And did I leave thy loveliness, to stand Sick of smooth looks, agued with icy kindness? Yet I will look upon thy face again, My own romantic Bronx, and it will be A well-remembered form in each old tree, SONNET Is thy heart weary of unfeeling men, And chilled with the world's ice? Then come with me. And I will bring thee to a pleasant glen Lovely and lonely. There we'll sit, unviewed By scoffing eye; and let our hearts beat free With their own mutual throb. For wild and rude The access is, and none will there intrude, To poison our free thoughts, and mar our solitude! The rock lies cold in sunshine-not the power ON LOOKING AT HIS PORTRAIT BY WEIR COOPER, whose name is with his country's woven, And throned her in the senate-hall of nations, And beautiful as its green world of thought: And faithful to the Act of Congress, quoted He writes that we are, as ourselves have voted, That all our week is happy as a Sunday And furthermore-in fifty years, or sooner, And our brave fleet, eight frigates and a schooner, If he were with me, King of Tuscarora! Gazing, as I, upon thy portrait now, In all its medalled, fringed, and beaded glory, Its brow, half martial and half diplomatic, For thou wast monarch born. Tradition's pages Thy name is princely-if no poet's magic Could make RED JACKET grace an English rhyme, Though some one with a genius for the tragic Hath introduced it in a pantomime, RED JACKET. Yet it is music in the language spoken Of thine own land; and on her herald roll; As bravely fought for, and as proud a token As Cœur de Lion's of a warrior's soul. Thy garb-though Austria's bosom-star would frighten Yet 'tis a brave one, scorning wind and weather, Is strength a monarch's merit, like a whaler's? Is beauty?-Thine has with thy youth departed; Is eloquence?-Her spell is thine that reaches The heart, and makes the wisest head its sport; And there's one rare, strange virtue in thy speeches, The secret of their mastery-they are short. The monarch mind, the mystery of commanding, Thou hast it. At thy bidding men have crowded And minstrels, at their sepulchres, have shrouded Who will believe? Not I-for in deceiving That all things beautiful are what they seem; Who will believe that, with a smile whose blessing Would, like the Patriarch's, soothe a dying hour, With voice as low, as gentle, and caressing, As e'er won maiden's lip in moonlit bower; With look, like patient Job's, eschewing evil; That e'er clenched fingers in a captive's hair! That in thy breast there springs a poison fountain, Deadlier than that where bathes the Upas-tree; And in thy wrath, a nursing cat-o'-mountain Is calm as her babe's sleep compared with thee! And underneath that face, like summer ocean's, Its lip as moveless, and its cheek as clear, Slumbers a whirlwind of the heart's emotions, Love, hatred, pride, hope, sorrow-all save fear. Love for thy land, as if she were thy daughter, Pride-in thy rifle-trophies and thy scars; Hope that thy wrongs may be, by the Great Spirit, Remembered and revenged when thou art gone; that none are left thee to inherit Sorrow Thy name, thy fame, thy passions, and thy throne! |