Thy blossoms now no longer bright;
Thy wither'd woods no longer green;
Yet, Eldurn shore, with dark delight
I visit thy unlovely scene!

For many a sunset hour serene
My steps have trod thy mellow dew;
When his green light the glow-worm gave,
When Cynthia from the distant wave
Her twilight anchor drew,

And plough'd, as with a swelling sail,
The billowy clouds and starry sea;
Then while thy hermit nightingale
Sang on his fragrant apple-tree,—
Romantic, solitary, free,

The visitant of Eldurn's shore,

On such a moonlight mountain stray'd,
As echo'd to the music made

By Druid harps of yore.

Around thy savage hills of oak,

Around thy waters bright and blue,
No hunter's horn the silence broke,
No dying shriek thine echo knew;
But safe, sweet Eldurn woods, to you
The wounded wild deer ever ran,

Whose myrtle bound their grassy cave,
Whose very rocks a shelter gave

From blood-pursuing man.

Oh heart effusions, that arose

From nightly wanderings cherish'd 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 banish'd race,
In such a loved and lonely place
Companionless to roam?

Yes! I have loved thy wild abode,

Unknown, unplough'd, 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 blossom'd 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 dishonor'd falls;
Like thee in solitude she calls

A thousand treasures forth.

Oh! silent spirit of the place,

If, lingering with the ruin'd 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 unhallow'd mind,

The majesty of heaven.

What though the bosom friends of Fate,→→

Prosperity's unweaned brood,—

Thy consolations cannot rate,
O self-dependent solitude!

Yet with a spirit unsubdued,

Though darken'd 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 look'd 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 banish'd 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 owering, 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 wo!

His art and honors wouldst thou seek
Emboss'd 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 warrants 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 away
She builds her solitary bower,
Where only anchorites have trod,
Or friendless men, to worship God,
Have wander'd for an hour.

In such a far forsaken vale,

And such, sweet Eldurn vale, is thine,Afflicted nature shall inhale

Heaven-borrow'd 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.

C'AN 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 tomb,

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 chill'd 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 look'd down with an aspect of ira;
But her beams on a sudden grew sick-like and gray,
And the mews that had slept clang'd and shriek'd far
away-

And the buoys and the beacons extinguish'd 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 plough'd, by the lee-shore of Heligoland,
Such breakers as boat of the living ne'er cross'd;
Now surf-sunk for minutes again they uptoss'd,
And with livid lips shouted reply o'er the flood
To the challenging watchman that curdled his ble -