whose crimson leaves,
As variegated mosaic, blend
Their silken tapestry, and mellow glow,
With oriental pomp, magnificence,
And glory; and in pride unrivalled rear
On high the irradiate crest of splendour.
In the enchanted distance myrtle groves
Expand, and, when the gentle vigil breeze,
On rustling pinions, plays amid the green
And musical branches, and the dryads,
Sleepless, tune the soft woodland reed, or pipe,
To notes of holy, and celestial love,

And gladness unalloyed by mortal hate,
The tired wanderer of this dismal sphere
Might there repose, nor while away his hours
In heartless mirth, inglorious revel,
Nor inhuman schemes of malice, envy,
And insatiate vengeance; but, in mild love,
Attend the soothing voice of nature kind
To all her melancholy votaries;
And awake from blissful dreams to behold
The cincturing Eden, blooming in its pride,
And lulled into a visionary spell
Of rapture, hear the songs of Paradise
Float, in immortal strains, from the strung harps
Of nature's spotless ministers, who wing
Their earthward flight on noiseless pinions, gemmed
With the effulgent glory of their Lord.
Afar, the sighing willow copse, whose boughs
Pendent o'er the sheeny wave, that ripples
In silvery whiteness, tinged by the beams
Of solar splendour, tinkling in its chime
The unvaried dirge, and swelling higher notes,
That close in one full-voiced diapason,
Bathe their pale-green foilage in the flood
And drink the drastic fluid; shadows o'er
The laughing mead, and veils the sacred scene
Of sculptured urns, and storied mausoleums.

O! in this charming bower I would dwell
Undazzled by the pomp, and unallured
By the vain pageants of a faithless world;
And there, unknown to mirth, and guile, and grief,

Mingle my lyric minstrelsy of love
With the strains of the sad, lone, nightingale,
The muse of solitude, that float along
Cerulean skies, and flowery meads, and dales
Exulting in the radiance of light and life;
And call up visions, where the lonely mind,
Unused to brook the bitter jeer, the smile
Of envy, and the brutal shock of him,
Who outvies the fierce hyæna, and slakes
His frenzied fury with the brilliant charms,
That twine around the fibres of the heart,
And break, when each fond passion wanes and dies
In budding beauty, or celestial bloom,
Enjoys all nature in her mellowness,
And, nurtured by ambrosia shed from heaven,
And nectar, fraught with more than fabled force,
Or, rich Arcadian sweetness, attune
The warbling wires of enraptured gladness;
Unknowing pompous misery, and hate,
That decks itself in friendship, and assumes
The smile of soft complacency, indulge
In heavenly reveries of hope, and faith,
Till the unstained soul shall rise, and spring,
And mingle with angelic choirs on high.

Rafflesia titan.

[I saw a yacht, in gay career]

I saw a yacht, in gay career,
Glide like a swan along the stream,
The jewelled empress of her sphere,
And glitt'ring brilliants flung a beam,

A halo round the ivory neck,
And seanymphs walked the foaming wake,
And streamers fanned the golden deck,
And mirth flew o'er the crystal lake.

I saw the flame-girt sun arise,
And gild the concave in his march,
And saw the rainbow span the skies,
And tinge the beauty's flower-wreathed arch,
When, amid a golden flood,
He slowly sought his vesper dome,
And decked the fair, and perfumed wood,
But left behind impervious gloom.

I saw the silver crescent float
Amid the mantling rack on high,
And oft was heard the warbler's note
Breathe o'er the wild rich melody;
And flashing stars, her gilded train,
Like love on beauty, mildly wait,
But faint, fleet, transient, was her reign,
And silent as the realm of fate.

I saw a blushing lily bloom,
And o'er the lone and desert heath
Fling on Zephyr soft perfume,
Like the stainless virgin's breath;
There hung the beryl, and the gem,
And by there blushed the violet,
The myrtle waved, love's diadem,—
And stately rose the mignonette.

I saw amid the myrtle grove
The gentle nymph of purity,
The graces round her fair form move,
And revel in their ecstasy;
And oh! my heart, at Mary's name,
Mutely confessed the charms of love,
And every fair breeze fanned the flame,
Whose radiance brightest glows above.

[Come to the bower, that love has wove]

Come to the bower, that love has wove
Amid the foliage of the tufted grove,
Thou beauteous queen of my heart;
The world is a cheerless scene of strife,
With reckless wo and chicane rife,
And love alone can bliss impart.

O come, and grace the mossy bower,
Thou blushing, roseate spangled flower,
And reign the empress of my soul,—
The flashing light of thy diamond eye,
Thy hyacinthine locks that fly,
Seem the radiance of bliss by mortals stole.

The woodbine, rose, and jasmine entwine,
Like love and beauty in ardour divine,
And amorous ringdoves chant their song;
Come from thy height of pomp, my love,
And charm my heart in the tap'stried grove,
And thy train will dance the wild along.

The lulling stream the arbour laves,
And bright skies hang our architraves,
And spirits press the banks of thyme;
Without thee, fragrance leaves my path,
And dies like the withered lattermath,
And harsh to the soul is the crystal chime.

Thy coral lip breathes mellifluous love,
Thy marble cheek is tinged from above
With the carmine that lives in upper air;
O'er thy ivory neck, as a mantle of gold,
Thy auburn tresses, from their band unrolled,
Float, like sheen Iris exultingly fair.

There on the emerald carpet, bright
With gems that sparkle to the queen of night,
The dove-like fays twirl round their nymph,
And they sing, as they spread their visual sail,
To the cool breeze, that echoes their fanciful tale,
And fans the lucent mirrored lymph.

[There is a fountain welling, yet unknown]

There is a fountain welling, yet unknown,
And shaded deeper than the untrod cave,
Where mortals venture not, and where have blown
No sweeping tempests—silent as the grave,
Yet mighty in its progress—and unquelled
By human prowess—flows the living stream
In full power, till, in icy bondage held
It murmurs—dies—nor yields a parting gleam;—

There is a region, veiled in sunless gloom,
Peopled by pygmy beings, and arrayed
In pomp exotic, alien pride,—the tomb
Of the ascetic eremite, inlayed
With all the aulic pearls, and gems, and flowers
Of kingly state, betrays not folly more
Than the full-festooned, but rayless bowers,
Delineated on the desert shore
By viewless hands, and pencilled in the shades
Of darkness and of beauty—love and hate—
There blooms the hyacinth through the op'ning glades
Of nightshade and of banewort—and dire fate
Amid the scene hath reared his darkling throne;

There is a clime by withered lilies strewn,
That glowed with incense erst—the lyre's soft tone
Is hushed to all the charms, that oft attune
The woodland wires—and cheerless nature droops,
And sighs the dirge through all her leafless grove,
And there the ungorged hawk, or ostrich swoops,
And unheard, unknown, is the turtle-dove;

There is a dome that rears its turrets o'er
Desolation, beauties nor a ray impart
Of hope, or love—nor charm the joyless shore—
It is despair's domain—a broken heart;
Far more unknown than polar climes, that sleep
In dormant gloom, that eye ne'er gazed upon;
Than the dark mansions of the coral deep,
Or the drear palace of the torrid zone.

ELEGY

ON THE DEATH OF THE REV. WALTER CRANSTON.

Enraptured hope had culled the perfumed flowers,
And twined her wreath around the glowing brow,
While faith hung fondly on the joyous hours,
And love beamed forth in amaranthine glow.

Each radiant eye, in kindling joy, surveyed
The cherub features of his glowing mien,
And mute attention winning homage paid,
And heaven's devotion harmonized the scene.

His smile angelic lit the troublous way,
When grief had shrouded earth in murky gloom,
Like orient sunbeams, in their brilliant play,
His flash could gild the darkness of the tomb.

O dear, lost patron of my tuneful art!
As stars, that flash along the crystal dome
Of heaven, a bright and vivid gleam impart
To nature, when the viewless spirits roam;

So the sheen rays of thy celestial soul
Illumed the darkness of my lonely path,
When the mild tear from thy dark lashes stole,
And gleamed thy shield amid the bolts of wrath

As pearly streams, that lave the diamond mine,
Bear the rich treasure in their ceaseless flow,
Time, grief, misfortune, and decay combine
To gild the past with never-waning glow.

O! oft with thee through classic haunts of yore,
With a soul fired to win the Paphian meed,
I roved, and mused on soft Castalia's shore,
And round Aganippe attuned the reed.

Thy wisdom taught my grovelling thoughts to ris
When barbed darts transfixed my feeling heart,
The arch of love and mercy spanned the skies,
When thy bold hand with vigour drew the dart.

Unknown to guile, impelled by virtue's power,
His heaven-girt soul disdained the aspic fiend
Of malice,—scandal,—who improved the hour
Unguarded, to assail the bosom of my friend.

O! on the varnished hypocrite there fell
His holy ire, and sacred malison,
The painted demon back recoiled to hell,
And joined his compeers in their feats anon.

But oh! what scenes are opening on thy sight,
What raptured strains awake thy living lyre
Shrouded in innocence, and robed in light,
Thy bosom burns with bright, ethereal fire

Ah! could my hand but reach thy distant tomb,
Fair flowers should deck the desolate domain
Of sin's fierce heir, and blossoms e'er illume
The darkling grandeur of his dreaded reign.

But breathing sculpture cannot raise thy fame,
Nor mausoleums consecrate the sod;—
O sainted shade! thy fair and glorious name
By angels is engraved upon the throne of God.

THE REQUIEM.

The curtain has fallen, the night-cloud has lowered,
And dark waves the pall o'er the desolate bier;
And low lies the fair form, that exultingly towered,
And the white shroud of death is bedewed with a tear.

Oh! his name o'er oblivion tunes the pæan of glory,
It sinks not to dust, but is twined in the heart,
O his eloge is the eternal story
Of his deeds, and his mind, that did virtue impart.

There's a sound floating on the fleet breezes of balm,
And the dirge is absorbed in the song of the saint,
There's a seraph that follows with the heavenly palm,
And his shadow is dim, and the lyre's notes are faint.

Gild, ye sunbeams of glory, the tomb where he sleeps,
And enamel the bright urn, fraught with embers, that glowed
In lambent effulgence—for the willow-copse weeps,
Where he mused on his woes, and wept as he trode.

The aspen, that quivers when the light breeze is blowing,
Spreads its deep-blue foliage, and adorns the domain
Of nature, when each field with rich verdure is glowing;
So shrinks the soft heart from the fell stroke of pain.

They called him austere,—he frowned on the herd,
Who wade thro' the slime of corruption and lust,
They called him a maniac—for he deigned not a word
To the wretch, who banquets on glittering dust.

He slumbers; the tempest is howling above,
Yet his heart is unmoved, and his fancy is still;—
He slumbers; but his spirit in the pure realms of love
Breathes the redolence that issues from bright Zion-bill.

THE WANDERER.

“The sun is sinking on the sea,”
The dim shades flit along the lea,
The scintillating sunbeams flee,
And tinge the heaving billow;
The night has lowered, and flung her veil
O'er the wold, and o'er the dale,
And swelling is the snowy sail,
And rolling is my pillow.

The ship is bounding in her motion,
The proud waves heave in loud commotion,
The mirage of the restless ocean
Is hanging on the horizon;
The seagull screams, and hastens by,
The porpoise bounds in revelry,
The lurid vestments o'er the sky
Seem to the soul a malison.

The blast is dread on wings of fire,
The billows flash in vivid ire,
The quailing heart dares not aspire,
And draw a hope from heaven;
The death-fires dance among the shrouds,
The wind-god rides the fleecy clouds,
And, wailing, writhe the pallid crowds,
And fiercely is the frail bark driven.

The wave is resting on the deep,
The wanderer's eye is closed in sleep,
The lachrymal fount has ceased to weep,
And the arcade's clothed in brightness;
The gilded spire attracts the view,
The tropic clime, now veiled in dew,
The range of domes, of diverse hue,
And fields in budding whiteness.

The verdant grove is decked with bloom,
The woodbine blushes through the gloom,
The floral petals o'er the tomb,
And the shrubbery redolent,
The bay, where smooth lianas twine,
The rill, whose silver waters shine,
The fane, where rises thought divine,
In one rich view are blent.

The friend of youth is far away,
The shades of beauty dimly play,
The floods of wo have quenched the ray,
And all the charms of love;
The plaintive sigh's not breathed for me,
The joyous board, the mirthful glee,
The loving smile, festivity;—
For I am doomed to rove.

The hope of joy is plumed for all,
The cup, that crowns the festival,
The fond caress, the aulic hall,
And blest is ardent passion;

The sneer, that blasts the love of youth,
The wrath, that scorns celestial ruth,
The ire, unheeding worth and truth,
Have shown me faith is out of fashion.

The saint, who clasped me to his breast,
The voice, that hushed my woes to rest,
The love, imbibed among the blest,
Have sought their silent mansion;
The heart, untainted, high, sincere,
The full soul, unconfined by sphere,
Have been by vipers rendered sear,
And burst in their expansion.

The partner of my childhood pleasures,
The hand, that shared my orient treasures,
The foot, that trod our sportive measures,
(Would thrust—would tramp me into earth;
The bird, that sung, would hush her strain,
The dog, who loved me, ere again
My footsteps tread my natal plain,
Wound me, a form of unknown birth.

The scenes of bliss are gone for ever,
Their charms return to cheer me—never,
The hearts, that fell hate could not sever,
Have broke in earth's collision;
The eyes, that wept for others' woes,
The glance of vengeance now disclose,
And civic form a mantle throws
O'er manhood's sheer derision.

[There's a crystalline cove hid in the deep-bosomed hills]

There's a crystalline cove hid in the deep-bosomed hills,
Where the perch and mullet rove, and chime the flashing rills,
And dandelions blush around, and daffodils perfume
The air, and carpet o'er the ground, and love the quiet gloom.

Amid the fresco concerts raise the songs of bliss above,
And the purlieu echoes praise, that charms the rosy grove,
And there the red-bird chirps and plays, and to his honied dome
The freeborn bee, 'mid lauding lays, on weary wing doth roam.

The cocoa clasps the myrtle spray, and weaves a colonnade,
And flaunting woodbines wind their way, and tapestry the shade,
The whispering winds o'er floral lawns woo sorrow to repose,
And the sun of pleasure dawns, and bliss its mantle throws.

There on the limpid water dance the woodnymphs clothed in robes of flowers,
And dryads fling a raptured glance, and ringdoves, from their bowers,

In mellow music keep the chime, and rule their joyous measures,
And then they sleep on shores of thyme, and gather fairy treasures.

There in the linden groves of peace, and where bananas spread,
When the notes of woe shall cease, I'd lay my weary head,
Or rove along the pebbled shore, and rear a pearly dome,
Where fiery billows never roar, and vestal virgins come.

THE ORPHAN.

I saw when the tired day and dim eve were blending,
And the hyacinth was valving its petals of yellow,
A form, with her looks all dishevelled, descending
The dew-covered hill to the mead that was mellow;
She was beautiful and fair, but the rose reigned alone,
The lily had withered, the carnation had died,
And wild flashed her eye, and her low vocal tone
Arose on the breeze, like the requiem of pride.

Embosomed in the deep maple grove, there arose
The mouldering walls of a roofless abode,
And the nightshade, and hemlock, as the sighing breeze blows,
Bent their stalks o'er the path, where the lone virgin trode;

And the owlet, and raven, and twittering swallow,
Found a desolate shelter in the maid's sunny bower,
And the tempest, that moaned in gusts faint and hollow,
Threw an ominous pall o'er the sorrowful hour.

But, along the wild desert, and beneath the arch'd willow,
The lorn relic of bloom, a sweet lily was budding,
Like the philomot flower on the fire-crested billow,
When the wandering sunbeams the clear wave are studding;
The motherless child, by illusion, though fleeting,
Wore a lingering smile as she paced the lone mansion,
And she sought the high chamber, with her hands spread for greeting
Her sister—her soul sunk in noble expansion.

She had grasped the fond hand and had sunk on the breast,
And had kiss'd the full tear from the tremulous cheek,
And sought a far land, where beloved and carest,
She shared all that charms, and thought not to seek;
She was blooming in beauty, and as spotless as fair,
But a fell demon saw her—the tale is soon told,
Her bright orb has set in a rayless despair,
And she trod to her tomb as she flew o'er the wold.

The nightingale heard the shrill shriek of wo,
And spread her soft pinions, and perched on the willow,
And the maid loosed her scarf, laid her fair form below,
And the lily bent o'er her on her motionless pillow;
The requiem is chanted, and it floats through the air,
And, cinctured by green turf, the beauty is sleeping,
And choristers sing dirges o'er the orphan, and there
The heaven-wept dew her mute mansion is steeping.

Oh! her pure soul has flown, and is raptured above,
Where high angels encircle her, and sweep their strung lyres,
But when the lone wanderer, through the bowering grove
Where she sleeps, doth ramble o'er the tombs of his sires,
In the darkness of even, he fancies a spirit
Is gliding around him, and he seeks the lone willow,
And pauses to listen, that his heart may inherit
A ray from the eye, that is closed on the pillow.

THE SAILOR'S DREAM.

The ship upon the breeze was hung,
My hammock from the deck was swung,
Our last song of glee was sung,
And I was deeply sleeping.

My father's cot before me stood,
And the wide pine-apple wood,
The sportive deer, in mirthful mood,
Around my path was leaping.

And there my wife, in faithful love,
Was gazing on the distant grove,
And when the breeze its boughs did move,
She bowed her head in weeping.

She caught my frisking dog, and pressed
Him to her fair and throbbing breast,
And words she spoke, as she carest,
And words they were worth keeping.

I strove to burst my way, and hear
The song, alas! my aching ear
Could not, for far away my dear
Our bridal couch was steeping.

I could not hear, but saw my sire
Collect his wood for winter fire,
And knew he touch'd the rustic lyre
As he his grain was reaping.

But, loud above my aching head,
The drowsy watch was called to tread
The deck, and slow I left my bed,
And then the tide was neaping.

THE FELO-DE-SE.

In yon unhaunted, and unhallowed copse,
O'er whom no form is bent to shed a tear,
The tortured victim of delusive hopes,
Poor Austin sleeps, beyond the verge of fear.

Perchance his heart was formed in virtue's mould,
And beat responsive to celestial worth,
His noble hand the gilded stores unrolled
Before the good man of ignoble birth;

His voice, in soothing accents, hushed the woes,
The iron pangs, that rack the pensile breast,
And his high soul portrayed each charm, that throws
A screen o'er sorrows, that life's blessings wrest.

In the deep mansions of his pliant heart,
He bore the shafts of envy and disdain,
Nor worth, nor wisdom could a charm impart
To quell his anguish, or assuage his pain.

A smile would tremble on his pallid lip,
Like the dim sunbeam of the dusky hour
O'er lilied lawns, when pendent willows dip
Their boughs in rills, or droop beneath the shower.

But oh! when fancy lured his raptured sight
With a rich gem, in thrilling hope he sprung,
And grasped the thorn, and, merged in mental night,
His spirit dark to agony was stung.

ANTISTROPHE I.

When flower-wreathed Morn upon the mountains danced,
And fragrant gales the spangled meadows fanned,
His radiant eye o'er nature's fair form glanced,
Each sense was revelling, and each passion bland.

His soul drank nectar from the honied fields,
And, in exuberance, bounded like the fawn,
The darkest breast the light of glory gilds,
And heaven descends to deck the gemmed dawn.

Oh! then he roved and culled the blushing flowers,
And wove a garland, in his wayward mood,
To grace the brow of her, who charmed the bowers,
That bloomed in his lone, mental solitude.

STROPHE II.

The soft, the delicate, the dovelike breath
Of gentle ruth attuned his soul for bliss,
But in the shock, the scorn of man fell death
His fine heart sunk to dark despair's abyss.

His breast was not an adamantine throne,
Where reigned stern Apathy with stoic eye,
Unmoved by gore, unheeding mortal groan,
Dark deeds her vaunt, and death her revelry.

He lured not victims with the rays of heaven,
Stolen to fascinate by a lucid glare,
Then lock the chain by which the wretch is riven,
And, smiling, dye the gory scimitar.

No!—the fierce pangs of human wo he hushed,
But curses fell upon his tortured ear,
From life—from hope in frenzied rage he rushed,
They laid him shroudness on his raven bier.

ANTISTROPHE II.

So there he sleeps beneath the glebe untrod,
And, if perchance a vagrant footstep roam
Around the spot, or press the fatal sod,
Or a sigh's breathed o'er dire misfortune's dome;

A warning voice will break the sweet repose,
And mark pollution on the pensive mien,
That dares to drop a tear, and is not froze
To iciness when gazing on the scene.

Poor suicide! thy bitter life was sad,
And agonizing were thy woes unknown,
A fiend each fair, and bright, and dear scene clad
With desolation; and the eternal throne

Man strove to seize, and thee thy doom award
In never waning fire and hopelessness;
Thou should'st have reared thy crest, and bravely warred,
And made each proud head prone, and every voice to bless.

CHORUS.

But I would seek thy voiceless tomb,
And tread the moaning nightshade down,
And weep amid sepulchral gloom,
Nor vent a curse, nor wear a frown.

He, that thy being gave, alone
Can know thy thousand untold woes,
He knows if ought can death atone
Inflicted by thy hand—he knows.

Goaded by hate, and black despair,
Illuded by his fickle fate,
The youth has fallen who was fair,
And his grave is desolate.

This sphere is sure no place for those,
Who feel each taunt and bitter jeer,
Yet we must brave our mortal woes,
And steel ourselves against a tear.

The hand, that caused the stream to flow,
A one can justly stem the torrent,
And he, who strikes the fatal blow,
Is ever viewed with eye abhorrent.

A NONDESCRIPT.

There lives amid the varied scenes of life
A vixen, masqued in starless mystery.

Her tresses seem, in distant view, to wave
In auburn full profusion o'er a neck
Of ivory; her bright mien lit with smiles,
That glow in loveliness, and homage win
From devotees, who kneel afar, and strew
Her path with odoriferous incense;
Her eye, in diamond flashes, fills the soul
With rapture voiceless, and to mortal ken
A blissful angel loves to linger there,
And the Pierian habitants are gemmed
With the bright crowns the Paphian goddess wore;
And there they dance in mazy pride, and fling
Sweet perfume at each wanton wheel of love;
Not soft Idallia's form, 'mid groves of palm,
Seemed wrought in mould so smooth, and pencilled o'er
With teints so delicate, as her's; she moved
In dignity and gracefulness—her voice
Breathed forth celestial aspirations, fraught
With holy love, in vocal symphony.
I saw a form, on glossy pinions, move
In fearless majesty, yet calm and sweet,
And soar above the dazzled herd around,
And break the spell the Pythoness had hung,
In sybil wiles, around her horrid mien.
Oh! then, recoiling, faith was lost in dread,
And false, illusive seemed my startled view
Of hissing serpents, wreathed around her brow,
Who coiled, in massive folds, and fiercely flung,
From venomed tongues, their fatal poison o'er
The haunted scene; her wrinkled lineaments,
Distorted all, assumed a demon glare

Of vengful fierceness; and the yellow blood
Diffused a sallow flush o'er features,
Wrought into heavenly form by the art
Of magic falsehood; her celestial frame
Before the seraph eye, that gazed upon
Its dread deformity, became a mass
Of formless, graceless, and ignoble shame;
Her eye flashed with the fires, that glow around
The sad victim of undying torture.
She shrunk away in terror wild before
The rays, that disenthralled the votary
Of charms, that glittered in the distant eye,
But withered in possession, and assumed
A Stygian horror, and in holy wrath
A sheeny sabre was brandished on high,
And pierced the heart's deep core; the flood
Of life reeked from the deadly wound, and flowed,
In tainting streams, around the syren's dome.
Graved on her robe were flaring figures, wrought
In fascinating forms, but on her brow,
Devoid of hieroglyphic mystery,
Appeared “hypocrisy;” and upon the crown
Of the winged being, who unveiled her wiles,
And broke her fancied spell, in jewels set,
Shone the fair name of bright and stainless Truth.

LESANG;

OR, THE GRAVE OF THE ABORIGINAL FLOWER.

I.

The crescent through the liquid air,
That breathed in fragrance o'er the grove,
Was sailing, and her vestments fair
Unfurled in mild and tranquil love;
And o'er the wold, enamelled bright,
The fairy woodnymphs seem to glide,
The phantom queens of noiseless night,
In all their lucent pygmean pride;
The beech was nodding from the cliff,
The moss-wreathed oak was sadly sighing,
And, on the cove afar, the skiff
O'er the light blue wave was flying;
The mountain hoar arose on high,
The visual pillar of the sky,
And down its shaggy sides, embrowned
By tropic suns, with rapid bound,
The lion, panther, fierce jackal,
Rushed to their midnight festival;
The hour was lone and sad, I ween,
But, voiceless was the desert scene?

II.

Clad in the garb of deepest wo,
A tenant of the airy height,
Her bosom heaved by mis'ry's throe,
And marked with grief her visage bright,

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Why moans Manan in wailings deep,
Why loves lone Echo to respond
The bitter cry along the steep,
In notes of deep affection fond?
Oh! she has ceased to win the meed,
The olive sons of the cane-girt wood
In battle fierce, and fell, did bleed
To crown her with, the fair, the good;
Her sire, the chief of all the braves,
Who reigned the lords of wave and weald,
No more the fiend of havoc raves;
And rules by prowess firmly held;
And dark-haired Manan's sunny bower,
Upon the emerald, sloping hill,
Is tenantless at vesper hour,
And untrod dews around distil;
The eagle spirit of her race
Has flown away with rapid pace,
The congar makes his gory lair
In the royal weekwam—ay—and there
The night-wind bears the embers warm
Of all, that wore the living form,
And none, amid the dark despair,
Is left a boon to crave, or share.
Why flash the eyes, that beamed with mildness,
Around the wood in maniac wildness?

III.

Why are her arms clasped round her breast,
And why that heartless smile through tears?
Her dulcet song will hush to rest
The infant now the mother bears.

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It slumbers in its bough-rocked cradle,
And mutely to the fountain-spring
Lone Manan treads, with cocoa-ladle,
The cold, pure beverage to bring.
In dreamless wo she pressed the knoll,
And sat upon the moss-grown seat—
“Dread grief seems rushing on thy soul,
And art thou—art thou desolate?
Why lov'st thou this dark wilderness,
If ought can be to win and bless”
“Stranger! thy mien appals my sight,
And adds a pang unto my heart,
The north-wind, oh! has sent a blight
O'er all that could a hope impart;
My garden in you wild was growing,
And vernal rays just oped the bud,
Then flew the fires of vengeance glowing,
Quenched only by my father's blood.
I was a chieftain's pride and glory,
The flower, that bloomed around his path,
O veil, ye Powers, the awful story!
Areouski's thundering wrath
Slept, moveless, in yon darkling cave.
And here is now my princely grave
Amid the marsh—no Indian eye
Will e'er the unknown spot espy,
Nor wandering footstep press the sod,
Save the cursed white-man's sole, O God!”

IV.

“As shadows flit before the dawn,
Perchance thy woes will find a balm,

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And yet remain a martial train
Of warriors, who will bear the palm.”
“The Spirit, of the red right-hand,
Will hear proud Kolacusta's daughter,
And wield in wrath the gore-dyed brand
O'er the murderers' ruthless slaughter!
By my tombless father's name,
By all the glory he had won,
They shall hear 'mid death and flame,
My last—my dying malison!
Lesang—accursed for ever be
The man, who robbed me of my glory,
Yet O! his name is dear to me,
I love him, e'en in garments gory—
Lesang entwined my heart in love,
We looked—and vowed by him above,
To live in one—our bosoms prest,
An infant hung upon my breast,
And I in love and hope was blest.

V.

“Taught by my sire, he bounded o'er
The pathless forest, like a roe,
And slew the crocodile on the shore,
Or bayed the rapid buffalo;
And sure, unerring was his arrow,
As the flaming bolt of heaven,
In wide savannas, ravine narrow,
The victim fell by morn, or even!
And dauntless was his fiery soul,
As the firm rock 'mid cataracts,

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Each scene of terror would unroll,
Ere death did mark his gory tracks;
We spread the bear-skin, and we slept
I woke, and base Lesang had fled,
Years rolled away, and still I wept,
And classed him with the unknown dead.
'Twas when the autumnal jubilee
Had filled each heart with joyous glee,
And dimmed the eye of the Cherokee,
Around lay buskined warriors, dead
To glory's whoop, or danger's dread,
On arid sands the feathery plume,
The bow, and battle's rich costume,
Were strewn, and soul impassive slept,
And deadly still was the cloud-wrapt hill,
Like lioness, ere burns her eye,
When nought is left but to shriek and die.

VI.

“Swathed in its bands, yon orphan child,
(O! sweet the thought, it knows not grief,)
Hung on my breast, and we sought the wild,
But oft gazed on the warrior-chief,
Who lay, unknown, unseen, unheeding
Guile, or ambush, bow or brand;
But on the prairie war is breeding,
And death is winged from the white man's hand;
Through the dun gloom a vivid flash,
A barbed bolt, the signal rung,
An hundred desperadoes dash—
Our warriors to the battle sprung,

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But reeled and fell, and not a bow
Their nerveless arms in terror drew;
O'er marsh and glen I frantic flew,
Lesang, Lesang, and is it you?
Spare, spare him—Oh! my hoary sire!
'Twas vain; their hands had lit the pyre.
His blood is reeking on the turf,
His embers rest upon the surf.

VII.

“My frenzied eye, in burning wrath,
Surveyed the basilisk of night,
In reckless ire I crossed his path,
And spoke in fell despair's dread might;
'Nay—seek not thus to 'scape the doom
The Manitou prepares for thee,
Beneath yon thicket's rayless gloom
Thou shalt enjoy thy revelry;
Say, demon, say is this the pledge
Of deathless hope, and ceaseless love;
Is that his couch—yon craggy hedge,
Where thou hast doomed thy spouse to rove?
Go—thou shalt sleep in shroudless dust,
The crow shall weave thy funeral pall,
Thy name by every tongue be curst
And round thy fleshless form shall all
The serpent brood agree to coil;
Now take my malison to foil
Thy exploits, and thy feats of glory;
Go—thou shalt sleep in vestures gory;

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Thy banner, dyed in human slaughter,
The wrathful Ioconda's daughter
Shall wrest from thy ignoble hand,
And furies round thy torture stand.

VIII.

“He turned in scorn—I sought yon height,
With fury merged in dark despair,
My shriek rung on the ear of night,
And sprung the lion from his lair;
A death-scene rushed upon my view,
And screams of horror shook the glen,
The poisoned arrow fiercely flew,
A flash arrayed the gloom, and then
The pierced heart's last convulsive throb
Sent a faint shriek—I could not sob,
The fountain of my tears had dried,
And love, and hope, and passion died,
But Lesang fell—and all was o'er—
My voice is hushed for evermore.”

IX.

Dark Manan sunk upon the knoll,
Her flashing eye has lost its fire,
Her noble mind and guileless soul
No more the tale of death inspire;
The wanderer scooped a shallow grave,
And there he laid the forest flower,
The last of all the savage brave,
To whom their spirit, as a dower,

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Gave all this noble hemisphere;
He took the boy, devoid of fear,
And trained him, in a Christian land,
To deeds of mercy, pure and bland;
And oft the bard, at eventide,
When nature veils her scenes of pride,
Has heard him chant, along the dale,
His mother's wild, and dreadful tale.

A SEASIDE REVERIE.

Aurora's sheen track fades along the sky,
And orient beams vermilion it in pride,
The crimson pendants from the vessel fly,
That o'er the blue wave doth serenely glide;
The rapid fury of the warring tide
Is hushed along the platted woodland shore,
And warbling larks through the blue ether ride,
Carolling their honied music as they soar
To those aerial fields, that wing ne'er fanned before.

Congenial nature in the banquet shares
Of renovated life, and living light,
Decks her fair brow, her robe of splendour wears,
And views, in time's clear mirror, with delight
The form, that gilds her votary's raptured sight;
The curlew joins the seagull in her glee,
The mock-bird carols from the wood-crowned height,
All living powers awake the jubilee,
Whose kingdom is the land, or bright and waveless sea.

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Majestic Ocean! thy wide-rolling wave
Paths the dread course, and is the joyless home
Of the neglected sailor, or his grave;
Stern fate hath doomed him o'er the world to roam,
His pathway billowy, and his rocking dome
The bark, careering mid the lurid storm;
Maternal eld to watch his slumbers come
Not, O, nor greets his vacant eye the form,
That shone upon his visions when his heart was warm.

He walks, with eagle-eye, the airy shrouds,
Whose infant foostep pressed the flowery field,
His dark canopy is the flood of clouds,
O'er whom affection did a mansion build,
And gratulate itself with fancies wild;
O! when the smiling mother saw the eye
Of childhood glow, and o'er the laughing weald
The fair child sport in glowing ecstasy,
Her clouded vision kenned not manhood's lowering sky.

In the deep bosom of yon billowy flood
Lies many a jewel—many a form full dear,
The ardent votary of ideal good,
And the misanthropist with feelings sear;
O'er coral fields the reckless billows bear
The austere beauty, and wild libertine,
And o'er their unseen tomb no pearly tear
Is shed in sympathetic ruth divine,
No plaintive lay is sung, around no flowers entwine.

Wild youth, invested with the charms of heaven,
Revels in baseless dreams, and phantasies,

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And woos a syren, till by furies driven,
He wakes encircled by the warring skies,
And agony succeeds his ecstasies;
Exulting hope is merged in dark despair,
The radiance of youthful fervour dies,
Withered is every scene that once was fair,
And fraught with poison the horrific simoom air.

Wisdom is nurtured by the saddest scenes,
The restless waves, menacing wo and death,
Depict the soul, whose baseness never gleans
A wandering thought of grandeur from the breath
Of glory; oh! be mine the iron wreath
Of moveless honour, and unchanging vow,
That cannot crouch a heartless plea beneath
To scorn all faith, and wear a placid brow
Alone towards pampered guilt, whose tinselled vestures glow.

THE MANIAC.

Hark! The rosy foot, that pressed the bed of flowers,
Like angels on the rainbow, trips around these massive towers;
A smiling form, in golden vestures clad,
As sunbeams o'er an arid heath, descends and makes me glad.

And music on my sweet harmonious ear
Floats like the strains of spirits from yon glory-cinctured sphere,

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My raptured soul is panting for the wing
To sail o'er glowing floods of light, and hymns of Eden sing.

Lo! he appears! O come my chosen lover!
Like gales of perfume, that have flown the rich Ausonia over,
My bosom swells to meet thy clasping hand,
As fires of pure devotion urge the bright seraphic band.

Hush! his pallid lips would sing the song of love,
Like heaven-taught choristers within the deep palmetto grove,
I see his jewelled pinions wave for flight,
As stars that flash along the welkin in the dark-descending night.

Alas! my vision is so dim, I cannot trace,
Amid my dark, and wandering hair, the smile upon his face,
I know his voice will tune a welcome back,
For he did follow like the star in Luna's haloed track.

Oh God! he wears around a snowy shroud,
And seems amid it like a seraph on a fleecy cloud;
I wove a blooming garland for his brow,
But ah! I cannot touch him, or he ne'er would break his vow.

He's gone—but lives within my burning brain,
As walks the mermaid o'er the waters of the rolling main,
And dies the notes of his soft silver lute,—
The charm has fled—and I am lone—and all the mansion's mute.

110

[There's a dome in yon star, that is floating on high]

There's a dome in yon star, that is floating on high,
And shedding its brilliance o'er the blue fields above,
Where the tear trickles not, nor is uttered the sigh,
But the thoughts are all gentle, and the dictates of love;
Where the wreath, that encircles the ivory brow,
Is culled from the flowers entwined round the trellice,
And the honied accents of affection, that flow,
Melt on the ear, like pure notes that are warbled from bliss;
Where the soul is untainted by passion, or guile,
And is pure as the dew that vermilions the lawn,
Where the mien of delight wears a cherubic smile,
Like the gilded Aurora, when she heralds the dawn;
Where diaphanous streams from the mild bosom well,
And are tinctured by smiles as they ripple along
The shore of the heart, where the clear currents swell
When sublimely is chaunted the mellifluent song;
Where the groves of perfume are amaranthine,
And the breeze, that fans the interminable fields,
The breath of the Being, whose bright glories shine
O'er the emerald lawn, that his veilless eye gilds;

111

Where the habitants of bliss on viewless wings roam,
And warble the strains of devotion and love,
Whose echo is caught in the musical dome,
And floats o'er the sapphire walks, gilded above,
Like pyramidal incense from gratitude's shrine;
Where bliss hymeneal is untainted, and pure,
And imparting through termless time blessings divine,
Like sunbeams that flash from the ruby-wreathed ewer.

[The night-hawks fly]

The night-hawks fly
Along the sky,
And fan the welkin with a hollow sound,
The dusky veil
Of eve o'er dale,
And mountain's hung in vapoury folds around.

The lily's bell
Perfumes the dell,
Ere curling petals sleep upon the dew,
Beneath the shade
Of willows laid,
Past scenes of joy attract the mental view.

In yon high nest,
The ringdoves rest,
And spread their dappled wings around their young,
So love did knit
A mantle, and sit
Above my fears—around a bright shield hung.

112

'Mid lilac bowers
The joyous hours,
In mellow tinctures, softly flew along
A vernant shore;
Alas! no more
Those pure hours cheer, save in ideal song.

The fires of mirth,
The rays of worth,
Are quenched in the gulf of grief and wo,
The bliss of love,
The guileless dove,
Have fled, with all their varnished charms, below.

The heart's full throb,
And sorrow's sob
Unreal hopes can never hush to rest,
The lone alcove,
Where fairies rove,
And wanderers pause, is nature's vermeil breast.

There I would lay
The live-long day,
And tune my roundelay, or madrigal;
Nor leave the bower,
Till death's cold hour,
And leave it then my consecrated pall.

113

COLUMBIA; A SAPPHIC ODE.

Eagle of the West! from thine eyrie thou
Didst stoop, and wrest from grandeur's diadem
The choicest gem, that glittered there in pride
Invaluable.

And Freedom's banner, hung upon thy wing,
Was bathed in the fountain of the despot's heart,
And waved in light triumphal o'er a land
Invincible.

O'er bigot rage, and feudal tyranny,
Jewelled regalia, and baronial pomp,
The car of freeborn energies was driven
By the unshackled soul.

Star of the bright West! thy celestial beams
Oppression blew upon the crest of glory,
And spangled o'er the waving gonfalon
With the rays of heaven.

The green-wood arbour, the pellucid stream,
The rural meadow, wood-crowned prairie's plain,
The sea majestic, and the city's scene,
Thy effulgence gilds.

Thy sheeny halo fires the eagle's crest,
When her undazzled eye is on the fight,
Or when her wings are spread above the hall
Of legislation.

114

The dreadless lion walks amid thy blaze,
Eyes his winged compeer in her heavenward flight,
Spares the wild victim, bounds upon his prey,
And glories in the war.

Yet thy irradiation brightest burns
Upon the foaming billow of the ocean,—
The picaroon in his felucca flies
Afar in terror.

The red flag, crescent, glowing tricolor,
Bow to the eagle on her ocean wing,
And spirits greet the glories of the realm
Rising transcendant.

Eagle of the West! Star of Glory dawning!
With pencil dipped in Iris hues, and song
Echoed from heaven, we'll twine the fleur-de-lis
Round victory's brow.

MY NATAL SCENES;

AN IDYL.

Tossed from the nursery on a frowning world,
By wailing gales o'er boiling surges hurled,
Lured by the beacon's tantalizing glow,
That fitful gleams o'er scenes of bitter wo,
Condemned to drag the manacles of wrath
Along our course, and track our reeking path,

115

Sweet mem'ry, being's sheen and brilliant star,
When hushed is terror, and the din of war,
Illumes the dome of mind, the lone heart's cell,
And, as the streams of curling amber well
From the translucent fountain in the grove,
Gilds with celestial rays the forms we love.
But, as the ivy, while it clasps the tree,
And throws its tendrils bright with many a dye,
Infuses poison with its firm embrace,
And blasts the verdure, while it adds a grace,
The gilded visions of saturnian hours,
When beauty's fingers culled the roseate flowers,
And wove a garland for the infantine brow,
And waved the agnus castus' pensile bough,
Rush on the mind with mingled joy and pain,
As rose and hawthorn join to decorate the plain.
Yet the high mount, that rears its snowy head
Majestic o'er the stream's pellucid bed,
Whose azure waves, that rippled in their flow,
Oft bore the youth in wild meanders slow,
And every dell, and bowering grotto dun,
With golden harvests, bronzed in summer's sun,
And laughing meads, where sportive zephyrs play,
And o'er the green-bosomed lawn attune the lay
Of blithesome pleasure, and celestial love,
Where the fond eye gazed on the perfumed grove
Borne on the wings of flashing fancy, rise
In renovate and bright transparencies.

With thee, dear L******, in the days of youth,
Ere love had fled, and died the charms of truth,

116

Oft have I roved along the sunny mead,
And tuned to jollity the rural reed,
When nature, smiling, round the grazing flocks
Waved her bright wand; and shook ambrosial locks,
When fawns in gambols trod the flowery plain,
And bending spirits, at the ringdove's strain,
Struck their thrilled wires unto the songs of heaven,
And sung the glories unto mortals given;
And, when the carols of the soaring lark
Floated in air, ere sunbeams did embark
Hyperion's cohort through the pale-blue skies,
And gild the welkin with irradiate dies,
Nature unfurled her gemmed robe around,
And bloomed in living splendour at the sound
The linnet's melody in aspen grove,
That fluctuates when the light-wing'd zephyrs move,
The cooing turtle's song in vigil hour,
The minstrel's songstress in her darkling bower,
The swallow, twittering on her plumed wing,
The jovial mock-bird of the roseate spring,
The crested cuckoo in the forest's gloom,
And all the lyrists that flit round the bloom,
Regale the bard of solitary mood,
And, with their thousand choirs, make vocal every wood.
Such were the pleasures of our orient years,
That rolling time to distant vision bears;
Distance to fancy lends delightful hues,
And gilds the eye in retrospective views;
In youth each fountain is a nectared ewer,
And every scene extatic, bright, and pure.

117

The clustering vine that fragrant incense yields,
The golden pomp, and “garniture of fields,”
The sheeny cascade, silvered by the rays
Of solar brilliance, and meridian blaze,
Deck radiant nature,—throw a winning charm
Around the heart with vestal virtue warm;
And, when in fury foaming torrents dash,
And fires of wrath around the victim flash,
And peals of thunder rend the shuddering frame
Recoiling from the forked, death-clad flame,
We fondly gaze, through time's dark vista, o'er
The scenes of beauty on a blooming shore,
Drop the sad tear—and chase our fickle fate,
Shrouded in vestures black, and desolate.

FANCY'S ROMAUNT.

I stood on Zion; and methought (a dream
Of ingulphed ages o'er me came) there stood
An hoary minstrel by me, and the gleam
Of his unwonted flashing eye, imbued
With fire, that long had slept in solitude,
Illumed his furrowed visage, and arrayed
His form in splendour—wayward was his mood
Of feverish being, and a fitful shade
Of unknown anguish passed—but on his vitals prey'd.

118

He stood before me with his caftan rent,
And silvery beard far streaming to the breeze,
His unstrung lyre was tuneless—and he bent
O'er its sad, worn golden wires, like the freize
Of some lone fane o'er tomb-stones, or the greeze,
Where countless votaries thronged, that far winds
Its untrod pathway round the dome, where trees,
Time's moaning relics, sigh, and fate unbinds
The virgin lyrist from her shrine, where worshipped noble minds

An unknown Being sketched in mortal garb;
Around the untombed minstrel myst'ry flung
Her sable mantle—but the thoughts unbarb
The heart, that slumbers in its cell, and, stung
To noble plenitude, like bright stars hung
In yon aerial concave, the soul
Springs to impart its fire; when mind is wrung
To frenzied madness, spurning time's control,
The flood of passion pours, clandestine scenes unroll.

He woke from his deep, unbroken reverie—
Not war's fierce, untamed, courser bounds away
'Mid vollied thunders with triumphal glee,
And shakes the gory battle-field—not the fray
Of ocean's billowy waves, when murky day
Retires, and sheds not light upon the scene
Of the wreck'd bark's despair—as the gray
Genius of time, when burst his voice, I ween,
Seem half so terrible, for their armory's seen.

119

He broke mute silence, and his arched brow
Seemed clothed in jewels, and his tow'ring frame
Of adamant,—and fires irradiate glow,
In one full halo of unearthly flame,
Around him; and his eye's wild wrath to tame
No mortal power would dare. The vision flew
Through boundless space, when pealed his awful name,
And rising empires my fixed optics drew,
While tuned the bard his lyre, and sung how nations grew.

“Prostrate Judea! darling child of heaven!
God was thy hierarch, and gracious King,
Before his war-car hostile hordes were driven,
And in Moriah did warbling music fling
On high melodious praise—choirs, enamoured, wing
Their terrene flight to mingle glory's lays
With adoration's songs—earth, elysium ring,
And votive shrines waft censers' perfume—praise,
Honour and devotion crowned blest Ælia's holy days.

“But low-born chicane, and intrigue beguile
A nation of its grandeur, and infest
Ambition's dome, and wisdom's hall, and smile
Upon the railing turmoil—dregs congest,

120

And poison oft the banquet of the blest;
The vulgar heart enshrouds the hottest fires,
The unknown start, and lords pursue the jest,
Freedom and truth outvie the mob's desires,
But lawless rapine lights the noblest nation's pyres.

“Lo! mailed avengers on the ingrate rush,
In madness fly the ungorged eagles o'er
The heaven-doomed clime, and their broad pinions brush
Away the pride of ages, and the shore,
Where angels love to linger, peals the roar
Of ruin, and the poltroon's cry awakes
The fierce fanatic's vaunt—and on high soar
The proud fane's fragments, where the streaming flakes
Of flame illume the sky, and heaven's bright mirror breaks.

“Debasement drove them to the feats of hell,
And nature shuddered at her children's fall,
Frenzied despair, and frantic fury swell
Alecto's blood-fed orgies—but the pall
Of blackness shrouds the unholy festival;
Rebels they were, alas! they loved the slime
Of the foul quagmire, and the sordid thrall
Of luxury and lust, above the clime,
The Eden portioned—planted—blessed by a kind King sublime.

121

“Lone Desolation stalks through mirthless streets,
And reigns sole monarch of the desert land,
Where God once deigned to sway,—the Sovereign greets
From glory's high arch, where, amid his band
Of bitterns, waves the sceptre of command,
And gleams the jewelled diadem of sate,
His voiceless realm exulting—his stern hand
Upholds his silent mandate—and the state
Of once bright Palestine nought but heaven can renovate.

“Where are thy glories, lost Judea! where?
Where are the pomp and splendour of thy fane?
Aerial strains float not through listless air,
Nor beauties linger on thy ravished plain.
Where are thy high-soul'd heroes? Can again
The voice of dauntless chivalry awake
The dormant energies of David's reign?
Can glory's heaven-descended, full beams break
The spell of bondage, gild the Gallilean lake?

“Behold! yon cloud, that veils the eastern skies,
Secrets the angel of exhaustless love,
It gathers not, but bright transparencies
Reveal where harbingers of mercy move;
Doth not thy soul dilate, when from above
Descends the herald to invoke the bloom,
And rays of heaven upon the clime, where grove,
Hill, dale, stream, rock, and nameless tomb,
Attract love, awe, and veneration, though in gloom?

122

“O towery Babylon! cinctured bright
With massive bulwarks—where the gilded groves
Of spires and turrets shed the solar light,
When eve in darkness reigned—thy splendour proves
A fairy pageant—and the wand'rer roves
Through blood-paved palaces; the dragon loves
To slumber in the monarch's couch—and mirth
And maudlin revel quake, when ireful moves
The fiery besom o'er the startled earth—
And heaven's dire fiat caused Chaldea's dismal dearth.

“She fell by pampered luxury—the hall
Of Semiramis and Belshazzar gleamed
With diverse instruments—at glory's call
The one her courser sped where loudly screamed
The raven o'er red heaps of foes—where beamed
The trophied car of triumph—where the dome
Of fame immortal tow'red—and honour deemed
He built earth's empire; fiery spirits roam,
And make the tombless battle-field their foemen's home.

“The other reigned amid a wilderness
Of dazzling glory, and his gem-crowned brow
Beamed peerless mirth—white robed panders bless
The glorious feast—architraves throw

123

Lamps' kindling light—and the full banquet's glow
Of golden cups, and embossed lavers, crowns
The festive dome—arch'd vaults, and swung globes strow
Delicious incense round—but darkly frowns
Impending vengeance, lo! wreathed flame the palace bounds.

“The voiceless, viewless angel hovered o'er
The festal city—flower-wreathed maidens dance
Around the festooned fane of Bel—the shore
Of grand Euphrates hears the proud steed prance
Along towered walls—afar the Persian's lance
Mocks the bright sunbeams, and the clarion's bray
Echoes a fierce defiance; but the glance
Of the determined captain lights the fray,
And nought can crush the band where all their lord obey.

“Now, save the storm-lash'd pyramid, where sleep
Creation's lords in aweless grandeur, all
The gemm'd land is one vast Golgotha—deep
Lie time's vaunting demigods, to the call
Of honour, or of fame unknown—the pall
Of desolation shrouds them—saint and sage,
Monarch and slave, in foul corruption's thrall
Are held mute compeers, and the guileless page
Of refluent Time doth class them equals of the age.

124

“The feudal manacles no longer bind
The low-born vassal—through the slime and gore
Of war and bondage, slaves no longer wind
Their way, and drag their chains, for the rich store
Of death is mingled clay—and vipers soar
Above distinction; chainless mind obeys
Not the tiar'd despot—nervous powers pour
Tinselled treasures into tyrants' cells—rays
Of thought celestial break debasement's tainting haze.

“Immortal Greece! the dim gem glory leaves,
When on her eagle-pinions, ere the ire
Of freedom's foe the fane of grandeur cleaves,
She seeks the lone wild, where the vestal fire
Of virtue burns—unshackled souls aspire!
The quenchless embers of thy funeral pyre
The despot's fell breath blew to vivid flame:
Though long the willow wore thy warbling lyre,
It lives—and cannot die—thy free-born name,—
And every age shall add a jewel to thy fame.

“Thine was the bard, whose noble ardour lives
In freedom's child, and fires his glowing eye,
Thine the proud sophist, whose great name survives
Conception's crude ideas of mystery;

125

Thine were the heroes, on whom destiny
Attended, like the lightning on the storm;
Thine is the clime, where patriot souls will fly
In freedom's holy cause sublimely warm,
And tread thy hallowed strand, and frown at despot's form.

“Destruction waved his besom o'er thee, Rome
Through pillared streets, and festooned fanes of pride,
The vaulted palace, and the peasant's dome,
Decay asserts her dismal reign—the nide
Of feathered rovers throng the hall, or ride
Unrivalled in triumphal march—and chant
Victorious pæans o'er the clime, where's died
Each patriot passion, that could charm or daunt,
Or shed a glow o'er her, that worth made glory's haunt.

“Egeria was the child of fancy, wrought
Into a sybil, and a Pythoness,
By the credulity of man, who sought
To deck a being formed to view and bless;
She and the flamen raised Rome's glory less
Than the low archer of her phalanx'd host;
Her martial virtue, and her fearlessness
Were her omnipotent deities—when lost
The Pantheon fell, and pride fled from Baiæ's coast.

126

“The triple tiar graces ill the brow
Of him, whose palace is the Lateran,
The pomp of gemm'd canonicals, whose glow
Was dazzling—the voice of wrath, from whose ban
The soul recoiled, and quivering lips, all wan,
Ejaculated ruth—the ermined power,
Have fallen in their acme—freeborn man
No more in cells of priestcraft drags his hour
Of wretchedness—but resumes the soul's celestial tower.

“Time's mansions—cities—lords, in one dread tomb
Are now immerged—and other monarchs rise,
And reign o'er other climes—the dread simoom
Of vengeance hath blackened the bright skies
Of glory and of fame. The obsequies
Of nations time performs, and in the dust
Lays all the train of pride; the conqueror dies,
And earth receives him—but the green clods burst,
And winds herald his ashes to their mansion erst.”

The minstrel turned—and radiant flashed his eye—
“Lo! where the Atlantic laves a perfum'd shore,
And the winged glories of a distant sky,
In lambent fires of beauty, hover o'er,

127

A nation reigns; in all the vaunted lore
Of eastern sages, ne'er a reign, like this,
Was sketched in fancy; the shade of power bore
From bondaged climes, now slavery's dark abyss,
The bay, the laurel, palm, to trophy freedom's bliss.

“No proud regalia of imperial state,
Nor feudal seignories of pomp and power,
Nor pride baronial mark the noble fate
Of heaven-blest Columbia; but the hour,
That sealed her freedom, brought a blissful dower
Of wise equality in human kind;
Her patriot chiefs, 'mid glory's splendour, tower,
A golden chain each filial heart doth bind,
And harps in tones of love fling music on each wind.

“She owns no autocrat, who drives his car
O'er prostrate slaves, and lives but in their doom;
The light, that flashed from her refulgent star,
Will wane when ruin shrouds the world in gloom,
But ne'er till then! for the blasting simoom
Of chilling tyranny will rage remote.”
He said; I stood upon a lonely tomb
Amid the platted broomland—and the note
Of the soft nightingale through ether fields did float.

128

THE DESPERATE MAID.

[_]

WRITTEN AT SEVENTEEN.

Sad sat a maiden on the shore,
And viewed the tumbling lake,
She listened to the dismal roar,
And heard the billows break.

She saw high rocks their mountains raise
The rolling waves that washed their base,
The water dashing up the bays,
Which lashed the rocky vase.

Loosened was her golden hair,
Hung in tresses down her breast
Or floating to the chilly air,
Winged from the lake that knew no rest.

Wan was her form and pale her mien,
Sorrow marked her visage bright;
Fled was her eye's full glow serene,
Life was now a winter night.

Her snowy breast was open wide,
On it all the winds did blow,
It felt the cold and chilly tide,
Yet calmed was not its heated glow.

129

Her changing pulse beat short and slow,
As she heard the raging roar;
Quick they ran with every blow,
The rolling waves did strike the shore.

Torn were her feet with flinty stones,
Bare her head to every blast;
Soon did she think to find the bones,
Of him she loved best and last.

On every gale were borne his groans,
Each roaring wave but told them o'er;
Each beast rehearsed his deadly moans;
His boat was wrecked upon the shore.

She laid her heated, glowing head
Upon the cold and frosty earth;
Thought on the woes of him now dead,
For whom she left her father's hearth.

Perhaps they now will search in vain,
To find her whom they loved so dear;
Little think they she dares complain
In sullen notes, by lake so drear.

These direful thoughts did rack her breast,
As the tempest howled along;
Such are the thoughts that find no rest,
Which to aching hearts belong.

130

She heard full oft the owl's wild screech,
Which seemed the awful, dismal dirge;
Oft she sprang her love to reach;—
As oft she met the cruel surge.

Till, rising on the growing breeze,
A dreadful crash did strike her ear;
She started from her bended knees,
Wild with love, and mad with fear.

She eyed the lake from side to side,
She saw its waters dyed with blood;
Nought could be seen upon its tide;
Nothing but the foaming flood.

She looked again;—an object rose,
It was her William on the verge—
She stretched her arms to him inclose—
Off was he borne by roaring surge.

She heard her William's final shriek
And left the low and dreadful shore,
Of rocks she climbed the highest peak—
She plunged—and heard no more.

131

THE OUTLAW'S BRIDE.

In a lone vale, unknown to pomp and state,
Beloved by few, unwilling to be great,
Yet pressed by them in love and faith sincere,
Inmates of penury, beyond a fear
For simple life, save that the hydra head
Of vice might rise in their secluded shed,
Congenial souls, by virtue joined in love,
With not a wish that flew beyond the grove,
Lucius and Laura saw their offspring rise,
Like gilded stars along cerulean skies,
Their minds expanding like the blushing flowers
Beneath bright sunbeams, and prolific showers.
Wild was the scenery, and an arid heath,
Emblem of desolation, and of death
To those who revel in voluptuous mirth,
And scorn the treasure of ignoble birth,
Spread round the cot, that stood within a glade
Which labour's hand had opened from the shade,
But patient toil had drawn from nature's breast
A store, that made the unambitious blest,
And crowned the weary cares of sire and son
With hope of wealth by wise exertions won.
Each infant mien within the cot was bland,
And all was neat, for Laura's toilless hand
Had spread a chaste and graceful scene around,
O'er which the fawn and kid, with sportive bound

132

Enhanced the blushing maiden's merry glee,
And nature held a joyful jubilee.
[OMITTED]
[OMITTED]
[OMITTED]
When from the wood, where fell the gnarled oak,
And towering pine beneath his nervous stroke,
Or the far field, enriched with golden sheaves,
That for the granary the planter leaves,
The joyous husband smiles to meet the eye
Of her he loves, nor heaves a bitter sigh;
When gathered round autumnal fires, that burn
And gild the scene to welcome their return,
The social circle blend their rural smiles,
Unheeding envy, and her wanton wiles,
Survey past scenes and hope for joys to come,
The weeping eye, condemned to gaze and roam,
Might rest upon that quiet spot, and glow
In sparkling fervour o'er a placid brow.
[OMITTED]
[OMITTED]
Amid the calm scenes of those gladsome days
A sullen darkness, and a sunless haze,
A fitful wildness, and elinguid mood,
Came o'er the cheerful tenant of the wood;
His fields were fruitless, and his home unknown
To rustic pleasure, and the honied tone
Of love and friendship, gratitude, content,
With moody sadness and despair unblent.
His board was crowned with viands, known before
To those alone, to whom the ample store

133

Of fortune had descended, with its train
Of luxuries, attendant on her reign;
Yet 'mid the banquet, wondrous to the view
Of her, whose wild imagination flew
Not o'er her hills to search the aulic dome,
And know its pleasures—but ne'er thought to roam—
He sat unquiet, unallured by all
The glowing, rich, and vinous festival;
A pang would rack his soul, the iron there
Was treasuring fast the horrors of despair.
The leaden eye of Laura could not pierce
His darkling breast, nor learn his terrors fierce;
As fond philosophy ascends the height,
And views the lava that illumes the night,
Bends o'er the crater, where the volcan's flame
Not billowy floods could subjugate and tame,
Hears the dread rumbling of the giant's car
Shake the proud height with subterranean war,
But cannot penetrate the scene of strife,
Nor scan the gulf with deadly horrors rife;
So guilt corrodes the bosom of despair,
While conscience, like the lion from his lair,
Asserts her empire, o'er the madding soul
Doth all its sins, unholy deeds, unroll;
When racks the brain with terrors none can tell,
Displays the writhing agonies of hell,
And bids to hope and heaven a long farewell!
But the fierce fires by shame and guilt represt,
Assuaged by none, within the hopeless breast

134

In vivid fury, not exhaustion burn,
And unknown miseries proffered solace spurn.
Yet, when in midnight visions, reason slept,
And lovely Laura on her pillow wept,
Delirious Fancy, in her airy flight,
Invoked the appalling demons of the night,
And told a tale, from which the soul recoiled,—
The sense was frenzied, and the life-blood boiled,
The voice of Lucius gave the dread command,
His eyeballs flashed, and in his gory hand
A sabre gleamed—“the noble deed is done,
The miser falls, the golden prize is won.”
Low murmurs now his pallid lips declare,
Before his vision frowned the fiend Despair,
And shook his brand amid the hydra brood
Of withering spectres lured by human blood;
The incantation he could not dispel,
Nor exorcise the fiends of wrath, who dwell
Within his burning brain; his straining eye
Saw nought but dread, undying agony.
“Poor guileless Austin! thine it was to feel
The ruthless brand, the undeserved steel,
Edgeless but for my adamantine heart—
O God! my hand impelled the deadly dart!
Demons of Death! ye strained the dreadful bow,
And smiling saw the reeking life-blood flow,
Ye nerved my arm, and rung his funeral knell,
Ye are my compeers—and my dome is hell!”
He paused and slept; a ghastly smile was seen
Upon his lip—bewildered was his mien.

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But Oh! what anguish rent a woman's breast,
What moonless darkness on her senses prest!
No sound is heard beneath the thatched roof,
But low, and far, and rapid tramps a courser's hoof.
[OMITTED]
[OMITTED]
[OMITTED]
[OMITTED]
“Lucius! thy crime is known to Him on high,
Prepare thy shroud, and pall, for thou must die!
The sword of Justice o'er thy fate-doomed head
Is hung, to avenge the blood that thou hast shed;
Vengeance hath heard, and bared her crimson arm,
Her eye is on thee, her thou canst not charm.”
The frantic woodsman saw the massive chain,
And owned the dread of murder's purple grain,
A horse, a bar, a dungeon, meet his eye,
All that remains is to confess and die!
Before his view the fatal scene appears,
The husband dies, the wife is left to tears.
The hope of youth, when every scene is fair,
Unknown deep wo, and pleasure-blighting care,
The nectared joys of matrimonial love,
The peace of age, and happiness above,
Have lost their richness, and the soul in gloom
Seeks her bright home beyond the darkling tomb.
Reason deserts her awe-commanding throne,
Her soul is void, and every passion lone,
Save when dread memory recalls the hours,
That flew along a brilliant field of flowers;

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When hope was smiling, blissful dreams beguiled
The lonely tenant of the desert wild;
The days of toil then ushered nights of rest,
Each eye was glowing, and each passion blest.
But when bewildering miseries inurn
The mind, while fires of fitful fury burn,
When the warm heart, in agony immured,
By nothing bright or lovely is allured;
It is as if the human frame entombed,
While yet the vital spark the breast illumed,
Felt every pang inflicted by the worm,
And every gripe he makes upon the form;
But cannot frame a curse to fright away
The revellers jubilant over mortal clay;
Nor lift a hand the reptiles low to crush,
Who hold dominion, and in armies rush.
Laura, who once with joyous fervour hailed
The glad return of Lucius, and regaled
His hours of solitude with bonny love,
And roved delighted through the maple grove,
Who pledged her hand, and yielded up her breast
To cheer his loneliness, his heart divest
Of all the stings a reckless world will give,
And all the darts that rankle there and thrive,
No more with rosy foot treads o'er the lawn,
And heralds with her radiant smile the dawn;
Dark is her soul, her every hope is dead,
Misfortune's baneful vial now has shed
A blighting poison through her graceful frame,
A storm around her home, a stigma on her name.

137

Her cot is roofless, and the scene is mute
That echoed once the flagelet and flute,
Her fields uncultured, and her children fair,
Like silver down upon the viewless air,
Scattered through varied climes unsought, unknown,
Deaf to a mother's prayers, or mellow tone,
Or laid in sunless mansions premature,
And shroudless, on a wild and desert moor.
Round the lone fountain, digged by hands beloved,
Musing on other scenes, she oft has roved,
While the clear wave, that glistened sheeny there,
Flung back the bending form, and imaged out Despair.

ADIEU.

The winged hours flew along, we met—
Embraced—and parted—but oh! yet
There was a rapture in the eye,
A veilless glow of ecstasy,
A treasure in that warm embrace,
A lingering smile upon the face;
There was the soul in every word
My revelling ear with ardour heard,
There was a charm in every tread,
That thrilled my heart, and pleasure bred.

138

A thousand loves were vision glancing,
And round Eliza's bright form dancing;
And all the scene of full delight
Was winning, beautiful, and bright.
'Tis heaven to meet the forms we love,
When our dull eyeballs widely rove,
Around the earth, o'er vacancy,
Nor catch a glimpse of beauty nigh;
But oh! to mingle souls, and part—
It seems a death blow to the heart.
Yet, yet, we meet ere long again,
And then we'll link a golden chain.

INOSCULATION.

With the bright fires of youth and beauty glowing,
And heaven-lit hearts, imbued in virtue's mould
With love celestial, while hope's tide was flowing,
They met; before their vision been unrolled
Earth's fairy scenes, and rapture is bestowing
Her trophied meed,—her gilded wreath of gold;
And amber skies diffuse the ambient air,
And every scene of life is beautiful and fair.

Oh! while the youthful tide is laving hearts,
That feel intensely every bitter jeer
Of a demon world, ere bright hope departs,
And stygian Time the Lethean pall doth wear,
And tortured soul is steeled 'gainst sorrow's darts,—
Oh! then to feel the hand of beauty wipe the tear

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Of grief away—her bosom, oped to share
Life's piercing woes—sure heaven is dwelling there.

Earth is a joyless sphere; but oh! if bliss
E'er her cherubic smile to mortals deigns,
She lingers in the soft connubial kiss,
She warms the blood in matrimonial veins,
And thrills the rapture of our happiness.
Unenvied celibacy quiet feigns,
And vaunts the unshared banquet of the soul,
But all his joys spring from the brimming bowl.

The baseless pictures of a wild romance,
And all the poet's termless fancy yields,
Thrill not the bosom like the faintest glance
Of sweet domestic love; it brightly gilds
Each scene—in transport's beatific trance
Angels are dancing o'er the flowery fields,
And He, whose name's Benevolence and Love,
Sheds his sweet smile o'er heaven's wide realms above.

When soul expansive grasps the blissful boon,
Dear woman's heart—and love by rolling years
Is nurtured—and smiles the hymeneal moon
In ceaseless glow, like stars along the spheres
Cinctured by the flushing radiance of June;
Primeval hope her Eden vestures wears,
Exuberant pleasure cheers the heart of feeling,
And silver streams o'er laughing lawns are stealing.

140

When childhood's eye was glowing with the joys,
That spring from life beheld in theory,
When the infantine hand grasped nature's toys,
And the light foot, beneath a radiant sky,
Was dancing o'er the mead, and the soft voice
Was heard full jocund; then our bosoms prest,
And the rural reveries of hope were blest.

Another, and a fairer being shares
The sweet affection of that feeling breast,
To sorrow's view each holy scene appears
In Tisiphone's pall—and demons wrest
Our transient pleasures bought with bitter tears;
Still Virtue folds thee in her jewelled vest,
And lovely woman, clasped in rapture's arms,
Dispels the gloom of wo with her celestial charms.

MONOLOGUE.

NAPOLEON.
Scene—St. Helena. Time—Sunset.

The flaming sun sinks on the ocean's breast,
And seeks his wavy dome 'mid coral groves;
His beams, in opaque scintillations, illume

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The desert crags, and bronze the leafless wood.
So sunk my peerless glory on the plain
Of dread Waterloo, when my tricolor,
First drooped in battle, and the eagle's wing
Fanned the vapid air in her crestless fight;
So died the laurel wreath of Victory,
That cinctured bright my imperial brow,
And was crested by the dark crimson plume
Waving, a banner, 'mid the din of war.
[OMITTED]
[OMITTED]
Creation's Lord is Saint Helena's slave!
Ambition's fount is quenchless and its wave
Instils a ruthless madness through the soul,
And the unsated palate burns for aye;
Like the fell fluid from the dipsas' tooth,
The burning tongue to quench corroding fires
Craves the oft replenished cup, but finds, alas!
The flame is nurtured by the ceaseless draught.
O! in ambition's gory path I dared
The fiercest flashes from the flame of death,
And climbed the Gallic throne o'er breathless hills
Of shroudless foes.

God, in his sovereign wrath,
When Pandemonium's fiends in artifice,
And baneful bitterness, had failed to win
The burning wreath, that harrows up the brain
To deeds diabolic, commissioned earth
A fell peerless demon to engender.
She chose the gaunt hyena, to depict

142

The outward monster—heaven hurled scathing fires
To light the heart of adamant, that hell
Had sacked its dire domains to deck, ensconce,
And enshrine with liquid flame; he towered
Lord of the world, and harbinger of death.
Conscience enseared, and riven every chord
That tuned a thought to high magnificence,
He gazed alike on minaret and spire,
Crescent and cross, mosque and fane; prostrate fell
Before the shrine of Hera's sage, or God;
But chiefly adoration hung upon
The formless being, anarchy; who reigned
In aulic domes all untrod and voiceless.
From the giant's mouth a volcan poured
Its sheeted flame o'er empires and the flood
Wafted the besom of desolation;
His morbid eye beheld no splendid good,
Domestic peace, or public worth, but wrath
Blasted the joys of beauty and of hope.
I am that being! heaven's unwilling scourge!
For I would burst my manacles, and ride,
Imperial Autocrat, o'er the wreck
Of universal nature; I would light
The concave in an ocean blaze, and tune
Creation's requiem 'mid the dying yells
Of her slaughtered habitants—the sound
Of shrieks and lyres would mingle in a flood
Of symphony unequalled and sublime.
The murky skies should roll, like parchment, o'er
The fire-clad welkin, and the expiring groan
Of nature raise my loud triumphal song.

143

Alas! the radiant sun has fled, and night
Wraps in her massive folds of darkness
The hero of her love; upon this height,
In giddy loneliness, and desolate,
I stand, enveloped by the iron pall,
Whose folds shall wrap me in oblivion;
And yon wild flood, that roars in thunders round
The storm-lashed cliff, shall chant my lonely dirge
Along this Albion; and the foot shall tread
Heedless on his grave whose voice could call
Angels, or demons; at whose sovereign beck
Myriads of hands would sketch his name
Upon the glorious heavens, and array
His tomb with the halo of undying light.

[I love to linger on the hours]

I love to linger on the hours,
That thrilled my infant heart with happy gladness,
When wreaths were culled from blushing flowers,
That hung around ambrosial bowers,
And ne'er was seen the Gorgon form of sadness.

There we can fondly, deeply dwell
Nor heave a cankering thought in sighing,
The wild-bird's song, the village bell,
The laughing mead, the flowery dell,
In fancy bright, around the mind are flying.

144

Each scene of youth is consecrate,
And rushes through the soul in airy brightness,
We heed not then our fickle fate,
Our minds with hope and love dilate,
And smiling woodnymphs trip around with lightness.

Beneath the oak, not drooping willow,
Laid, when the flashing sun rolled down in glory,
The beryl turf my vernant pillow
I loved to gaze upon the billow
Rolling afar—and list wild fancy's story.

The unholy deeds, that rack the brain,
And wring the bounding soul with torture,
Are all unknown—the lyric strain,
That floats along the blooming plain,
Wafts no base homage to the ear of hauteur.

O could I trace my being o'er,
And hang upon the sunny spots that brighten,
Mind could not find a fairer shore,
A finer field, a nobler store,
Than childhood pure and holy love to heighten.

Obscure, ignoble, and unknown,
E'en while a vivid fancy's brightly glowing,
I'd seek my natal plains all lone,
And listen to the songster's tone,
And drink the balm from nature's bosom flowing.

145

WINTER.

In sheeted robes of iciness,
Aloft on sweeping pinion,
The sire of storms and dreariness
Resumes his wild dominion;
The green lawn's robed in bedded snow,
And Autumn, nature's darling child,
Has fled, and veiled her golden brow,
And every scene is cold and wild.

The chilling stream unchiming flows
Beneath the icy mantle, thrown
O'er weald and rill, and, deeply froze,
No eye can mark its torrents flown;
So grief has barred the vital flood,
That whilom flew at sorrow's tone,
But rapid pours the boiling blood
Within my bosom—there alone.

The ice-tapestried, leafless grove,
Tinged by the yellow solar glow,
Doth in fantastic figures move,
Or rattle on the crust below;
So through my soul, at misery's throe,
The reliques of sweet pleasures rush,
But ah! so changed, eye cannot know
Their fairy forms in livid flush.

146

Oh! all is drear and desolate!
But sweeter to my lonely mind
Is winter's bloomless, fruitless state,
Than all the pomp and glow, that bind
The eager gaze in revelry;
The spirits of a fair clime wind
Their way around to charm the eye,
That manhood's guile and venom blind.

Congenial Winter! like my spirit,
Gloomy, dark, companionless,
From thy breath I can inherit
Balm to quench the bitterness,
That poisons every nectared chalice—
I love thee in thy glacial dress,
For thy gale's not fraught with malice,
But thousand scenes are left to bless.

While o'er desert scenery roving,
And the gale is whistling by,
While tender forms are bright and loving,
And fancy gilds the flashing eye,
The blissful realms that hang above,
On fleecy folds sublimely moving,
Raise our hopes to praise and love,
And heaven is then its rapture proving.

147

[Here on this velvet-mantled lawn]

Here on this velvet-mantled lawn,
Smiling beneath the rosy dawn,
The breeze breathes incense from the daisies bedding,
The musk-rose blooms around, and flings
A nectared burden on the wings
Of fragrant Zephyr, who is lightly treading
O'er the fields of dewy flowers,
Or above is fanning bowers,
The violet or the flaunting woodbine's spreading;
The Eden scene is purely fair,
And forms, that flit around it, wear
The carmine robes that deck the hour of wedding.

Here the odorous yellow jasmine,
And the virgin eglantine,
Through groves of platted evergreen are creeping,
And when the gale is rustling by,
And cooling an effulgent sky,
Beneath the shielding shade the lover lone is sleeping
Oh! blissful are his fairy dreams,
And radiant are the blushing beams,
That gild the eye of beauty absence weeping;
Now on a blooming, sunny spot,
And cinctured by a flower-spread grot,
His peaceful hamlet stands, and fawns in glee are leaping.

Here perched upon the verdant bay,
The merry mockbird tunes his lay,

148

And countless choristers are music flinging
On the hours, that linger still
In dance along the winding rill,
Ere, o'er empyreal plains their wild flight winging,
They mingle in the flood of age,
And leave to compeers frolic's stage;
The lark, the robin, and the redbird, singing,
In carols woo, the festoons through,
The throbbing heart to share a part
Of joys, that spring not from the nerve that torture's wringing.

Here, o'er the full and airy soul
Sweet streams of baneless rapture roll,
And holy bliss o'er tender chords is stealing,
Unruffled is the rose-twined bower,
Delightful is the joyous hour,
That sheds its soothing balm o'er tortured feeling;
The sky-lark mounts to chant her song,
The eagle, heavenly dales along,
Is heralding celestial angels wheeling
Through the amber skies afar—
The dome of each is a flashing star,
And on each riven chord is felt the hand of healing.

149

A CANTLET.

When winter winds, wailing,
Tear the fair robes of Autumn,
When icy hills, sailing,
Hear the rude polar drum;

When wanton wilds, wearing
Their mantles of flowers,
The stern gale is searing,
And divesting the bowers;

When wood pigions wild wing
Their way to the tropic,
And the turtle-doves sing
Not, with love, lay, and topic;

When woman, weald, woodland,
Are silent and sighing,
And the smiles of the mien bland
Are drooping, and dying;

When, wielding with wasting
His rod of dominion,
The wind-god is blasting
Sweet Spring on the pinion;

When winged winds winnow
The lilies fresh blooming,
And red perfumed minnow,
And beauty is looming;

150

I would watch the fleet wild-bird
Careering through ether,
I would catch the sweet watchword,
And seek the far heather.

I would ramble through wild groves,
And the isles of the blest,
And list the thronged ringdoves
Coo love from their nest.

ENNUI.

There is a dark and rayless hour, that hangs
A mystic mantle o'er our dearest pleasures,
Attended not by agonizing pangs,
A ruthless ruin of our tinkling treasures,
When the Eumenides, with Gorgon mien,
Call their dire progeny, the empusae,
To lay the dark domains of death, the scene
Of mornless gloom, and dreadful destiny,
Before the startled vision, and array
Their legions in a phalanx;—but when worth,
Nor love, nor beauty, round the fancy play,
And o'er the soul's dominions dark a dearth
Of feeling reigns, a desert listlessness
Enshrouds the mind; as hopeless Psyche lone,
Companionless, was left with none to bless
Her tired existence, no soft, soothing tone

151

To call her dormant energies back to life,
And renovate the passions, that illume
This warring sphere with reckless terrors rife,
And gild the tenant of a living tomb.
The heartless galliard, and buffoon appear
Like gilded butterflies, on velvet wing,
In idle sport, and idiot mummery, e'er
Chasing airy phantoms around the spring,
That purls along in draining flow—or apes,
Frisking around in frolic mimicry;
Or like the wanton shades, and sybil shapes,
Flitting, on pinions beautiful, on high,
And luring fickle man to misery and death.
The sage philosopher, in sable stole,
Strikes the fell dart, and poisons with his breath
The exquisite, cultured, but hopeless soul,
And flings the robe of Nessus o'er the frame;
His learned maxims lose their magic art,
They kindle into fury terrible the flame,
That sleeps in dormant embers round the heart.

O'er the sad soul there comes a chilling blight,
A winter ... and a withering of all that's fair,
A heedless feeling, and a starless night;
And pestilential is the circling air!
Yet surging billows break not, whelm not all
The fine sensations of majestic mind—
Stern apathy, of iron mien, the pall
Of darkness throws—in labyrinths we wind

152

Our devious way—in wild vagaries
Of soulless mirth, and jest, we strive to throw
A darkling veil o'er grief, and light the skies,
Where horror broods, with beauty's vermeil glow.
'Tis all a wanton masquerade—a play
With woes, that none can mitigate, nor heal—
Like the light deer, that sports the summer day
Beneath the shade nemoral, ere the steel
Rives her full heart, and lays her darling young
In piles around her;—In exclusion dread
From all we hope or love, not fiercely stung
To vengeful madness, by agony bred,
Not doomed to writhe in torture audible,
Cinctured by victorious fiends, and e'er
Illuded by their subtle arts, and fell,
But condemned groanless, and without a tear,
To drag along a weary life—no fond,
Mild, compassionate voice to hear, and spring
To higher spheres, and brighter worlds, beyond
This vapid tenement—no fanning wing
To view, on which to soar away, and blend
Existence with eternity, and join
In high devotion ne'er to wane, nor end
Its song extatic, symphony divine.

153

LATRIA.

Amid the joyless scenes of life, we gaze
With kindling fondness on the realms above,
And catch the faintest spark from those sheen rays,
That seem to canopy descending love.
O our fond vision kens the vapoury folds,
That wave in radiance round the aerial bow,
Our tireless eye espies the raptured souls,
Whose dome is heaven, and who 'mid glory's glow
Attune their golden wires in ceaseless praise;
Upon the waking ear falls every strain,
That wanders from heaven's pure seraphic lays,
And oh! we seem to linger on the plain
With lucid beauty, and perfection rife,
Imbibe the glories of bright Zion hill,
Burst from our bands to renovated life,
And spring to brighter being. Gales distil
A mellow balm o'er every baneful wound,
And all the sad attendants of our course,
Pale grief, desolate despair, disease, that bound
Our pleasures—the furies murmuring hoarse,
The shroud, the bier, the tomb, the chilling dread
Of an unknown future, all forgotten lie
In latent mystery;—our footsteps tread
With gladness the ethereal plains on high,

154

That spread around in holy loveliness,
And beauty, lilies amaranthine bloom,
And wave their pensile tendrils, like a tress
Of a wandering Naiad in the gloom
Of Daphne's groves of myrtle and of palm,
Or floating, in her pygmy bark, o'er waves,
That chime along, curled by the breeze of balm
Into cincturing ripples. The bed of flowers paves
The golden dome, and diamonds flash around
In sheeny splendour kindled by the blaze,
That emanates from the high Lord supreme,
Who smiles in calm benignity at the sound
Of the seraphic harps, that tune His praise,
And own His glory their immortal theme.
Time wears the robe of bright eternity!
Ere disembodied, on the rapid wings
Of sacred vision, o'er the arching sky
We rove, and drink the light that Eden flings
To wrap our souls elastic, and awake
The rays of heaven within the darkling breast.
Laid on the banks of the translucent lake,
O'er which sweet nature flings her silver vest,
A thrilling wildfire flashes in the eye,
When in sublimity, and grandeur soar
Majestic mountains, columns of the sky,
O'er sunken glens, and lonely dells, and dales
Expanding in luxuriance along the shore,
Where eddying seagulls throng, and shrilly wails

155

The startled kittywake; where the raven wing
Of the indulgent pelican is heard,
Like rushing winds, that sigh along, and fling
The deep-blue foliage on the arching sky.
O then we live in nature's charms—the word,
That called her into life, and from on high
Sent forth the winged hosts, embalmed, comes o'er
The revelling senses—and awakes the soul
To all the beauties of the outward form
Of pure religion's handmaid; and the shore,
The forest, and the city—the wild storm,
And cloudless sunshine—fair scenes, that unroll
The happiness of olive Peace—and all
The deadly din of dread and wasting war,
The flaunting robe of grandeur, and the pall
Of death—the slow dark bier, and the fleet car,
Derive their pomp, or terror, from the King
Of worlds unnumbered, and every scene of earth
Displays the impression of primeval birth—
Nature in gentle homage owns her Sire,
And points her silver sceptre to the throne
Of God, as upward burns the volcan's fire,
Or as the magnet seeks the frigid zone.
Oh! when the soul asserts her godlike powers,
And Fancy, winging her celestial flight,
Invokes the sainted shades of bliss from bowers
Tapestried in heaven with flowers for ever bright,
The mental eye dwells not upon the scene
Of drear oblivion, and forgetfulness,
But oh! intensely gazes on the sheen
Of glory, opening on the world to bless

156

The reckless vision—fondly pants the heart
To join in beatific anthems sweet—
Where the high Paraclete doth love impart,
And He, who erst did death in triumph meet,
From the eternal throne serenely smiles,
And wo is unknown, and its wanton wiles.

MATERNAL LOVE.

The deep affection of a mother's soul
O who can paint? The vivid glow of love,
Like the firm needle on the distant pole,
Or the fair bow that spans the skies above,
Abides the tempest, as the dappled dove
Broods o'er her fledgelings when the howling gale
Sweeps o'er the heavens, and rives the blooming grove;
O love is firmer than the hauberk's mall,
Though delicate its frame, mellifluent the tale.

While the fair cherub, hung upon the breast,
Smiles on the eye, that beams in blissful glow,
Fond fancy culls each flower among the blest,
Invokes the charms, that live in heaven below,
A robe to deck, o'er which the heart will throw
Its tender passion's perfume, and array
The guileless infant; hope will incense strow
Around its path where genial zephyrs play,
And the high angels grave in heaven its natal day.

157

When manhood rises agile and alert,
And time has seized his young, unruffled years,
When infant mild! thou art not what thou wert,
And the rude world in dismal garb appears,
Parental love another vestment wears,
Yet decked with finer gems, and brighter hues;
The eye's impearled with less of saline tears,
But a deep feeling lingers in its views,
And every noble deed its vision keen pursues.

Within the mother's bosom dwells a store
Of all, that beautifies terrestrial life,
Imbibed not from the metaphysic lore
Of warring sophists, nursed in ceaseless strife,
But with the holy thought of heaven rife;—
Untainted, undeluding, and sincere,
The joyous mother, and the loving wife,
Fair woman heeds not menace, knows not fear,
When virtue is assailed, or pity craves a tear.

She was the acmè of unnumbered worlds!
She was the festoon, that arrayed the fane
Of nature—and when the Archangel's fury hurls
The dome of earth to ruin, o'er the plain,
That spreads on high, will float the raptured strain
Of heavenly choirs on innocence and love!
Eternal Wisdom in his ruth did deign
To pair the eagle with the tender dove,
And in celestial unison they live and move.

158

If wanton fascinations lead astray
The heedless youth, and plunge the darling child
In revelry's dark abyss—if the ray
Of light and hope is quenched by folly wild,
If the full heart by no dim gleam's beguiled,
And death broods o'er the mother's pride and care,
A lingering flush her pallid cheek will gild,
And flash along the gloom of black despair,
E'en while she treads his grave, and heaven assails in prayer.

O sacred love that never knows decay!
O faithful guardians of our infant hours!
Unknown to pomp, and glittering array,
Are the beautiful, odoriferous flowers,
That hang around the woodland's umbered bowers.
Yet they enshield us from the solar glow;
So woman, witness, ye Supernal Powers,
Guards us in youth, ere opening mind can know
The countless ills of life, that whelm us in their flow.

Then while existence, in its fleet career,
Displays the hand that reared the tender germ,
While the fond soul doth all the vestments wear,
Flung by affection round the pensile form,
Ere the heart feels the fierce corroding worm,
Let gratitude sincere libations shed,
And gild of time each rapid rolling term;
So noble nations, in sweet virtue bred,
Will mercy mild revere, and deprecate all dread.

159

ODE TO DEITY.

Eternal Monad! Great Invisible!
Essence incontaminate of Glory!
High chainless Mind pervading heaven and hell,
Spheres countless, systems sublime! The story
Of thy Being, oh! how grand! far beyond
Conception's airy flight, and soaring thought,
Is thy imperial grandeur, yet fond
Is mind ethereal to portray ought,
That can in visions dim but image Life
All unoriginated—with heaven rise.

Mysterious Triad! Jehovah,
Saviour, Comforter! throned in unity!
O'er the wide heaven's aerial plains afar,
Bright orbs concentric in a golden sky,
Their laudatory smile enkindles bloom,
While at the frown from the immortal throne
Heaven quakes—and hell, the living tomb
Of spirits apostate, is voiceless, lone,
And o'er this sphere the forked lightning flies,
And intonating thunders shake the skies.

The genealogic chronicles of Time,
Titanian pyramids, and all the pride
Of mausoleums, storied with the rhyme
Encomiastic of earth's lords, who died

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In victory's thousand arms—shall fade—shall cease
To shrine the godless Ammon—and the dust
Of forms embalmed in myrrh no more in peace
Oblivious shall slumber—time will burst
The mansion of eternal fame—in vain
Their ashes canopy the rolling main!

But Thou art linked with wide Eternity,
Eternity itself thou art! no space
Impedes thy sunlike vision—no dark sky
Obnubilates thy brightness! Gentle grace
And majesty upon thy visage blend,
Like golden floods with sapphire skies at eve,
And forth thy diamond sceptre, waved, doth send
Winged spirits base-born man to cheer, or grieve,
Heralding, where'er they move, Thy name,
Or robed in mercy, or wide wasting flame.

Before my swimming vision lay the plains
Of the highest heaven—and the Presence there
Irradiates my sight—afar the strains
Of angels, breathed upon the fanning air,
Concentrate in one enraptured symphony
Around the viewless throne—the ransomed saint,
On earth a homeless, houseless wanderer by
The revelling mansion, in notes not faint,
And tremulous, joins high devotion's song,
But sounds the anthem listening heavens along.

Oh! spotless, stainless is the flowing robe,
That wraps the disembodied spirit—fair
Is the lustre of that unclouded globe,
That doth in undecaying beauty wear

161

The vestures, flung by holy Being round
Its vaulted skies.—But, thou Supreme! O what am I?
A praiseless creature unto baubles bound,
A poor ephemera—but born to die,
A being fond of mingled joy and pain!
Ah! no! a spirit called to live and reign.

Ineffable are thy glories, unconfined
By worlds celestial, that far stretch beyond
The eye of fancy—piercing is thy mind,
Creation's luminary—suns respond
The flash, that kindles into life each sphere!
Yet Thou dost deign in mediatorial love,
And mild benignity deathless to wear
A brow of soft complacency above;—
And the refraction of thy glory shines
Through human breasts in bright interminable lines.

As the fell tarantula at the sound
Of lyric wires coils in innocent glee,
And winds its way in playfulness around,
So warring passions, when the Deity
But smiles, subside in waveless, gentle Peace;—
O Thou Omnipotent! with Thee to dwell,
Is heaven—is full beatitude—ne'er cease
Thine everlasting glories. No farewell,
That wild, that rending word! the spirit yields
To Him, who lives in bliss—and ceaseless ages gilds.

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MNEMOSYNE.

O memory! sad, unwilling dream of time!
Impelled to muse on energies sublime,
And heaven-born exploits, blasted by the breath
Of malice, and consigned to infamy and death.
Storehouse of time! thou palace of the soul!
Whose treasures flow, and heed not mind's control.
O painful-pleasing wand'rer, are the scenes,
From which wild fancy peerless treasure gleans,
Thou dost array before the mental eye,
And deck in terror, or in ecstasy;
Here towers the warrior with his plumed crest,
And in his country's noble feats is blest—
The high-souled patriot, who contemns the gold,
By which his empire is betrayed and sold—
The saint, the sage, the sophist—all who stand
Enrolled in honour,—wield the flashing brand,
Or wrap around the philosophic stole,
Rush in review before the dazzled sight,
And, like a mantle flung from heaven's own height
O'er golden fields, and sunny meads, they shed
A charm around the vista of the dead.
But virtue, honour, and a stainless worth,
Like the bright fruitage in its vernal birth,
Display their envied glories, and awake
The whelming blast—and vengeful torrents break
The heaven-raised battlement; on the ruined scene
We gaze, unconscious of the pomp that's been.

163

In ev'ry age, of devasting time,
And ev'ry glorious, or ignoble clime,
Virtue has wandered to her meed unknown,
And base born finesse has usurped the throne;
Devotion to the nation's noblest weal
Been crowned with iron on the writhing wheel,
The sage's lore demanded being's bane,
And ruin's panders have enjoyed the strain
Of triumph from the mercenary bard;
Thus justice, wisdom, meet the world's reward.

ANTHEM.

O Thou, whose hand with vengeance grasped the thunders of the skies,
Who left thy jasper throne of light and deigned for man to bleed;
Thou will not human griefs contemn, nor aching hearts despise,
Thou wilt not quench the smoking flax, nor break the bruised reed.
Unhonoured, and unpitied thou didst groan in dark Gethsemane,
And up the hill of Calvary didst bear thy cross to bleed,
Thou bow'st thy head, and nature quaked in homage unto thee,
Thou will not quench the smoking flax, nor break the bruised reed.

164

Mercy, with radiant beaming eye, waves high her olive wand,
The man of sorrows and of grief confers the holy meed
On broken hearts that fear to rise—and smiles in beauty bland,
He will not quench the smoking flax, nor break the bruised reed.
The flaming mount, that blazed sublime when great Jehovah came,
The awful pomp and grandeur that attended on the deed,
Are all absorbed and beautiful in great Emmanuel's name,
He will not quench the smoking flax, nor break the bruised reed.
His holy brow was pierced with thorns, his cheek was wet with blood,
He bled, and agonized, and died, but oh! he died to lead
The weary laden to the feast adorned with heavenly food,
He will not quench the smoking flax, nor break the bruised reed.

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THE DAWN.

Fond memory lingers o'er the days of youth,
Whose rays effulgent glitter in the eye,
Whose hours, like odours on the fragrant south,
Roll on beneath an ever-glowing sky;
No scene around a pleasure can deny,
To hearts which e'er with living ardour glow,
A sweet response, whose echoes never die,
To His, who claims to be adored below
By Love, the bond of life, which smooths the warring brow.

Time hides his flight from youth's enraptured view,
And seldom soars upon his raven wing,
But beams delightful burst in every hue
That charms the sight with one eternal spring;
The heart, too ardent, feels no secret sting
Rising beneath the roseous bed around,
Suspects no gale will grief, or sorrow bring,
No chords of love emit a jarring sound,
But that the fairy scene will never know a bound.

Ah! has thine eye ne'er paused upon the dawn,
Fretting the east with grand vermilion dies?
Seen mild Aurora, by her coursers drawn,
Recede before the sun's refulgent rise?

166

Short was the sheeny phantom to thine eyes,
Dazzling a moment—lost in vapours dun!
So fares life's morn—the beauty man descries;
It disappears, before the eye has won
Scarce one extatic view of what it dwells upon.

Then raise thy view to heav'nly worlds on high,
Attune to strains sublime the warbling wire,
Seek views whose radiance cannot wane or die,
And cherish hope that never can expire;
So youth shall blossom o'er the tott'ring sire,
Immortal beauties wake the living strain,
Whose dulcet notes shall fan the latent fire
And spread abroad o'er Zion's golden plain,
The holy joys that spring from Love's eternal reign

PALESTINE.

Erst o'er thy plains, the sun his golden car,
And spangled skies his pathway, highly rode
The Warrior-Chief of thy embattled hosts,
Heaven-girt Judea! thy Monarch high,
And deity beneficent; On his brow
The sovereign diadem of glory gleamed,
The sceptre, olive-wreathed, of boundless state
Was waved o'er thy fair realm, and heavenly smiles
Of love arrayed thy blooming meads and fields
And while the soul its winning homage paid

167

To Being in sublimity, and worth
Wafted its gilded treasures to the throne
Of immortality, while the censer
Flung its wreathing incense piacular
On high, and all in the theocracy
Were blest, the bright, pictorial bow
Of gentle ruth the arching heavens spanned
But glory left thy skies [OMITTED]
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Yet bright again
Thy phenix spirit glows—again the choir
Angelic, ardent, wield their thousand wings
O'er Sinai, and the Mount of Passion dire.
No magi watch the phasis from the height
Of towering Lebanon, to mark the hour
Of festival, or jubilee; victims
Bleed not on the holy altar—the robes
Of grandeur clerical wave not o'er
The thronging mass in adoration bowed.
But the pure messengers of heavenly Peace
Tread o'er thy seraph-haunted scenes, and strike
The tuneless lyre of slumbering ages
To strains harmonic and celestial notes;
O envied bliss! upon thy dales to gaze,
Proud Salem! once bright Glory's chosen dome!
In earth's vast amphitheatre the eye
In all its rapid flight o'er fields of blood,
Where valour's demigods of fame repose

168

And e'en the air seems nectared with the breath
Of honour, as it plays with lambent fan
Around their barrows; or o'er the kingdom,
Pillared by heroes, whose foundation rests
Upon the adamantine ocean-rock,
Whose every glen teems with a hardy race
Of free-born warriors, and who tune their lays
To battle's fury or the arts of peace;
The kindling eye dwells not with moveless gaze
Upon these scenes—on earth no hill like Zion
Transports the soul—no vale expands in pride,
Like wide Jehoshaphat—no sweet garden
Charms the vision, like the one, that echoed
The melting groans of writhing agony.
O'er Neptune's wide domains, whose trident waves
In wild dominion,—Heroes of the Cross!
Lies your untrod pathway—and woman sweet
Shines in her sphere—the world of doing good;
To her a full luxury is proffered,
And forth, arrayed in heaven's unyielding shield,
And all the panoply of faith, she speeds,
Like an enchantress o'er the desert wild.
O! when the apocalyptic vision,
Unfolded by the rapid wing of Time,
Shall open on the view the plans complex
Of Deity, tutelar of glory—
The fanning airs, that breathed celestial love,
The fane that rose in glorious majesty,
The lonely fountain, and the mountain cave,
Shall hear the mingled songs of Judah high,
And Christian bands, arise in symphony;

169

While o'er the joyous scene the mellow harp
Of female worth shall close the full diapason.

SONNET.

Where, Hope, are all thy golden visions fled?
Sybil enchantress! vain are all thy dreams!
Formless the shade that on the fancy beams,
When faith is flown, and energy is dead;
Thine airy arches, that enshield the head,
With fascinating figures wrought, delude,
And the sweet gales of Araby, that shed
Love through the soul, cheer not the wayward mood;
Oh! lynx-eyed rapture, on her eagle wing,
In feeling exquisite soars away,
Basks in the sunbeams of celestial day,
Then sinks—and fierce the fires of fury wring.
Joys charm not this cold, sublunary sphere,
Life opens with a smile, and closes with a tear.

[O, that in listening to my youthful strain]

O, that in listening to my youthful strain,
Stern Grief would hush his agonizing throe,
That, merged in slumbers, lay the heart of pain
And torrents wild would cease their lava flow.

170

Why thrills the lyre to pleasure's notes alone,
Or carols e'er the sapphic lay of love?
Is there no minstrel to embalm the tone
Of dark despair, and inspiration prove?

When the effulgent seraphim on high
To praise eternal tune their magic lays,
The exiled fiends forbear a bitter sigh,
And the eye flashes through the circling haze.

The Muse can fire the soldier's fearless breast,
And nerve his arm amid the flame of death,
But can she not to everlasting rest
Hush the sad wail with her soft, soothing breath?

Oh! not alone doth Music charm the hall
Of mirth, when boiling blood distracts the brain,
Companion sweet! o'er misery's funeral pall
Her dovelike voice is heard, her melting strain.

Lo! yon wild maniac, when the mountain breeze
Fans the fair meadow, listens deeply there,
And, if it harps amid the bowering trees,
The rustling soothes her desolate despair.

The wretch, whom demons dire incarcerate,
Forgets his woes when sounds the mellow lyre,
Rears his fair brow, defiance bids to fate,
His high soul dancing on the silver wire.

171

The exile, panting for his native clime,
Is wrought to rapture with the floating song,
That falls upon the ear in heavenly chime,
Like streams that murmur childhood's dales along.

In grandeur visionary, created rise
Romantic scenes beneath the plastic hand,
Torrents below, above irradiate skies,
Around the beautifu and sublime expand.

The eye dwells fondly on some happy scene
And, wrapt in reverie, “forgets all time;”
So can the poet's vivid fancy wean
Man from his grief, and raise his soul sublime.

Then let imagination cull each flower
To deck the aching heart incarnadine,
And throw a waking light upon the hour
O'er which no mental gleam of love doth shine.

Let sorrow rove in virtue's garb of peace,
And pleasure sport around her leaden eye,
Then the deep sigh, and rending groan will cease,
And pure religion point the soul on high.

Why thrills the lyre to pleasure's notes alone,
Or carols e'er the sapphic lay of love?
Is there no minstrel to embalm the tone
Of dark despair, and inspiration prove?

172

A FRAGMENT.

A thousand melting scenes of dread distress
Not to thy fancy, but thine eye appear,
Ideal grief may on thy mind impress
A sentiment sublime,
And swell the sympathetic heart
With feeling, that rude time
Can never seize, nor yet impart—
A smile may mingle with a rolling tear.
But gentle Nature paints with magic truth,
Attires the language of the sensient soul,
Decks hoary age, smiles on exuberant youth,
And o'er each fair and holy scene holds mild control.
Pursue her path, obey her wand,
And Passion, Hate, and frenzied Rage,
And Murder, with the gory hand,
No more will battle wage;
But shrink away, when o'er the thrilling lyre
Thy fingers fly, and ruth, and nature thee inspire.

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STANZAS.

O Memory! nymph for ever fond!
Arraying all the bitter past
Before the eye—while all beyond
Fancy depicts a lonely waste.
Delighting, and deluding e'er,
Enchanting now, and all anon
Blasting our joys with a sullen sneer,
And smiling when bright hope is gone.

Gilding with love the raptured vision
Retracing every youthful scene,
And tearing with a fierce derision
Every form that smiles serene;—
Away with all your false Mnemonics,
Lave the soul in Lethe's stream,
The boiling blood demands not tonics,
O plunge the brain in a wanton dream.

The eye of love, caress of beauty,
The bliss of friendship, pleasure's tone,
The holy deeds of cheering duty,
All have died—and I am lone;
Every hope of earth is fickle,
Glowing—veiled in stygian blackness,
Tears of writhing anguish trickle,—
Every genial ray is trackless.

174

O if our being were a blank,
A void of all that cheers or saddens,
If nor Love nor Hate grew wild and rank,
Nor this depresses, nor that gladdens;
If life unconscious wore away,
And brutal instinct all supplied—
What were the creature of a day?
A feather on the warring tide.

Ah! we must linger on the brink
Of dark despair's wild precipice,
And we must gaze—and we must think
Upon the scenes that ne'er entice,
Upon the agony below!
And shudder ne'er, but rive the foot
With the hard rock, and heed not wo,
Nor list the sound of the silver lute.

The passion strong, the thought intense,
Feeling acute, conception dear,
Launching in high magnificence,
Will strand on deep reefs dread and drear,
And all, that youth or age has given,
Amid the false world's shivering shock,
Is lost and dead—and nought but heaven
Can mind recover from the stroke.

175

[When, like austral breezes light soft breathing o'er the fields of roses]

O Lachymarum sons, tenero sacros
Ducentium ortus ex animo;
Felix; in imo qui scatentem
Pectore te, pia Nympha, sensit.
Gray's Poemata.

When, like austral breezes light soft breathing o'er the fields of roses,
The tender thoughts of winged years in freshness throng the mind,
When wo has hushed her melting wail, and sorrow's portal closes,
The bounding soul in love drinks joys that time has left behind.

When smiles angelic light the eye, and dance upon the lip,
Like lunar beams of flushing June upon the glassy deep,
And joy ecstatic flies around, from beauty's breath to sip
His nectar sweet, and sorrow doth in darkling caverns sleep;

When woman's swanlike bosom heaves with warm love nestling there,
Like blushing sylphs that rise and sink upon the fanning air,

176

And pleasure wears a viny crown, and, ever on the wing,
Exquisite Rapture flits around, nor feels a bitter sting;

The smiling hours roll fleetly on, and o'er the swelling breast
Pour honied streams of bliss, on which the heaven-born fairies float,
Who deck their airy forms and leave the “Islands of the Blest,”
And stem the whelming flood of time to tune youth's cheering note.

The scene, that meets our moveless gaze, is not loud wassail's dome,
Where dormant souls awake alone to vent a mirthless jeer,
Or fire-clad phrenzy leaves the brain, when o'er the senses come
A chilling coldness and a blight of all that lust deemed dear.

Pure as the dew by heaven poured in libations o'er the lawn,
Wild as the vernal sky, that spreads its arches when the shower is o'er,
Is every thought that retrospective wakes the laughing dawn
Of life, bright is the tear, like waves when sunbeams gild the shore.

177

Like the wild courser when he snuffs the battle field afar,
Like warring billows when they rush o'er ocean's rocky breast,
The vivid fancy bounds away when gleams the twinkling star
Of memory o'er the happy scenes where youth was passed and blest.

[My bosom has become a sepulchre]

I.

My bosom has become a sepulchre
Of departed hopes and joys,—a dungeon
Rather, were the clanking manacles grate
On the rough bars serrated by the toil
Of inborn agony—where the damp base
Of clay is worn into caverns hollow
By sleepless torture, and is deeply tinged
With crimson—mantling from the bursting heart
By uncontrollable fatality
Existence is dominated—patience
Then must raise a battlement, like the rock,
That mountain billows move not, and against
Despair rear an iron front. The ordeal
Of fire and flood ah! who can safely pass?
Who wears a breast of adamant—an heart
Of brass? A frame insensible to pain?
None!—Why then invite the fawn to battle
With the whelpless Lioness—the fair dove

178

To pair with the foul insatiate falcon?
Stoic Philosophy is the parent
Of the veriest idiotism—and wears
Her sable robe in mockery when grief
Demands a balm;—a shroud, a pall, a tomb
Is all she deigns to being desolate.

II.

The dungeon! feelings unutterable,
Unintelligible thrill the wrung soul
To phrenetic, and unknown delirium.
Through the high lattice intermural gleam
The flashing sunbeams in refractions dim,
And awful; for the twilight gloom inspires
Thoughts, that invest the outward forms of things
With unseen terror, dreaded, yet unknown;
Darkness tangible loads not the soul
With terrible sensations—no demon glides
Through the rayless gloom, for his sparkling breath
Would supersede his purpose; but the hour,
That intervenes between the varied reign
Of sun and moon, the time of dizziness,
The season of chaotic anarchy,
Is fraught with bodied horrors—gorgons, then,
And fiends walk unforbidden o'er the earth.
Around the tortured brain, corroding, play
The lambent fires of brighter days, when youth,
In sportive trills, and wild exuberance,
Free as the mountain breeze, or like the roe
Bounding away in woeless mirth and glee,
Or the winged deer arching her smooth neck,

179

And culling every fragrant shrub, that grows
Upon the sunny hill-side, or the gazelle,
Darting from raven lids a piercing eye
Pregnant with rainbow hues; was fraught with heaven,
And seemed a spirit, wandering from the bowers
Of higher spheres, and happier realms than this.
Like wreathing flames around a voiceless wreck,
Manless, sailorless, the thoughts of sweet years
Long past—long lost—come o'er my aching mind,
And wrap me in oblivion momentary!
Sweet hour! O that—alas! this clanking chain
Hath broke the fascinating spell, and crushed
The embryo wish, that dawned upon my soul,
And rose the harbinger of lovely hope.

III.

The mental powers, and passions all confined
Unquelled—unbroken—wild and warring still!
The stretched hand now grasping—nought—now clenched round
The icy chain! the straining eyeball's glare
O'er vacancy! the fierce whelming tempest
Raging within! the hissing shades, that pass,
And hurl their puny thunderbolts around,
Or curl the sneers of degradation and contempt:
All paint but feebly the fell miseries,
And severing pangs, that rack the pensile frame
Immured in wrath within a living tomb.

The bosom's sepulchre! unseen by man,
In long and undisturbed hours of deep

180

And dreadful loneliness, the soul had slept,
Unheeding mortal mandate, when a sun
Arose upon my vision, and a world
Of dazzling brightness, and around me flew
Strange forms, and laughing eyes did shine through hair
Loose waving—I wondered at the transition!
The glad reversions of my former fate!
I mused upon the inexplicable
Scene—and thought, as oft we think when deep sleep,
Midway between Death and Eternity,
Steals o'er the wearied senses and recalls
The visions she has bred before, a dream,
Engendered by some hovering angel,
Had swelled my vivid fancy with a sweet,
Illuding phantom scene, to cheer, dispel,
The clouds, that hang in blackening folds around
The fathomless, quenchless oblivial gulf.
But a hand touched me, and a voice was heard.
I wakened from my reverie, and rose
Upon my fanning pinions o'er the clouds,
That rolled beneath, and opened on my view
A blissful scene—and I was bodiless.

IV.

My soul drank the rays of light as nectar,
And they became a nutriment, that fired
Its powers primeval with a rapture
Exquisite, ethereal—and attuned
My harp, that breathed 'mid the gales of perfume
Celestial harmonies sweet, responsive
To the songs of choirs seraphic. Above,

181

Below, around, was one constellation
Of interminable light and glory,
The skies were sapphire and the pavement gold,
And the eternal throne of Majesty,
Exalted on the foundations moveless
Of countless worlds, was sardonyx mingled
With the diamond, and around in bloom,
Waved the olive and the broad palm intwined,
Like happiness and devotion.

The balm
Sanative poured o'er the festered wounds,
And wrenched chords, and broken throbbing heart,
And feeling soul, slumbering in the deep gloom
Of a sepulchre animate, revives
Me once again; but divested by hands
Gentle, without the pang of intervening Death,
Of frail Mortality's crushing burden
O how extatic is the airy flight
Of the unshackled spirit o'er the plains
For ever budding, and for e'er in bloom.

THE REBELLION.

The tartarean scheme of vengeance fell
Was well matured for ruthless execution;
The massive chain of treason bound the hearts
Of soul-exulting myriads, who were galled

182

By a sad interminable bondage,
And tortured into madness unheeding
Innocence, or worth, or virtue's weal,
By the gory lash of despotism mean;
Yet not a link was broken; rolling years,
In wide accumulating flow, had brought
An iron mass of fearless desperadoes,
A dauntless phalanx of auxiliaries,
With frames of steel, and souls of vivid flame,
And hearts impenetrable to the shriek
Of defloration, or the dying groan
Of honour fair; still no unguarded hour,
In inadvertent jest, developed guile,
Brooding beneath a placid brow—a smile
Of toil obsequious, a massacre
Unfeeling, undistinguishing, unseen.
A lonely shed, amid the marsh afar,
Impervious to the approaching tread
Of eagle-eyed Detection, had become
The dome of eloquence incendiary,
And Vesey there inflamed the palled soul
Of slavery debasing with his flood
Of lava passion—the fires of freedom
Intensely glowed within the waking breast
Of thousand auditors, who grouped around,
And though no shrill huzza sublimely rung,
In lengthening echoes, through the deep pine wood,
Each thrilling fibre, in responsive tone,
Impelled the arm to action terrible.
Anon the hut arose a capitol!
And legislation, by the vulgar mass

183

Of sable sages cultured, smiled around
Upon the scene fantastic; fancy saw
The plains prolific own their brutal slaves
Lords legitimate by blood and rapine,
And wisdom sanctioned all the happy tale.
Yet sure they reasoned on the point not ill;
Track trophied Victory around the globe,
Mark the wide progress of revolution,
And of freedom; all—all are bought with blood
Fierce spirits ever dominate the mob.
From the congregated throng arose
A deep magician, versed in subtle spell,
And incantation, and enchantment wild.
His sea-shell rosary was the amulet,
That held dominion over Destiny,
A glossy cane was waved his magic wand,
And his broad cincturing girdle, graven
With figures rude, uncouth, illegible,
Was viewed by Superstition's glazed eye
As pregnant more with power invulnerable
Than the wrought mail, and panoply of war.
The doom of fated Carolina in that cell
Of midnight counsel dread was fixed, fore'er
Irrevocable—Death indiscriminate
To man—the soulless tyrant—to woman—
The dark domains of fiends diabolic
Ne'er teemed with thought so foul, contaminate,
Debasing! her breast was open to the steel,
But not to—. Indulging horrid systems
Of vengeance unrelenting, and intense,
They seek their distant cots in joyful mirth,

184

And frame their idol Liberty. Mean-while
Smiling on lords they soon will tombless lay.
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The night was dark, and scarce a wandering star
Was flashing along the bright spheres of June,
No meteor-blaze, an omen dread, arrayed
The concave in a momentary glare,
The loud volcano voice of terror,
And alarm, was heard not—a spirit mild
Noiseless had descended, on the wings
Of gentle ruth, and warned the slumbering clime
Of wrath impending; through the moonless gloom
The thundering dragoons fly, and the sound
Of steely sabre sheath, and iron hoof
Along the street, and the shrill parting voice
Of love connubial, or paternal,
And the hollow-pealing drum, that awakes
The soldier from repose—artillery
Anon in distant thunders shaking earth,
And intonating knells the alarum
Sounding in dirge-like tones, all blend,
And rush upon the open, aching ear.
Trembling affright, and quivering terror pale
Swayed thousand victims, and impressed the soul
With agony—and the brain with phantoms dire,
And shades menacing death,—they wielded round,
The sabre ruthless, and incarnadine,
Or pierced with cruel spike the bosom deep.

185

It was, alas! a scene of wo—an hour
Of suspense terrific—for the high mind
Impels the sense, recoiling from the voice
That divests the tale of ignorance sweet
Of all its fairy decorations thrown
By causeless hope around it, to knowledge
Of all, that dread, or joy conspires to shroud
In mystery; and oft the mind serene
Will bear the full developement of death
Inevitable, while the hour of wild
Suspense uncertain sheds a chilling blight,
And fearful phrenzy through the throbbing breast
Ye fair! what thoughts within your bosoms burned?
What writhing horrors on your senses prest?
The ideal view of massacre and death,
Pillage, and all the scenes attendant on
The victory unrepressed, is fraught with dread
To potent minds and masculine; but when
A tempest and a whelming hurricane,
Winged by fell human passion, fling around
A pestilence worse than quick destruction,
And the soft, delicate form is fated
To endure corroding pangs—a living death—
Imagination cannot paint the scene.

Vindictive Justice bared her gory arm,—
Then fell her wrath upon the myrmidons;
And all their gilded scenes of freedom,
And bright emancipation, and the reign
Of their immortal Vesey, withered—died.
Immured within a darkling cell, the thoughts

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Of hempen exaltation, and a sway
Sublime and airy, o'er their senses came,
And brought a scene befitting base-born minds.
The toiling Law in even balance weighed
Their virtues and their crimes—and drew a line
Between bland innocence, and iron guilt;
O'er some there came a chill when the award
Of Death rung solemn on the startled ear—
Unfeeling apathy, or reckless mirth
All other swayed;—their dreadful doomsday came.
And 'mid thronged myriads, who were fiercely doomed
To death promiscuous, they yielded life
On earth for—what their Judge omnipotent
Did award them—e'en the magician died!

THE SABBATH.

Τρεμει δ ορη, και γαια, και πελωριος
Βυθος θαλασσης, χωρεων υψος μεγα,
Οταν επιβλεψη γοργον ομμα Δεσποτου.
Æschylus.

O sweet, and calm, and solemn day of rest!
The deafening din, and reckless hum of man,
And all the tumult of mercantile life,
And cheering mirth of worldly pleasure, cease.
Thy legates, Lord! develope, in the dome
To holy adoration consecrate,

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The mediatorial mission of the skies,
And point the sentient powers unto the throne
Of Immortality, and the mansions
By the hand of Calvary's sacred King
Prepared on high for praising saints below.
The sapphire sky, o'er which a topaz veil
Is flung by gentle morn, and fleecy clouds
Float in transparent silvery whiteness,
Smiles on the lifted eye of devotion
Viewing, through the azure fields, angels bright
Gazing, as they tune their strung golden lyres
To heavenly adoration, on the saint
Kneeling before the shrine all unadorned,
And wafting on the wings of spirits pure
The incense of faith, and love, and gratitude.
Unlike the day, when Sinai heard the tread
Of the Almighty Being, at whose word
Emulgent chaos felt the massive wheels
Of revolution roll, and order, time,
Existence, nature, sprung from the abyss
Of anarchy—and lovely hope, not bred
In famed Pandora's fabled box of yore,
Arrayed the scene, and love flew laughing round.
O how unlike the day—loud thunders dread
Sublimely heralded the grand descent
Of heaven's high King, and lightenings paved his track,
And the earthquake was the voice with which he spake.
Appalling terror shook the bosom then,
And thronging millions, prostrate, then beheld
The awful God, they dared not look upon.