Of Peace and Love, and they would hallow it
To Him. Oh life of blessedness! to reap
The fruit of honorable toil, and bound
Our wishes with our wants! Delightful thoughts,
That soothe the solitude of weary Hope!
Ye leave her to reality awaked,
Like the poor captive, from some fleeting dream
Of friends and liberty and home restored,
Startled, and listening as the midnight storm
Beats hard and heavy through his dungeon-bars.
ВАТН, 1795.
WRITTEN ON CHRISTMAS DAY, 1795.
How many hearts are happy at this hour
In England! Brightly o'er the cheerful hall
Flares the heaped hearth, and friends and kindred
And the glad mother round her festive board
Beholds her children, separated long
Amid the wide world's ways, assembled now,
A sight at which Affection lightens up
With smiles the eye that age has long bedimmed.
I do remember, when I was a child,
How my young heart, a stranger then to care,
With transport leaped upon this holiday,
As o'er the house, all gay with evergreens,
From friend to friend with joyful speed I ran,
Bidding a merry Christmas to them all.
Those years are past; their pleasures and their pains
Are now, like yonder convent-crested hill
That bounds the distant prospect, indistinct,
Yet pictured upon Memory's mystic glass
In faint, fair hues. A weary traveller now,
I journey o'er the desert mountain-tracks
Of Leon, wilds all drear and comfortless,
Where the gray lizards in the noontide sun
Sport on the rocks, and where the goatherd starts,
Roused from his sleep at midnight, when he hears
The prowling wolf, and falters as he calls
Here of the friends I think
Who now, I ween, remember me, and fill
The glass of votive friendship. At the name,
Will not thy cheek, Beloved, change its hue,
And in those gentle eyes uncalled-for tears
Tremble? I will not wish thee not to weep;
Such tears are free from bitterness, and they
Who know not what it is sometimes to wake
And weep at midnight are but instruments
Of Nature's common work. Yes, think of me,
My Edith!-think that, travelling far away,
Thus I beguile the solitary hours
With many a day-dream, picturing scenes as fair
Of peace and comfort, and domestic bliss,
As ever to the youthful poet's eye
Creative Fancy fashioned. Think of me.
Though absent, thine; and if a sigh will rise,
And tears, unbidden, at the thought steal down, Sure hope will cheer thee, and the happy hour Of meeting soon all sorrow overpay.
WRITTEN AFTER VISITING THE CONVENT OF ARRABIDA, NEAR SETUBAL,
HAPPY the dwellers in this holy house;
For surely never worldly thoughts intrude
On this retreat, this sacred solitude,
Where Quiet with Religion makes her home.
And ye who tenant such a goodly scene,
How should ye be but good where all is fair,
And where the mirror of the mind reflects
Serenest beauty? O'er these mountain-wilds
The insatiate eye with ever-new delight
Roams raptured, marking now where to the wind
The tall tree bends its many-tinted boughs
With soft, accordant sound; and now the sport
Of joyous sea-birds o'er the tranquil deep;
And now the long-extending stream of light,
Where the broad orb of day refulgent sinks
Beneath old Ocean's line. To have no cares
That eat the heart, no wants that to the earth
Chain the reluctant spirit, to be freed
From forced communion with the selfish tribe
Who worship Mammon,- yea, emancipate
From this world's bondage, even while the soul
Inhabits still its corruptible clay,-
Almost, ye dwellers in this holy house,
Almost I envy you. You never see
Pale Misery's asking eye, nor roam about
Those huge and hateful haunts of crowded men,
Where Wealth and Power have built their palaces,
Fraud spreads his snares secure, man preys on mail,
Iniquity abounds, and rampant Vice,
With an infection worse than mortal, taints
The herd of human-kind.
Ye tenants of this sacred solitude,
Here to abide, and, when the sun rides high,
Seek some sequestered dingle's coolest shade;
And, at the breezy hour, along the beach
Stray with slow step, and gaze upon the deep,
And while the breath of evening fanned my brow,
And the wild waves with their continuous sound
Soothed my accustomed ear, think thankfully
That I had from the crowd withdrawn in time,
And found a harbor. Yet may yonder deep
Suggest a less unprofitable thought,
Monastic brethren! Would the mariner,
Though storms may sometimes swell the mighty
And o'er the reeling bark with thundering crash
Impel the mountainous surge, quit yonder deep,
And rather float upon some tranquil sea,
Whose moveless waters never feel the gale,
In safe stagnation? Rouse thyself, my soul!
No season this for self-deluding dreams;
It is thy spring-time; sow, if thou wouldst reap;
Then, after honest labor, welcome rest,
In full contentment not to be enjoyed
Unless when duly earned. Oh, happy then
To know that we have walked among mankind
More sinned against than sinning! happy then
To muse on many a sorrow overpast,
And think the business of the day is done,
And as the evening of our lives shall close, -
The peaceful evening, with a Christian's hope
Expect the dawn of everlasting day!
ON MY OWN MINIATURE PICTURE,
TAKEN AT TWO YEARS OF AGE.
AND.I was once like this! that glowing cheek
Was mine, those pleasure-sparkling eyes; that brow
Smooth as the level lake, when not a breeze
Dies o'er the sleeping surface! Twenty years
Have wrought strange alteration. Of the friends
Who once so dearly prized this miniature,
And loved it for its likeness, some are gone
To their last home; and some, estranged in heart,
|