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THOMAS PARNELL.

HYMN TO CONTENTMENT.

LOVELY, lasting Peace of mind! Sweet delight of human kind! Heavenly-born, and bred on high, To crown the favorites of the sky With more of happiness below, Than victors in a triumph know! Whither, O whither art thou fled, To lay thy meek, contented head? What happy region dost thou please To make the seat of calms and ease? Ambition searches all its sphere Of pomp and state, to meet thee there. Increasing avarice would find Thy presence in its gold enshrined. The bold adventurer ploughs his way Through rocks amidst the foaming

sea

To gain thy love; and then perceives Thou wert not in the rocks and waves. The silent heart, which grief assails, Treads soft and lonesome o'er the vales,

Sees daisies open, rivers run,

And seeks (as I have vainly done)
Amusing thought; but learns to know
That Solitude's the nurse of woe.
No real happiness is found
In trailing purple o'er the ground:
Or in a soul exalted high,
To range the circuit of the sky,
Converse with stars above, and know
All Nature in its forms below;
The rest it seeks, in seeking dies,
And doubts at last for knowledge
rise.

Lovely, lasting Peace, appear!
This world itself, if thou art here,
Is once again with Eden blest,
And man contains it in his breast.
'Twas thus, as under shade I stood,
I sung my wishes to the wood,
And, lost in thought, no more per-
ceived

The branches whisper as they waved;

It seemed as all the quiet place Confessed the presence of her grace. When thus she spoke-"Go rule thy will,

Bid thy wild passions all be still, Know God-and bring thy heart to know

The joys which from religion flow: Then every grace shall prove its guest, And I'll be there to crown the rest."

Oh! by yonder mossy seat, In my hours of sweet retreat, Might I thus my soul employ With sense of gratitude and joy: Raised as ancient prophets were, In heavenly vision, praise, and prayer;

Pleasing all men, hurting none,
Pleased and blessed with God alone:
Then while the gardens take my
sight,

With all the colors of delight;
While silver waters glide along,
To please my ear, and court my song;
I'll lift my voice, and tune my string,
And thee, great Source of Nature,
sing.

The sun that walks his airy way, To light the world, and give the day: The moon that shines with borrowed

light;

The stars that gild the gloomy night; The seas that roll unnumbered waves; The wood that spreads its shady leaves;

The field whose ears conceal the grain,

The yellow treasure of the plain;
All of these, and all I see,

Should be sung, and sung by me:
They speak their Maker as they can,
But want and ask the tongue of man.

Go search among your idle dreams, Your busy or your vain extremes; And find a life of equal bliss, Or own the next begun in this.

THOMAS WILLIAM PARSONS.

HUDSON RIVER.

RIVERS that roll most musical in song
Are often lovely to the mind alone:
The wanderer muses, as he moves along
Their barren banks, on glories not their own.

When, to give substance to his boyish dreams, He leaves his own, far countries to survey, Oft must he think, in greeting foreign streams, "Their names alone are beautiful, not they."

If chance he mark the dwindled Arno pour

A tide more meagre than his native Charles; Or views the Rhone when summer's heat is o'er, Subdued and stagnant in the fen of Arles:

Or when he sees the slimy Tiber fling
His sullen tribute at the feet of Rome,
Oft to his thought must partial memory bring
More noble waves, without renown, at home.

Now let him climb the Catskill, to behold
The lordly Hudson, marching to the main,
And say what bard, in any land of old,

Had such a river to inspire his strain.

Along the Rhine gray battlements and towers
Declare what robbers once the realm possessed;
But here Heaven's handiwork surpasseth ours,
And man has hardly more than built his nest.

No storied castle overawes these heights;
Nor antique arches check the current's play;
Nor mouldering architrave the mind invites
To dream of deities long passed away.

No Gothic buttress, or decaying shaft
Of marble, yellowed by a thousand years,
Lifts a great landmark to the little craft,
A summer cloud: that comes and disappears.

-

But cliffs, unaltered from their primal form
Since the subsiding of the deluge, rise
And hold their savins to the upper storm,
While far below, the skiff securely plies.

Farms, rich not more in meadows than in men
Of Saxon mould, and strong for every toil,
Spread o'er the plain, or scatter through the glen,
Boeotian plenty on a Spartan soil.

Then, where the reign of cultivation ends,
Again the charming wilderness begins:
From steep to steep one solemn wood extends,
Till some new hamlet's rise, the boscage thins.

And these deep groves forever have remained

-

Touched by no axe, by no proud owner nursed; As now they stand they stood when Pharaoh reigned, Lineal descendants of creation's first.

No tales, we know, are chronicled of thee

In ancient scrolls; no deeds of doubtful claim

Have hung a history on every tree,

And given each rock its fable and a fame.

But neither here hath any conqueror trod,
Nor grim invaders from barbarian climes;
No horrors feigned of giant or of god

Pollute thy stillness with recorded crimes.

Here never yet have happy fields laid waste,
The ravished harvest and the blasted fruit,
The cottage ruined and the shrine defaced,
Tracked the foul passage of the feudal brute.

"Yet, O Antiquity!" the stranger sighs;
"Scenes wanting thee soon pall upon the view;
The soul's indifference dulls the sated eyes,
Where all is fair indeed, - but all is new."

False thought! is age to crumbling walls confined?
To Grecian fragments and Egyptian bones?
Hath Time no monuments to raise the mind,
More than old fortresses and sculptured stones?

Call not this new which is the only land

That wears unchanged the same primeval face Which, when just dawning from its Maker's hand, Gladdened the first great grandsire of our race.

Nor did Euphrates with an earlier birth

Glide past green Eden towards the unknown south, Than Hudson broke upon the infant earth.

And kissed the ocean with his nameless mouth.

Twin-born with Jordan, Ganges, and the Nile!
Thebes and the pyramids to thee are young;
Oh! had thy waters burst from Britain's isle,
Till now perchance they had not flowed unsung.

THE GROOMSMAN TO HIS
MISTRESS.

EVERY wedding, says the proverb,
Makes another, soon or late;
Never yet was any marriage

Entered in the book of Fate,
But the names were also written
Of the patient pair that wait.

Blessings then upon the morning When my friend with fondest look, By the solemn rites' permission,

To himself his mistress took, And the Destinies recorded

Other two within their book.

While the priest fulfilled his office,
Still the ground the lovers eyed,
And the parents and the kinsmen

Aimed their glances at the bride; But the groomsmen eyed the virgins Who were waiting at her side.

Three there were that stood beside her;

One was dark, and one was fair;

But nor fair nor dark the other,
Save her Arab eyes and hair;
Neither dark nor fair, I call her,
Yet she was the fairest there.
While her groomsman-shall I own it?
Yes, to thee, and only thee-
Gazed upon this dark-eyed maiden
Who was fairest of the three,
Thus he thought: "How blest the
bridal

Where the bride were such as she!"

Then I mused upon the adage,

Till my wisdom was perplexed, And I wondered, as the churchinan Dwelt upon his holy text, Which of all who heard his lesson Should require the service next. Whose will be the next occasion

For the flowers, the feast, the wine? Thine, perchance, my dearest lady;

Or, who knows?-it may be mine: What if 't were-forgive the fancy — What if 't were both mine and thine ?

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It was as if a harp with wires

Was traversed by the breath I drew; And oh, sweet meeting of desires! She, answering, owned that she loved too.

WOULD WISDOM For herseLF BE WOOED.

WOULD Wisdom for herself be wooed, And wake the foolish from his dream,

She must be glad as well as good,

And must not only be, but seem. Beauty and joy are hers by right; And, knowing this, I wonder less That she's so scorned, when falsely dight

In misery and ugliness.

Than the heart says, with floods of tears,

"Ah! that's the thing which I would be?"

Not childhood, full of fears and frets: Not youth, impatient to disown Those visions high, which to forget Were worse than never to have

known.

Not these; but souls found here and here,

Oases in our waste of sin, When everything is well and fair,

And God remits his discipline; Whose sweet subdual of the world

The worldling scarce can recognize; And ridicule, against it hurled,

Drops with a broken sting and dies. They live by law, not like the fool, But like the bard who freely sings

What's that which Heaven to man In strictest bonds of rhyme and rule,

endears,

And that which eyes no sooner see

And finds in them not bonds but wings.

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