The tones of the night,
That are sacred to love.
His gold-hilted sword
At his bright belt is hung,
His mantle of silk
On his shoulder is flung,
And high waves the feather,
That dances and plays
On his cap where the buckle
And rosary blaze.
The maid from the lattice
Looks down on the lake,
To see the foam sparkle,
The bright billow break,
And to hear in his boat,
Where he shines like a star,
Her lover so tenderly
Touch his guitar.
She opens the lattice,
And sits in the glow
Of the moonlight and starlight,
A statue of snow ;
And she sings in a voice,
That is broken with sighs,
And she darts on her lover
The light of her eyes.
His love-speaking pantomime
Tells her his soul-
How wild in that sunny clime
Hearts and eyes roll.
She waves with her white hand
Her white fazzolett,
And her burning thoughts flash
From her eyes' living jet.
The moonlight is hid
In a vapor of snow;
Her voice and his rebeck
Alternately flow;
Re-echoed they swell
From the rock on the hill;
They sing their farewell,
And the music is still.
THE GRAVES OF THE PATRIOTS.
HERE rest the great and good-here they repose
After their generous toil. A sacred band,
They take their sleep together, while the year
Comes with its early flowers to deck their graves,
And gathers them again, as winter frowns.
Theirs is no vulgar sepulchre-green sods
Are all their monument, and yet it tells
A nobler history, than pillar'd piles,
Or the eternal pyramids. They need
No statue nor inscription to reveal
Their greatness. It is round them, and the joy
With which their children tread the hallowed ground
That holds their venerated bones, the peace
That smiles on all they fought for, and the wealth
That clothes the land they rescued,--these, though mute,
As feeling ever is when deepest,—these
Are monuments more lasting, than the fanes
Reard to the kings and demigods of old.
Touch not the ancient elms, that bend their shade
Over their lowly graves; beneath their boughs
There is a solemn darkness, even at noon,
Suited to such as visit at the shrine
Of serious liberty. No factious voice
Call’d them unto the field of generous fame,
But the pure consecrated love of home.
No deeper feeling sways us, when it wakes
In all its greatness. It has told itself
To the astonish'd gaze of awe-struck kings,
At Marathon, at Bannockburn, and here,
Where first our patriots sent the invader back
Broken and cowed. Let these green elms be all
To tell us where they fought, and where they lie.
Their feelings were all nature, and they need
No art to make them known. They live in us,
While we are like them, simple, hardy, bold,
Worshipping nothing but our own pure hearts,
And the one universal Lord. They need
No column pointing to the heaven they sought,
To tell us of their home. The heart itself,
Left to its own free purpose, hastens there,
And there alone reposes. Let these elms
Bend their protecting shadow o'er their graves,
And build with their green roof the only fane,
Where we may gather on the hallow'd day,
That rose to them in blood, and set in glory.
Here let us meet, and while our motionless lips
Give not a sound, and all around is mute
In the deep sabbath of a heart too full
For words or tears-here let us strew the sod
With the first flowers of spring, and make to them
An offering of the plenty, Nature gives,
And they have render'd ours—perpetually.
Again the infant flowers of Spring
Call thee to sport on thy rainbow wing-
Spirit of Beauty! the air is bright
With the boundless flow of thy mellow light;
The woods are ready to bud and bloom,
And are weaving for Summer their quiet gloom ;
The turfed brook reflects, as it flows,
The tips of the half-unopen'd rose,
And the early bird, as he carols free,
Sings to his little love, and thee.
See how the clouds, as they fieetly pass,
Throw their shadowy veil on the darkening grass ;
And the pattering showers and stealing dews,
With their starry gems and skyey hues,
From the oozy meadow, that drinks the tide,
To the shelter'd vale on the mountain side,
Wake to a new and fresher birth
The tenderest tribes of teeming earth,
And scatter with light and dallying play
Their earliest flowers on the zephyr's way.
He comes from the mountain's piny steep,
For the long boughs bend with a silent sweep,
And his rapid steps have hurried o'er
The grassy hills to the pebbly shore;
And now, on the breast of the nely lake,
The waves in silvery glances break,
Like a short and quickly rolling sca,
When the gale first feels its liberty,
And the flakes of foam, like coursers, run,
Rejoicing beneath the vertical sun.
He has cross'd the lake, and the forest heaves,
To the sway of his wings, its billowy leaves,
And the downy tufts of the meadow fly
In snowy clouds, as he passes by,
And softly beneath his noiseless tread
The odorous spring-grass bends its head;
And now he reaches
the woven bower,
Where he meets his own beloved flower,
And gladly his wearied limbs repose,
In the shade of the newly-opening rose.
I had a vision.--
A city lay before me, desolate,
And yet not all decay'd. A summer sun
Shone on it from a most etherial sky,
And the soft winds threw o'er it such a balm,
One would have thought it was a sepulchre,
And this the incense offer'd to the manes
Of the departed.
In the light it lay
Peacefully, as if all its thousands took
Their afternoon's repose, and soon would wake
To the loud joy of evening. There it lay,
A city of magnificent palaces,
And churches, towering more like things of heaven,
The glorious fabrics, fancy builds in clouds,
And shapes on loftiest mountains—bright their domes
Threw back the living ray, and proudly stood
Many a statue, looking like the forms
Of spirits hovering in mid air. Tall trees,
Cypress and plane, waved over many a hill
Cumber'd with ancient ruins_broken arches,
And tottering columns--vaults, where never came
The blessed beam of day, but only lamps
Shedding a funeral light, were kindled there,
And gave to the bright frescoes on the walls,
And the pale statues in their far recesses,
A dim religious awe. Rudely they lay,
Scarce marking out to the inquisitive eye
Their earliest outline. But as desolate
Slumber'd the newer city, though its walls
Were yet unbroken, and its towering domes
Had never stoop'd to ruin. All was still;
Hardly the faintest sound of living thing,
Moved through the mighty solitude and yet
All wore the face of beauty. Not a cloud
Hung in the lofty sky, that seem'd to rise
twofold majesty, so bright and pure,
It seem'd indeed a crystaline sphere—and there
The sun rode onward in his conquering march
Serenely glorious. From the mountain heights
Tinged with the blue of heaven, to the wide sea
Glass'd with as pure a blue, one desolate plain
Spread out, and over it the fairest sky
Bent round and bless'd it. Life was teeming there
In all its lower forms, a wilderness
Of rank luxuriance; flowers, and purpling vines
Matted with deepest foliage, hid the ruins,
And
gave the semblance of a tangled wood
To piles, that once were loudly eloquent
With the glad cry of thousands. There were gardens
Round stateliest villas, full of graceful statues,
And temples rear'd to woodland deities;
And they were overcrowded with the excess
Of beauty. All that most is coveted
Beneath a colder sky, grew wantonly
And richly there. Myrtles and citrons fill’d
The air with fragrance. From the tufted elm,
Bent with its own too massy foliage, hung
Clusters of sunny grapes in frosted purple,
Drinking in spirit from the glowing air,
And dropping generous dews. The very wind
Seem'd there a lover, and his easy wings
Fann'd the gay bowers, as if in fond delay
He bent o'er loveliest things, too beautiful
Ever to know decay. The silent air
Floating as softly as a cloud of roses,
Dropp'd from Idalia in a dewy shower,--
The air itself seem'd like the breath of heaven
Filling the groves of Eden. Yet these walls
Are desolate-not a trace of living man
Is found amid these glorious works of man,
And nature's fairer glories. Why should he
Be absent from the festival of life,
The holiday of nature? Why not come
To add to the sweet sounds of winds and waters-
Of winds uttering Æolian melodies
To the bright, listening flowers, and waters falling
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