Her clear, warm heaven at noon-the mist that shrouds
Her twilight hills-her cool and starry eves,
The glorious splendour of her sunset clouds,
The rainbow beauty of her forest leaves,
Come o'er the eye, in solitude and crowds,
Where'er his web of song her poet weaves;
And his mind's brightest vision but displays
The autumn scenery of his boyhood's days.
And when you dream of woman, and her love;
Her truth, her tenderness, her gentle power;
The maiden listening in the moonlight grove,
The mother smiling in her infant's bower;
Forms, features, worshipped while we breathe or move,
Be by some spirit of your dreaming hour
Borne, like Loretto's chapel, through the air
To the green land I sing, then wake, you'll find them there.
OF NEW YORK, SEPT., 1820.
And they, whose hearts are dry as summer dust,
Burn to the socket."-WORDSWORTH.
GREEN be the turf above thee,
Friend of my better days!
None knew thee but to love thee,
Nor named thee but to praise.
Tears fell, when thou wert dying,
From eyes unused to weep,
And long where thou art lying,
Will tears the cold turf steep.
ON. THE DEATH OF JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE.
When hearts, whose truth was proven,
Like thine, are laid in earth,
There should a wreath be woven
To tell the world their worth;
And I, who woke each morrow
To clasp thy hand in mine,
Who shared thy joy and sorrow,
Whose weal and woe were thine:
It should be mine to braid it
Around thy faded brow,
But I've in vain essayed it,
And feel I cannot now.
While memory bids me weep thee,
Nor thoughts nor words are free,
The grief is fixed too deeply
That mourns a man like thee.
THE bud is in the bough, and the leaf is in the bud,
And Earth's beginning now in her veins to feel the blood,
Which warm'd by summer suns in th' alembic of the vine,
From her founts will over-run in a ruddy gush of wine.
The perfume and the bloom that shall decorate the flower,
Are quickening in the gloom of their subterranean bower;
And the juices meant to feed trees, vegetables, fruits,
Unerringly proceed to their pre-appointed roots.
How awful is the thought of the wonders underground,
Of the mystic changes wrought in the silent, dark profound;
How each thing upward tends by necessity decreed,
And a world's support depends on the shooting of a seed!
The summer's in her ark, and this sunny-pinion'd day
Is commission'd to remark whether Winter holds her sway:
Go back, thou dove of peace, with the myrtle on thy wing.
Say that floods and tempests cease, and the world is ripe for Spring.
Thou hast fann'd the sleeping Earth till her dreams are all of flowers,
And the waters look in mirth for their overhanging bowers;
The forest seems to listen for the rustle of its leaves,
And the very skies to glisten in the hope of summer eves.
Thy vivifying spell has been felt beneath the wave,
By the dormouse in its cell, and the mole within its cave;
And the summer tribes that creep, or in air expand their wing,
Have started from their sleep at the summons of the Spring.
The cattle lift their voices from the valleys and the hills,
And the feather'd race rejoices with a gush of tuneful bills;
And if this cloudless arch fills the poet's song with glee,
O thou sunny first of March, be it dedicate to thee.
Down the dimpled green-sward dancing
Bursts a flaxen-headed bevy,
Bud-lipt boys and girls advancing,
Love's irregular little levy.
Rows of liquid eyes in laughter,
How they glimmer, how they quiver!
Sparkling one another after,
Like bright ripples on a river.
Tipsy band of rubious faces,
Flushed with joy's ethereal spirit,
Make your mocks and sly grimaces
At Love's self, and do not fear it.
CHILDHOOD AND HIS VISITORS.
ONCE on a time, when sunny May
Was kissing up the April showers,
I saw fair CHILDHOOD hard at play
Upon a bank of blushing flowers;
Happy, he knew not whence or how;
And smiling,-who could choose but love him? For not more glad than CHILDHOOD's brow, Was the blue heaven that beamed above him.
Old TIME, in most appalling wrath,
That valley's green repose invaded;
The brooks grew dry upon his path,
The birds were mute, the lilies faded;
But Time so swiftly winged his flight,
In haste a Grecian tomb to batter,
That CHILDHOOD watched his paper kite,
And knew just nothing of the matter.
With curling lip, and glancing eye,
GUILT gazed upon the scene a minute,
But CHILDHOOD's glance of purity
Had such a holy spell within it,
That the dark demon to the air
Spread forth again his baffled pinion,
And hid his envy and despair,
Self-tortured, in his own dominion.
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