THE FLOWER AND STAR.
THE Flower beheld the Star above,
And longed to reach its airy love,
But longed in vain. A dew-drop fell
Into the soft and fragrant cell;
And then the Star was imaged there,
As if it dropped from upper air,
And gliding down from heaven, had come
To find on earth a kindred home.
Placed lengthways in the clasping casement, hark! How by the desultory breeze caressed,
It pours such sweet upbraiding, as must needs
Tempt to repeat the wrong! And now, its strings
Boldlier swept, the long sequacious notes
Over delicious surges sink and rise,
Such a soft, floating witchery of sound
As twilight elfins make, when they at eve
Voyage on gentle gales from fairy land,
Where melodies, round honey-dropping flowers,
Footless and wild, like birds of paradise,
Nor pause nor perch, hovering on untamed wing!
Oh! the one life within us and abroad,
Which meets all motion and becomes its soul,
A light in sound, a sound-like power in light,
Rhythm in all thought, and joyance everywhere ;
Methinks it should have been impossible
Not to love all things in a world so filled;
Where the breeze warbles, and the mute, still air
Is Music slumbering on her instrument.
COLERIDGE.
WHERE the remote Bermudas ride
In the ocean's bosom unespied,
From a small boat, that rowed along,
The listening winds received this song.
"What should we do but sing His praise,
That led us through the watery maze
Unto an isle so long unknown,
And yet far kinder than our own?
Where He the huge sea-monsters wracks,
That lift the deep upon their backs.
He lands us on a grassy stage
Safe from the storms and prelates' rage.
He gave us this eternal spring,
Which here enamels every thing ;
And sends the fowls to us in care,
On daily visits through the air.
He hangs in shades the orange bright,
Like golden lamps in a green night;
And does in the pomegranate close
Jewels more rich than Ormus shows.
He makes the figs our mouths to meet,
And throws the melons at our feet;
But apples plants of such a price,
No tree could ever bear them twice.
With cedars, chosen by his hand
From Lebanon, he stores the land;
And makes the hollow seas that roar
Proclaim the ambergris on shore.
He cast, of which we rather boast,-
The gospel's pearl upon our coast;
And in these rocks for us did frame
A temple where to sound his name.
O let our voice his praise exalt,
Till it arrive at heaven's vault!
Which, thence perhaps rebounding, may
Echo beyond the Mexique bay."
Thus sang they in the English boat,
A holy and a cheerful note;
And all the way, to guide their chime,
With falling oars they kept the time.
ANDREW MARVELL.
ON A CATARACT FROM A CAVERN NEAR THE SUMMIT OF A MOUNTAIN PRECIPICE.
UNPERISHING youth!
Thou leapest from forth
The cell of thy hidden nativity.
Never mortal saw
The cradle of the strong one ;
Never mortal heard
The gathering of his voices.
The deep-murmured charm of the son of the rock, That is lisped evermore at his slumberless fountain. There's a cloud at the portal, a spray-woven veil At the shrine of his ceaseless running;
It embosoms the roses of dawn,
It entangles the shafts of the noon,
And into the bed of its stillness
The moonshine sinks down as in slumber,
That the son of the rock, that the nursling of
heaven
May be born in a holy twilight.
The wild goat in awe
Looks up, and beholds
Above him the cliff inaccessible.
Thou, at once full-born,
Maddenest in thy joyance;
Whirlest, shatterest, spillest,
Life invulnerable!
THE GLADNESS OF NATURE.
Is this a time to be cloudy and sad,
When our mother Nature laughs around;
When even the deep blue heavens look glad,
And gladness breathes from the blossoming ground?
There are notes of joy from the hang-bird and wren,
And the gossip of swallows through all the sky;
The ground-squirrel gaily chirps by his den,
And the wilding bee hums merrily by.
The clouds are at play in the azure space,
And their shadows at play on the bright green vale;
And here they stretch to the frolic chase,
And there they roll on the easy gale.
;
There's a dance of leaves in that aspen bower There's a titter of winds in that beechen tree; There's a smile on the fruit, and a smile on the
flower,
And a laugh from the brook that runs to the sea.
And look at the broad-faced sun, how he smiles
On the dewy earth that smiles in his ray,
On the leaping waters and gay young isles ;—
Ay, look, and he'll smile thy gloom away.
BRYANT.
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