OH silvery streamlet of the fields,
That flowest full and free,
For thee the rains of spring return,
The summer dews for thee;
And when thy latest blossoms die
In autumn's chilly showers,
The winter fountains gush for thee,
Till May brings back the flowers.
Oh Stream of Life! the violet springs
But once beside thy bed;
But one brief summer, on thy path,
The dews of heaven are shed.
Thy parent fountains shrink away,
And close their crystal veins,
And where thy glittering current flowed
The dust alone remains.
A BURNING sky is o'er me,
The sands beneath me glow,
As onward, onward, wearily,
In the sultry morn I go.
From the dusty path there opens,
Eastward, an unknown way;
Above its windings, pleasantly,
The woodland branches play.
A silvery brook comes stealing
From the shadow of its trees,
Where slender herbs of the forest stoop
Before the entering breeze,
Along those pleasant windings
I would my journey lay,
Where the shade is cool and the dew of night
Is not yet dried away.
Path of the flowery woodland!
Oh whither dost thou lead,
Wandering by grassy orchard-grounds,
Or by the open mead?
Goest thou by nestling cottage?
Goest thou by stately hall,
Where the broad elm droops, a leafy dome,
And woodbines flaunt on the wall?
By steeps where children gather
Flowers of the yet fresh year?
By lonely walks where lovers stray
Till the tender stars appear?
Or haply dost thou linger
On barren plains and bare,
Or clamber the bald mountain-side
Into the thinner air ?—
Where they who journey upward
Walk in a weary track,
And oft upon the shady vale
With longing eyes look back?
I hear a solemn murmur,
And, listening to the sound,
I know the voice of the mighty Sea,
Beating his pebbly bound.
Dost thou, oh path of the woodland !
End where those waters roar,
Like human life, on a trackless beach,
With a boundless Sea before?
"OH MOTHER OF A MIGHTY RACE."
OH mother of a mighty race,
Yet lovely in thy youthful grace!
The elder dames, thy haughty peers,
Admire and hate thy blooming years.
With words of shame
And taunts of scorn they join thy name.
For on thy cheeks the glow is spread
That tints thy morning hills with red;
Thy step-the wild-deer's rustling feet
Within thy woods are not more fleet;
Thy hopeful eye
Is bright as thine own sunny sky.
Ay, let them rail—those haughty ones,
While safe thou dwellest with thy sons.
They do not know how loved thou art,
How many a fond and fearless heart
Would rise to throw
Its life between thee and the foe.
They know not, in their hate and pride,
What virtues with thy children bide;
How true, how good, thy graceful maids
Make bright, like flowers, the valley-shades;
What generous men
Spring, like thine oaks, by hill and glen ;
What cordial welcomes greet the guest
By thy lone rivers of the West;
How faith is kept, and truth revered,
And man is loved, and God is feared,
In woodland homes,
And where the ocean border foams.
There's freedom at thy gates and rest
For Earth's down-trodden and opprest,
A shelter for the hunted head,
For the starved laborer toil and bread.
Power, at thy bounds,
Stops and calls back his baffled hounds.
Oh, fair young mother! on thy brow
Shall sit a nobler grace than now.
Deep in the brightness of the skies
The thronging years in glory rise,
And, as they fleet,
Drop strength and riches at thy feet.
Thine eye, with every coming hour,
Shall brighten, and thy form shall tower;
And when thy sisters, elder born,
Would brand thy name with words of scorn,
Before thine eye,
Upon their lips the taunt shall die.
A MIGHTY realm is the Land of Dreams,
With steeps that hang in the twilight sky,
And weltering oceans and trailing streams,
That gleam where the dusky valleys lie.
But over its shadowy border flow
Sweet rays from the world of endless morn, And the nearer mountains catch the glow, And flowers in the nearer fields are born.
The souls of the happy dead repair,
From their bowers of light, to that bordering land,
And walk in the fainter glory there,
With the souls of the living hand in hand.
In trappings of the battle-field, are whelmed
By whirlpools, or dashed dead upon the rocks.
Then stand the nations still with awe, and pause,
A moment, from the bloody work of war.
These restless surges eat away the shores
Of earth's old continents; the fertile plain
Welters in shallows, headlands crumble down,
And the tide drifts the sea-sand in the streets
Of the drowned city. Thou, meanwhile, afar
In the green chambers of the middle sea,
Where broadest spread the waters and the line
Sinks deepest, while no eye beholds thy work,
Creator! thou dost teach the coral-worm
To lay his mighty reefs. From age to age,
He builds beneath the waters, till, at last,
His bulwarks overtop the brine, and check
The long wave rolling from the southern pole
To break upon Japan. Thou bidd'st the fires,
That smoulder under ocean, heave on high
The new-made mountains, and uplift their peaks,
A place of refuge for the storm-driven bird.
The birds and wafting billows plant the rifts
With herb and tree; sweet fountains gush; sweet airs
Ripple the living lakes that, fringed with flowers,
Are gathered in the hollows. Thou dost look
On thy creation and pronounce it good.
Its valleys, glorious in their summer green,
Praise thee in silent beauty, and its woods,
Swept by the murmuring winds of ocean, join
The murmuring shores in a perpetual hymn.
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