Nine summers had she scarcely seen,
Seasons return, but not to me returns.
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud, instead, and ever-during dark,
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men.
Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair
Presented with a universal blank
Of nature's works, to me expunged and rased,
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.
So much the rather thou, celestial light,
Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate; there plant eyes, all mist from thence
Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell
Of things invisible to mortal sight.
E walked along, while bright and red
Uprose the morning sun;
And Matthew stopped, he looked, and said "The will of God be done!"
A village schoolmaster was he,
With hair of glittering gray;
As blithe a man as you could see
On a spring holiday.
And on that morning, through the grass
And by the steaming rills,
We traveled merrily, to pass
A day among the hills.
"Our work," said I, "was well begun;
Then, from thy breast what thought,
Beneath so beautiful a sun,
So sad a sigh has brought?"
A second time did Matthew stop;
And fixing still his eye
Upon the eastern mountain-top,
To me he made reply:
"Yon cloud with that long purple cleft
Brings fresh into my mind
A day like this, which, I have left
Full thirty years behind.
And just above yon slope of corn
Such colors, and no other,
Were in the sky that April morn
Of this the very brother.
With rod and line I sued the sport
Which that sweet season gave,
And coming to the church stopped short Beside my daughter's grave.
The pride of all the vale;
And then she sang :-she would have been
A very nightingale,
Six feet in earth my Emma lay;
And yet I loved her more—
For so it seemed-than till that day
I e'er had loved before.
And turning from her grave, I met
Beside the churchyard yew
A blooming girl, whose hair was wet
With points of morning dew.
A basket on her head she bare;
Her brow was smooth and white:
To see a child so very fair,
It was a pure delight!
No fountain from its rocky cave
E'er tripped with foot so free;
She seemed as happy as a wave
That dances on the sea.
There came from me a sigh of pain
Which I could ill confine;
I looked at her, and looked again:
And did not wish her mine!"
-Matthew is in his grave, yet now
Methinks I see him stand,
As at that moment, with a bough
Of wilding in his hand.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH,
AY is dying! Float, O song,
Down the westward river,
Requiem chanting to the day-
Day, the mighty giver.
Pierced by shafts of time he bleeds,
Melted rubies sending
Through the river and the sky,
Earth and heaven blending;
All the long-drawn earthly banks
Up to cloud-land lifting :
Slow between them drifts the swan,
'Twixt two heavens drifting.
Wings half open, like a flower
Inly deeper flushing,
Neck and breast as virgin's pure-
Virgin proudly blushing.
Day is dying! Float, O swan,
Down the ruby river;
Follow, song, in requiem
To the mighty giver.
MARIAN EVANS LEWES CROSs (George EloEp
Dig for the whithered herb through heaps of snow.
As thus the snows arise, and foul and fierce
S when, to one, who long hath watched the All winter drives along the darkened air,
In his own loose revolving fields the swain
Advancing, slow forewarns th' approach of Disastered stands ; sees other hills ascend,
day
(What time the young and flowery-kirtled May
Decks the green hedge, and dewy grass unshorn
With cowslips pale, and many a whitening thorn);
And now the sun comes forth, with level ray
Gilding the high-wood top, and mountain gray;
And, as he climbs, the meadows 'gins adorn;
The rivers glisten to the dancing beam,
The awakened birds begin their amorous strain,
And hill and vale with joy and fragrance teem;
Such is the sight of thee; thy wished return
To eyes, like mine, that long have waked to mourn,
That long have watched for light, and wept in vain!
JOHN BAMPFYlde.
A WINTER LANDSCAPE.
Of unknown joyless brow, and other scenes,
Of horrid prospect, shag the trackless plain;
Nor finds the river nor the forest, hid
Beneath the formless wild; but wanders on
From hill to dale, still more and more astray,
Impatient flouncing through the drifted heaps,
Stung with the thoughts of home; the thoughts of
home
Rush on his nerves, and call their vigor forth
In many a vain attempt. How sinks his soul!
What black despair, what horror, fills his heart!
When for the dusky spot which fancy feigned,
His tufted cottage rising through the snow,
He meets the roughness of the middle waste,
Far from the track and blessed abode of man;
While round him night resistless closes fast,
And every tempest howling o'er his head
HROUGH the hushed air the whit'ning shower Renders the savage wilderness more wild.
At first thin-wavering, till at last the flakes
Fall broad and wide, and fast, dimming the
day
With a continual flow. The cherished fields
Put on their winter robe of purest white :
'Tis brightness all, save where the new snow melts
Along the mazy current. Low the woods
Bow their hoar head; and ere the languid sun
Faint from the west, emits his evening ray,
Earth's universal face, deep hid, and chill,
Is one white dazzling waste, that buries wide
The works of man. Drooping, the laborer-ox
Stands covered o'er with snow, and then demands
The fruit of all his toil. The fowls of heaven,
Tamed by the cruel season, crowd around
The winnowing store, and claim the little boon
Which Providence assigns them. One alone,
The redbreast, sacred to the household gods,
Wisely regardful of the embroiling sky,
In joyless fields and thorny thickets, leaves
His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man
His annual visit. Half afraid, he first
Against the window beats; then, brisk, alights
On the warm hearth; then hopping o'er the floor,
Eyes all the smiling family askance,
And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is :
Till more familiar grown, the table crumbs
Attract his slender feet. The foodless wilds
Pour forth their brown inhabitants. The hare,
Though timorous of heart, and hard beset
By death in various forms, dark snares and dogs,
And more unpitying men, the garden seeks,
Urged on by fearless want. The bleating kine
Eye the bleak heaven, and next, the glist'ning earth,
With looks of dumb despair; then, sad dispersed,
Then throng the busy shapes into his mind,
Of covered pits, unfathomably deep,
A dire descent! beyond the power of frost
Of faithless bogs; of precipices huge
Smoothed up with snow; and what is land unknown,
What water of the still unfrozen spring,
In the loose marsh or solitary lake,
Where the fresh fountain from the bottom voils.
These check his fearful steps, and down he sinks
Beneath the shelter of the shapeless drift,
Thinking o'er all the bitterness of death,
Mixed with the tender anguish nature shoots
Through the wrung bosom of the dying man,
His wife, his children, and his friends, unseen.
In vain for him the officious wife prepares
The fire fair blazing, and the vestment warm:
In vain his little children, peeping out
Into the mingling storm, demand their sire
With tears of artless innocence. Alas!
Nor wife nor children more shall he behold,
Nor friends, nor sacred home. On every nerve
The deadly winter seizes, shuts up sense,
And o'er his inmost vitals creeping cold,
Lays him along the snows a stiffened corse,
Stretched out, and bleaching in the northern blast.
JAMES THOMSON.
HESE, as they change, Almighty Father, thes Are but the varied God. The rolling year Is full of thee. Forth in the pleasing spring Thy beauty walks, thy tenderness and love. Wide flush the fields; the softening air is balm; Echo the mountains round; the forest smiles; And every sense, and every heart, is joy.
Then comes thy glory in the summer months,
With light and heat refulgent. Then thy sun
Shoots full perfection through the swelling year:
And oft thy voice in dreadful thunder speaks ;
And oft at dawn, deep noon, or falling eve,
By brooks and groves, in hollow-whispering gales.
Thy bounty shines in autumn unconfined,
And spreads a common feast for all that lives.
In winter awful thou! with clouds and storms
Around thee thrown, tempest o'er tempest rolled,
Majestic darkness ! on the whirlwind's wing,
Riding sublime, thou bidst the world adore,
And humblest nature with thy northern blast.
Mysterious round ! what skill, what force divine,
Deep felt, in these appear ! a simple train,
Yet so delightful mixed, with such kind art,
Such beauty and beneficence combined;
Shade, unperceived, so softening into shade;
And all so forming an harmonious whole;
That, as they still succeed, they ravish still.
But wandering oft, with brute unconscious gaze,
Man marks not thee, marks not the mighty Hand,
That, ever busy, wheels the silent spheres ;
Works in the secret deep; shoots, steaming, thence
The fair profusion that o'erspreads the spring:
Flings from the sun direct the flaming day ;
Feeds every creature; hurls the tempests forth;
And, as on earth this grateful change revolves,
With transport touches all the springs of life.
HE fire-flies freckle every spot
With fickle light that gleams and dies; The bat, a wavering, soundless blot, The cat, a pair of prowling eyes.
Still the sweet, fragrant dark o'erflows
The deepening air and darkening ground;
By its rich scent I trace the rose,
The viewless beetle by its sound.
The cricket scrapes its rib-like bars ;
The tree-toad purrs in whirring tone;
And now the heavens are set with stars,
And night and quiet reign alone.
ALFRED B. STREET.
HAT stands upon the highland?
What walks across the rise,
As though a starry island
Were sinking down the skies?
What makes the trees so golden!
What decks the mountain side,
Like a veil of silver folden
Round the white brow of a bride?
The magic moon is breaking,
Like a conqueror, from the east,
The waiting world awaking
To a golden fairy feast.
She works, with touch ethereal;
By changes strange to see,
The cypress, so funereal,
To a lightsome fairy tree;
Black rocks to marble turning,
Like palaces of kings;
On ruin windows burning,
A festal glory flings;
The desert halls uplighting,
While falling shadows glance,
Like courtly crowds uniting
For the banquet or the dance;
With ivory wand she numbers
The stars along the sky;
And breaks the billows' slumbers
With a love-glance of her eye;
Along the cornfields dances,
Brings bloom upon the sheaf;
From tree to tree she glances,
And touches leaf by leaf;
Wakes birds that sleep in shadows;
Through their half-closed eyelids gleams; With her white torch through the meadows Lights the shy deer to the streams.
The magic moon is breaking,
Like a conqueror, from the east,
And the joyous world partaking
Of her golden fairy feast.
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OME on, sir; here's the place: stand still! How
And dizzy 't is, to cast one's eyes so low!
The crows and choughs that wing the midway
air
Show scarce so gross as beetles: half-way down
Hangs one that gathers samphire,-dreadful trade!
Methinks he seems no bigger than his head:
The fishermen, that walk upon the beach,
Appear like mice; and yon tall anchoring bark
Diminished to her cock; her cock, a buoy
Almost too small for sight: the murmuring surge
That on the unnumbered idle pebbles chafes,
Cannot be heard so high.-I'll look no more;
Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight
Topple down headlong.
'HERE is a gloomy grandeur in the sun, That levels his last light along the shore; The clouds are rolling downwards, stern and dun:
The long, slow wave is streaked with red, like gore On some vast field of battle; and the roar
Of wave and wind comes like the battle's sound.
And now the sun sinks deeper; and the clouds,
In folds of sullen fire, still heavier lower,
Till the whole storm the shore and ocean shrouds.
GEORGE CROLY.
HERE'S grandeur in this sounding storm, That drives the hurrying clouds along, That on each other seem to throng, And mix in many a varied form; While, bursting now and then between, The moon's dim misty orb is seen,
And casts faint glimpses on the green.
Beneath the blast the forests bend,
And thick the branchy ruin lies,
And wide the shower of foliage flies;
The lake's black waves in tumult blend,
Revolving o'er and o'er and o'er,
And foaming on the rocky shore,
Whose caverns echo to their roar.
The sight sublime enrapts my thought,
And swift along the past it strays,
And much of strange event surveys.
What history's faithful tongue has taught,
Or fancy formed, whose plastic skill
The page with fabled change can fill
Of ill to good, or good to ill.
But can my soul the scene enjoy,
That rends another's breast with pain?
O hapless he, who near the main,
Now sees its billowy rage destroy !
Beholds the foundering bark descend,
Nor knows but that its fate may end
The moments of his dearest friend!
Fair was the maiden,
And fond was the lover;
But the snow was so deep
That his heart it grew weary;
Nature's great ancestor! day's eider-born!
And fated to survive the transient sun!
By mortals and immortals seen with awe!
A starry crown thy raven brow adorns,
An azure zone thy waist; clouds, in heaven's loom
Wrought through varieties of shape and shade,
In ample folds of drapery divine,
Thy flowing mantle form, and, heaven throughout,
Voluminously pour thy pompous train;
Thy gloomy grandeurs-nature's most august,
Inspiring aspect !—claim a grateful verse ;
And, like a sable curtain starred with gold,
Drawn o'er my labors past, shall clothe the scene.
WARD YOUNG.
HOU brightly glittering star of even,
Thou gem upon the brow of heaven!
Oh! were this fluttering spirit free,
How quick 'twould spread its wings to thee!
How calmly, brightly, dost thou shine,
Like the pure lamp in virtue's shrine !
Sure the fair world which thou may'st boast
Was never ransomed, never lost.
There, beings pure as heaven's own air,
Their hopes, their joys, together share;
While hovering angels touch the string,
And seraphs spread the sheltering wing.
There, cloudless days and brilliant nights,
Illumed by heaven's refulgent lights ;
There, seasons, years, unnoticed roll,
And unregretted by the soul.
Thou little sparkling star of even,
Thou gem upon an azure heaven!
How swiftly will I soar to thee,
When this imprisoned soul is free!
LUCRETIA MARIA DAVIDSON.
THE NIGHT-FLOWERING CEREUS.
The night-flowering cereus is one of our most splendid hothouse plants, and is a native of Jamaica and some other of the West India Islands. Its stem is creeping, and thickly set with spines. The flower is white, and very large, sometimes nearly a foot in diameter. The most remarkable circumstance with regard to the flower, is the short time which it takes to expand, and the rapidity with which it decays. It begins to open late in the evening, flourishes for an hour or two, then begins to droop, and before morning is completely dead.
OW departs day's gairish light—
Beauteous flower, lift thy head!
Rise upon the brow of night!
Haste, thy transient lustre shed!
Night has dropped her dusky veil-
All vain thoughts be distant far,
While, with silent awe, we hail
Flora's radiant evening star.
See to life her beauties start;
Hail! thou glorious, matchless flower! Much thou sayest to the heart,
In the solemn, fleeting hour.
Ere we have our homage paid,
Thou wilt bow thine head and die; Thus our sweetest pleasures fade, Thus our brightest blessings fly. Sorrow's rugged stem, like thine,
Bears a flower thus purely bright; Thus, when sunny hours decline,
Friendship sheds her cheering light.
Religion, too, that heavenly flower,
That joy of never-fading worth,
Waits, like thee, the darkest hour,
Then puts all her glories forth.
Then thy beauties are surpassed,
Splendid flower, that bloom'st to die;
For friendship and religion last,
When the morning beams on high.
ON RECROSSING THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS
ONG years ago I wandered here,
In the midsummer of the year,—
Life's summer too;
A score of horsemen here we rode,
The mountain world its glories showed,
All fair to view.
These scenes in glowing colors drest, Mirrored the life within my breast,
Its world of hopes;
The whispering woods and fragrant breeze
That stirred the grass in verdant seas
On billowy slopes.
And glistening crag in sunlit sky,
Mid snowy clouds piled mountains high,
Were joys to me;
My path was o'er the prairie wide,
Or here on grander mountain-side,
To choose, all free.
The rose that waved in morning air,
And spread its dewy fragrance there
In careless bloom,
Gave to my heart its ruddiest hue,
O'er my glad life its color threw
And sweet perfume.
The buoyant hopes and busy life
Have ended all in hateful strife,
And thwarted aim.
The world's rude contact killed the resa
No more its radiant color shows
False roads to fame.
Backward, amidst the twilight glow
Some lingering spots yet brightly show
On hard roads won,
Where still some grand peaks mark the way
Touched by the light of parting day
But here thick clouds the mountains hide, The dim horizon bleak and wide
No pathway shows,
And rising gusts, and darkening sky,
Tell of "the night that cometh," nigh,
The brief day's close.
JOHN C. FREMONT.
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