The wounded wild deer ever ran, Whose myrtle bound their grassy cave, Whose very rocks a shelter gave From blood-pursuing man.
O heart effusions, that arose
From nightly wanderings cherished here; To him who flies from many woes, Even homeless deserts can be dear! The last and solitary cheer
Of those that own no earthly home, Say is it not, ye banished race, In such a loved and lonely place Companionless to roam?
Yes! I have loved thy wild abode,
Unknown, unploughed, untrodden shore; Where scarce the woodman finds a road, And scarce the fisher plies an oar; For man's neglect I love thee more; That art nor avarice intrude
To tame thy torrent's thunder-shock, Or prune thy vintage of the rock Magnificently rude.
Unheeded spreads thy blossomed bud Its milky bosom to the bee; Unheeded falls along the flood Thy desolate and aged tree. Forsaken scene, how like to thee The fate of unbefriended Worth! Like thine her fruit dishonored falls; Like thee in solitude she calls
A thousand treasures forth.
O! silent spirit of the place,
If, lingering with the ruined year, Thy hoary form and awful face
I yet might watch and worship here! Thy storm were music to mine ear, Thy wildest walk a shelter given
Sublimer thoughts on earth to find, And share, with no unhallowed mind, The majesty of heaven.
What though the bosom friends of Fate,- Prosperity's unweanéd brood,-
Thy consolations cannot rate, O self-dependent solitude! Yet with a spirit unsubdued,
Though darkened by the clouds of Care, To worship thy congenial gloom, A pilgrim to the Prophet's tomb The Friendless shall repair.
On him the world hath never smiled, Or looked but with accusing eye; - All-silent goddess of the wild,
To thee that misanthrope shall fly! I hear his deep soliloquy,
I mark his proud but ravaged form, As stern he wraps his mantle round, And bids, on winter's bleakest ground, Defiance to the storm.
Peace to his banished heart, at last,
In thy dominions shall descend, And, strong as beechwood in the blast,
His spirit shall refuse to bend ; Enduring life without a friend, The world and falsehood left behind, Thy votary shall bear elate, (Triumphant o'er opposing Fate) His dark inspired mind.
But dost thou, Folly, mock the Muse A wanderer's mountain walk to sing, Who shuns a warring world, nor woos The vulture cover of its wing?
Then fly, thou cowering, shivering thing, Back to the fostering world beguiled, To waste in self-consuming strife The loveless brotherhood of life, Reviling and reviled!
Away, thou lover of the race.
That hither chased yon weeping deer! If Nature's all-majestic face
More pitiless than man's appear;
Or if the wild winds seem more drear Than man's cold charities below, Behold around his peopled plains, Where'er the social savage reigns, Exuberance of woe!
His art and honors wouldst thou seek Embossed on grandeur's giant walls? Or hear his moral thunders speak Where senates light their airy halls, Where man his brother man enthralls;
Or sends his whirlwind warrant forth
To rouse the slumbering fiends of war, To dye the blood-warm waves afar, And desolate the earth?
From clime to clime pursue the scene, And mark in all thy spacious way, Where'er the tyrant man has been, There Peace, the cherub, cannot stay; In wilds and woodlands far
She builds her solitary bower,
Where only anchorites have trod,
Or friendless men, to worship God, Have wandered for an hour.
In such a far forsaken vale,
And such, sweet Eldurn vale, is thine,- Afflicted nature shall inhale
Heaven-borrowed thoughts and joys divine;
No longer wish, no more repine
For man's neglect or woman's scorn;
Then wed thee to an exile's lot,
For if the world hath loved thee not, Its absence may be borne.
THE DEATH-BOAT OF HELIGOLAND.
CAN restlessness reach the cold sepulchred head?—
Ay, the quick have their sleep-walkers, so have the dead. There are brains, though they moulder, that dream in the
And that maddening forehear the last trumpet of doom,
Till their corses start sheeted to revel on earth, Making horror more deep by the semblance of mirth : By the glare of new-lighted volcanoes they dance,
Or at mid-sea appal the chilled mariner's glance. Such, I wot, was the band of cadaverous smile Seen ploughing the night-surge of Heligo's isle.
The foam of the Baltic had sparkled like fire,
And the red moon looked down with an aspect of ire; But her beams on a sudden grew sick-like and gray,
And the mews that had slept clanged and shrieked far
And the buoys and the beacons extinguished their light, As the boat of the stony-eyed dead came in sight, High bounding from billow to billow; each form Had its shroud like a plaid flying loose to the storm; With an oar in each pulseless and icy-cold hand, Fast they ploughed by the lee-shore of Heligoland, Such breakers as boat of the living ne'er crossed; Now surf-sunk for minutes again they uptossed; And with livid lips shouted reply o'er the flood To the challenging watchman that curdled his blood — "We are dead we are bound from our graves in the west, First to Hecla, and then to "Unmeet was the rest For man's ear. The old abbey-bell thundered its clang, And their eyes gleamed with phosphorus light as it rang : Ere they vanished, they stopped, and gazed silently grim, Till the eye could define them, garb, feature and limb.
Now, who were those roamers? of gallows or wheel Bore they marks, or the mangling anatomist's steel?
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