Page images
PDF
EPUB

The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay

Has dried up realms to deserts:-not so thou, Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play

Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow ;-
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now!

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests !-in all time,—
Calm or convulsed, in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
Dark-heaving,-boundless, endless, and sublime!
The image of eternity!-the throne

Of the Invisible !-Even from out thy slime

The monsters of the deep are made! Each zone Obeys thee! Thou go'st forth, dread! fathomless! alone!

Ex. XCIII.-THE WORLD FOR SALE.

THE world for sale!

REV. RALPH HOYT.

Hang out the sign;
Call every traveler here to me;

Who'll buy this brave estate of mine,
And set this weary spirit free?
'Tis going! yes, I mean to fling
The bauble from my soul away;
I'll sell it, whatsoe'er it bring:
The world at auction here, to-day!

It is a glorious sight to see,

But, ah! it has deceived me sore;
It is not what it seems to be.

For sale! it shall be mine no more.
Come, turn it o'er and view it well;

I would not have you purchase dear.

'Tis going! going! I must sell!

Who bids? who 'll buy the splendid tear?

Here's Wealth, in glittering heaps of gold;
Who bids? But let me tell you fair,
A baser lot was never sold!

Who 'll buy the heavy heaps of care?
And, here, spread out in broad domain,
A goodly landscape all may trace,

Hall, cottage, tree, field, hill, and plain ;-
Who 'll buy himself a burial place?
Here's Love, the dreamy potent spell
That beauty flings around the heart;
I know its power, alas! too well;

'Tis going! Love and I must part!
Must part? What can I more with Love?
All over 's the enchanter's reign.
Who 'll buy the plumeless, dying dove,-
A breath of bliss, a storm of pain?

And, Friendship, rarest gem of earth;
Who e'er hath found the jewel his?
Frail, fickle, false, and little worth,

Who bids for Friendship-as it is? 'Tis going! going! hear the call;

Once, twice and thrice, 'tis very low!
'T was once my hope, my stay, my all,
But now the broken staff must go!
Fame! hold the brilliant meteor high;
How dazzling every gilded name!
Ye millions! now's the time to buy.

How much for Fame? how much for Fame?
Hear how it thunders! Would you stand
On high Olympus, far renowned,

Now purchase, and a world command!—
And be with a world's curses crowned.

Sweet star of Hope! with ray to shine
In every sad foreboding breast,
Save this desponding one of mine,—

Who bids for man's last friend, and best?

Ah, were not mine a bankrupt life,

This treasure should my soul sustain!
But Hope and Care are now at strife,
Nor ever may unite again.

Ambition, fashion, show and pride,
I part from all for ever now;
Grief, in an overwhelming tide,

Has taught my haughty heart to bow.
By Death, stern sheriff! all bereft,
I weep, yet humbly kiss the rod;
The best of all I still have left,-
My Faith, my Bible, and my GOD!

Ex. XCIV.-THAT SILENT MOON.

THAT silent moon, that silent moon,
Careering now through cloudless sky,
Oh! who shall tell what varied scenes

Have passed beneath her placid eye,
Since first, to light this wayward earth,
She walked in tranquil beauty forth?

How oft has guilt's unhallowed hand,
And superstition's senseless rite,
And loud, licentious revelry,

Profaned her pure and holy light!
Small sympathy is hers, I ween,

With sights like these, that virgin queen.

But dear to her, in summer eve,

By rippling wave, or tufted grove, When hand in hand is purely clasped, And heart meets heart in holy love, To smile, in quiet loneliness,

To hear each whispered vow, and bless.

G. W. DOANE.

Dispersed along the world's wide way,
When friends are far, and fond ones rove,
How powerful she to wake the thought,
And start the tear for those we love,
Who watch, with us at night's pale noon,
And gaze upon that silent moon!

How powerful, too, to hearts that mourn,
The magic of that moonlight sky,
To bring again the vanished scenes,

The happy eves of days gone by;
Again to bring, 'mid bursting tears,
The loved, the lost, of other years!

And oft she looks, that silent moon,
On lonely eyes, that wake to weep,

In dungeon dark, or sacred cell,

Or couch, whence pain has banished sleep,

Oh! softly beams that gentle eye,

On those who mourn, and those who die.

But beam on whomsoe'er she will,
And fall where'er her splendor may,
There's pureness in her chastened light,
There's comfort in her tranquil ray:
What power is hers to soothe the heart,—
What power the trembling tear to start!

The dewy morn let others love,

Or bask them in the noontide ray;
There's not an hour but has its charm,
From dawning light to dying day:-
But oh! be mine a fairer boon,-
That silent moon, that silent moon!

Ex. XCV.-THE POET'S THEMES.

TALFOURD.

THE universe, in its majesty, and man in the plain dignity of his nature, are the poet's favorite themes. And is there no might, no glory, no sanctity in these? Earth has her own venerableness-her awful forests, which have darkened her hills for ages with tremendous gloom; her mysterious springs pouring out everlasting waters from unsearchable recesses; her wrecks of elemental contests; her jagged rocks, monumental of an earlier world. The lowliest of her beauties has an antiquity beyond that of the pyramids. The evening breeze has the old sweetness which it shed over the fields of Canaan, when Isaac went out to meditate. The Nile swells with its rich waters toward the bulrushes of Egypt, as when the infant Moses nestled among them, watched by the sisterly love of Miriam. Zion's hill has not yet passed away with its temple, nor lost its sanctity amidst the tumultuous changes around it, nor even by the accomplishment of that awful religion of types and symbols which once was enthroned on its steeps. The sun to which the poet turns his eye is the same which shone over Thermopyla; and the wind to which he listens swept over Salamis, and scattered the armaments of Xerxes. Is a poet utterly deprived of fitting themes, to whom ocean, earth, and sky are open-who has an eye for the most evanescent of nature's hues, and the most ethereal of her graces-who can "live in the rainbow and play in the plighted clouds," or send into our hearts the awful loveliness

[ocr errors]

of regions" consecrate to eldest time ?" Is there nothing in man, considered abstractedly from the distinctions of this world-nothing in a being who is in the infancy of an immortal life-who is lackeyed by "a thousand liveried angels -who is even "splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave" --to awaken ideas of permanence, solemnity and grandeur? Are there no themes sufficiently exalted for poetry in the midst of death and life--in the desires and hopes which have their resting-place near the throne of the Eternal—in affections, strange and wondrous in their working, and unconquerable by time, or anguish, or destiny? Such objects, though not arrayed in any adventitious pomp, have a real and innate grandeur.

Ex. XCVI.-TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

GRENVILLE MELLEN.

WAKE your harp's music!-louder,-higher,
And pour your strains along;

And smite again each quivering wire,
In all the pride of song!

Shout like those godlike men of old,

Who, daring storm and foe,

On this blest storm their anthem rolled,
Two hundred years ago!

From native shores by tempests driven,
They sought a purer sky,

And found, beneath a milder heaven,

The home of liberty!

An altar rose,—and prayers,-—a ray

Broke on their night of woe,—

The harbinger of freedom's day,
Two hundred years ago!

They clung around that symbol, too,

Their refuge and their all;

And swore, while skies and waves were blue,
That altar should not fall.

They stood upon the red man's sod,

'Neath heaven's unpillared bow,

With home, a country, and a God,
Two hundred years ago!

« PreviousContinue »