Specimens of American poetry :: :: University of Virginia Library

With beings of another sphere
Thy mystic converse seems;
Like that of some prophetic seer,
Who hid in caverns dark and drear,
Revolves foreboding dreams;
Yet thy fix'd eye's undying flame
Betokens nought of shame.

Say, dost thou commune with the stars,
And pierce the world beyond!
Seest warriors in their flaming cars,
In other spheres, wage quenchless wars,
While Love and Hope despond?
No! pure the pageantry must be—
Thine eye lights gloriously.

Say, dost thou see a blushing cheek
Through flowing, gleamy hair?
And is there one who kneels to speak
His thoughts of love—in words too weak,
For the fair creature there?
Thou smil'st—but no assent appears,
And now gush forth thy tears.

Speak, I conjure thee by the names
Of mother and of sire;
By every whispering hope that claims
Remembrance; by each spell that flames
The keen heart of desire;
Speak things of terror, words of fire,
I'll listen and admire.

“Youth! in yon sparkling firmament
I see a promised heaven.
When mortal toil and man's intent,
When every evil passion, sent
To earth, with earth is riven—
Then shall I claim in yon bright sky
A joy that cannot die.”

284

TO THE CLOUDS.

Ye, whose dark foldings are the throne
And palace of the monarch—Storm—
Ye, whose refulgent draperies shone
Above, ere earth or wave had form;
And spreading like a sea of gold,
O'er chaos, beauty threw and grace
On graceless things; and proudly told
Of him who gave ye shape and place.

Hail! Hail! I greet ye with a smile;
For ye to me speak words of power;
And bear my thoughts, from visions vile,
Back to creation's natalh our.
Ye seem the monuments of things
And ages pass'd with time away;
To ye my sighing spirit clings,—
Memorials of the ancient day!

The deep and muttering thunder breathes—
Your voices murmur in mine ear;
The awful lightning, flashing, wreathes
Your brows in dazzling smiles severe;
The rain-drops from your bosoms burst
In torrents o'er earth's spreading flame—
Ye seem to weep, that sin hath cursed
And doom'd the fallen race of men.

What if your changing shadows take
New fashionings from midnight's shroud!
What if the lights of morning break
Without a trace of evening's cloud!
Ye do not speak the less of Him,
And of the world's primeval birth,
Than if ye moveless stood—Ye dim
And threatening curtains of the earth!

Doth not the bright and scented flower
Decay and die in winter's gloom!
Doth not returning summer's hour
Revive and wake its fragrant bloom!
And, from the natal hour of light,
Have ye not learn'd to waste and fly
Before the conquering sunbeam's might,
And clasp ye not again the sky!

285

Memorials of His power, who sees
Earth, air, and ocean, time and space;
Who gilds with leafy crowns the trees,
And tears the mountain from its base;
Who bids fair summer deck the earth,
When winter's form its beauty shrouds;
And wakes the sparrow's song of mirth:—
His subjects hail! Illumined clouds!

THE BRIDAL.

There was a sound of music sweet as gentle notes that swell
At midnight from the moonlit caves of yonder leafy dell;
Where, at the dewfall, spirits cluster round the sleeping flowers,
To sing their plaintive melodies, and wreath their wild-rose bowers.
There were gallant forms and beauteous ones around the altar press'd,
And dazzlingly the torches flash'd on plume and burnish'd crest;
'T was a scene whereon a painter's eye or poet's lip might dwell,
When the young De Courcy wedded with the peerless Gabrielle.

He was a Knight a maid might love in days of wild romance,
For braver never wielded brand or placed in rest the lance;
Free as the wind that o'er his mountain-castle wildly blew,
Yet gentle as her gentle heart—and oh! as fervent too.
And through that land of tale and song, she shone the fairest one,
Where eyes are as its sparkling stars, and hearts are like its sun;
And still the wandering troubadour full many a tale can tell
Of her the ever brightest gem—the peerless Gabrielle.

Upon the altar-stone, there knelt the maiden young and fair,
Her blushes hid beneath a veil of flowing raven hair;
And by her side the lofty one, whose knee, like his of yore,
Had never bow'd save in the stirrup, and to God, before.
Oh! it is a touching sight when the lovely and the pure
Come up to pledge their faith, through sin, through sorrow to endure;

286

And never yet has man been bound within more potent spell,
Than linger'd in the heart and smile of peerless Gabrielle.

But as they knelt before the shrine, came on a sound of fear—
Each warrior grasp'd his sabre as it met his startled ear;
And through that quiet, holy place, the trumpet's summons rang,
The fearful burst of musquetry, and meeting sabres clang:
In pour'd the savage mountain-clan like some enfranchised flood,
And fierce the struggle 'twixt the brave and that stern band of blood;
For gallantly the warriors fought, and valiantly they fell
Around the altar-stone where lay the dying Gabrielle.

A shot had pierced the gentle heart of that fair virgin-bride,
She perish'd in her loveliness, in her young beauty's pride;
But where is he whose arm should guard, whose battle-blade defend,
The foremost in the raging fight, most eager to contend;
Could he forsake that sweetest rose, amid the deadly strife,
To purchase after hours of shame, to bear a hated life?—
Whose hand is clasp'd with that of one in life beloved so well—
De Courcy died a hero's death beside his Gabrielle.

SONG OF THE BEE.

Away, away, to the anxious flower
That droops and pines for its truant bee;
With beauty renew'd like the morning hour
'T will wait for my coming with anxious glee.
Ah little, but little, the rose-spirit dreams
Of the last dear place of her wanderer's rest—
Like the evening dew, in the mountain streams,
She would waste should I tell of the tulip's breast.
Away, away, for the earliest kiss
Must be mine from the freshest and sweetest rose;
Oh! there 's nought upon earth like the young bee's bliss,
When the morning rose-leaves over him close.
Hid from the beam of his rival—Sun,
Couch'd in the bosom of beauty's flower,
He rests, till its choicest treasures are won,
From the scorching ray or the drenching shower.