On our wearisome journey through life, When beauty and youth are our own; Mid spirits all buoyant and rife, We think of the present alone.
But there comes a cessation at last, As years slowly follow our track The days of our dreaming are past, And vainly we summon them back.
Qh thus, when our bosoms were young, Together we listlessly strayed,—
Together in joyousness sung,- Together in innocence played.
But now what a change we discover; Our playmates of childhood have fled: With some these endearments are over, And others they sleep with the dead!
Still, Eliza! there's one, tho' unworthy, Whose thought of these days cannot cease, Whose coldest and weakest wish for thee, Is happiness, pleasure, and peace.
He claims not the title of lover, Within thy affections to blend;
And his highest ambition is over,
When counted a cousin and friend.
Which foundered in a violent storm, off the Sunderland coast, in December, 1840, having been launched the previous day.
She bounded in her beauty
On the fresh and joyous tide, But yestermorn a virgin bark, To-day the Ocean's bride. He woo'd her with deceptive sigh,— The gently-blowing breeze,― Beneath the blue that canopied The bright and tranquil seas.
But consort false old Neptune proved; The winds waked o'er her head,- He twined her in his billowy arms Upon a rocky bed;
His sigh became the raging storm, His breath the thundering blast, His kiss was in the mountain wave That fiercely o'er her passed.
She struggled like a wayward girl That giant fingers press,
And long withstood that rude embrace, And spurned that wild caress, But wearied out at length she sank,
By ruthless strength o'erborne ; Her tresses streaming, wet with spray, Her bridal vestments torn.
The good ship's gone:-her first and last
And thwart her deck loud waters roll, Where life shall be no more.
For there her shattered wreck is cast, While o'er it weeps the surge; And the sea-mew shrieks exultingly The Syria's funeral dirge.
Oh! 'tis a piteous thing to see A gallant ship a wreck,
Her bold tars grouped without a hope, Upon her wave-washed deck; To see brave men in calm despair Each grasp his messmate's hand, And with a wild good bye, go down In sight of fatherland.
On the Death of my Mother.
A mother's loss may be felt, but can never be estimated.—
I remember-'tis a long time since- A vision o'er me smiling,
When in childhood's joyfulness I play'd, The light-wing'd hours beguiling. I remember too-'tis not so long- A pale face on a bed;
I asked why mother looked so white, And they told me she was dead.
I was glad, and my heart beat merrily As I looked at the horses prancing, And I laughed in boyhood's mirth to see In the wind the dark plumes dancing. It grieved me not that sunny day By the sable hearse to tread;
Though my darkest sun then shed its ray O'er the bier of my mother dead.
They laid her in the lone churchyard,
Insensate, I did not cry ;—
Yet I wondered not that my
For a tear was in every eye.
"Father," I cried, "why dost thou weep?"
"We are left alone," he said;
"Thy mother is gone to her last long sleepThy mother, my boy, is dead!"
Years passed away, and a stranger came; But I knew not she was come
To rule in my angel mother's stead O'er my father's heart and home. Study neglected, I forgot
Religion's paths to tread:
My father's house was no home for me,My mother, alas, was dead!
Years still wear on-a wanderer Am I upon the earth;
Unloved, unfriended, even unknown The race that gave me birth. Far from the freezing kindness
Of relations I have fled; There's but one being loves me now, And her mother, too, is dead.
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