صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

INSCRIPTION FOR THE ENTRANCE TO A WOOD.

STRANGER, if thou hast learned a truth which needs
No school of long experience, that the world
Is full of guilt and misery, and hast seen
Enough of all its sorrows, crimes, and cares,
To tire thee of it, enter this wild wood

And view the haunts of Nature. The calm shade
Shall bring a kindred calm, and the sweet breeze
That makes the green leaves dance, shall waft a balm
To thy sick heart. Thou wilt find nothing here
Of all that pained thee in the haunts of men
And made thee loathe thy life. The primal curse
Fell, it is true, upon the unsinning earth,

But not in vengeance.

God hath yoked to guilt

Her pale tormentor, misery. Hence, these shades

Are still the abodes of gladness; the thick roof

Of green and stirring branches is alive

And musical with birds, that sing and sport

In wantonness of spirit; while below

The squirrel, with raised paws and form erect,
Chirps merrily. Throngs of insects in the shade
Try their thin wings and dance in the warm beam
That waked them into life. Even the green trees
Partake the deep contentment; as they bend

INSCRIPTION TO A WOOD.

To the soft winds, the sun from the blue sky
Looks in and sheds a blessing on the scene.

Scarce less the cleft-born wild-flower seems to enjoy
Existence, than the winged plunderer

That sucks its sweets. The massy rocks themselves,
And the old and ponderous trunks of prostrate trees
That lead from knoll to knoll a causey rude

Or bridge the sunken brook, and their dark roots,
With all their earth upon them, twisting high,
Breathe fixed tranquillity. The rivulet

Sends forth glad sounds, and tripping o'er its bed
Of pebbly sands, or leaping down the rocks,
Seems, with continuous laughter, to rejoice
In its own being. Softly tread the marge,
Lest from her midway perch thou scare the wren
That dips her bill in water. The cool wind,
That stirs the stream in play, shall come to thee,
Like one that loves thee nor will let thee pass
Ungreeted, and shall give its light embrace.

16

181

"WHEN THE FIRMAMENT QUIVERS WITH

DAYLIGHT'S YOUNG BEAM."

WHEN the firmament quivers with daylight's young beam,
And the woodlands awaking burst into a hymn,
And the glow of the sky blazes back from the stream,—
How the bright ones of heaven in the brightness grow

Oh, 'tis sad, in that moment of glory and song,
To see, while the hill-tops are waiting the sun,
The glittering band that kept watch all night long
O'er Love and o'er Slumber, go out one by one.

Till the circle of ether, deep, ruddy, and vast,

dim!

Scarce glimmers with one of the train that were there; And their leader the day-star, the brightest and last, Twinkles faintly and fades in that desert of air.

Thus, Oblivion, from midst of whose shadow we came,
Steals o'er us again when life's twilight is

And the crowd of bright names, in the heaven of fame,
Grow pale and are quenched as the years hasten on.

Let them fade--but we'll pray that the age, in whose flight,
Of ourselves and our friends the remembrance shall die,
May rise o'er the world, with the gladness and light
Of the dawn that effaces the stars from the sky.

A SCENE ON THE BANKS OF THE HUDSON.

COOL shades and dews are round my way,

And silence of the early day;

'Mid the dark rocks that watch his bed,
Glitters the mighty Hudson spread,
Unrippled, save by drops that fall

From shrubs that fringe his mountain wall;

And o'er the clear still water swells

The music of the Sabbath bells.

All, save this little nook of land
Circled with trees, on which I stand;
All, save that line of hills which lie
Suspended in the mimic sky-

Seems a blue void, above, below,

Through which the white clouds come and go;
And from the green world's farthest steep
I gaze into the airy deep.

Loveliest of lovely things are they,
On earth, that soonest pass away.
The rose that lives its little hour,
Is prized beyond the sculptured flower.

184

BANKS OF THE HUDSON.

Even love, long tried and cherished long,
Becomes more tender and more strong,
At thought of that insatiate grave
From which its yearnings cannot save.

River! in this still hour thou hast

Too much of heaven on earth to last;
Nor long may thy still waters lie,
An image of the glorious sky.
Thy fate and mine are not repose,
And ere another evening close,
Thou to thy tides shalt turn again,
And I to seek the crowd of men.

« السابقةمتابعة »