FRIENDSHIP, LOVE AND TRUTH.
By JAMES MONTGOMERY.
WHEN Friendship, Love and Truth abound
Among a band of brothers,
The cup of joy goes gaily round,
Each shares the bliss of others.
Sweet roses, grace the thorny way
Along this vale of sorrow;
The flowers that shed their leaves to-day
Shall bloom again to-morrow.
How grand in age, how fair in youth,
Are holy Friendship, Love and Truth!
On halcyon wings our moments pass,
Life's cruel cares beguiling;
Old Time lays down his scythe and glass,
In gay good-humour smiling;
With ermine beard and forelock grey,
His reverend front adorning,
He looks like Winter turn'd to May,
Night soften'd into morning.
How grand in age, how fair in youth,
Are holy Friendship, Love and Truth!
From these delightful fountains flow
Ambrosial rills of pleasure:
Can man desire, can heaven bestow,
A more resplendent treasure?
Adorn'd with gems so richly bright,
We'll form a constellation,
Where every star, with modest light,
Shall gild his proper station.
How grand in age, how fair in youth,
Are holy Friendship, Love and Truth!
One of the finest of our National Lyrics, composed by THOMAS CAMPBELL. What a spirit stirs in every line. It is a song rather to be shouted than sung.
YE mariners of England!
That guard our native seas,
Whose flag has braved, a thousand years,
The battle and the breeze!
Your glorious standard launch again,
To match another foe!
And sweep through the deep,
While the stormy tempests blow;
While the battle rages loud and long,
And the stormy tempests blow.
The spirits of your fathers
Shall start from every wave!
For the deck it was their field of fame,
And ocean was their grave:
Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell,
Your manly hearts shall glow,
As ye sweep through the deep,
While the stormy tempests blow;
While the battle rages loud and long,
And the stormy tempests, blow.
Britannia needs no bulwarks-
No towers along the steep;
Her march is o'er the mountain waves,
Her home is on the deep.
With thunders from her native oak,
She quells the floods below,
As they roar on the shore,
When the stormy tempests blow;
When the battle rages loud and long,
And the stormy tempests blow.
The meteor flag of England,
Shall yet terrific burn;
Till danger's troubled night depart,
And the star of peace return.
Then, then, ye ocean warriors!
Our song and feast shall flow
To the fame of your name,
When the storm has ceased to blow;
When the fiery fight is heard no more,
And the storm has ceased to blow.
The tones of this poem by LONGFELLOW are as solemn and thrilling as those of the night-voice it celebrates.
SOLEMNLY, mournfully,
Dealing its dole,
The curfew bell
Is beginning to toll:
Cover the embers,
And put out the light;
Toil comes with the morning,
And rest with the night.
Dark grow the windows,
And quench'd is the fire;
Sound fades into silence,-
All footsteps retire.
No voice in the chambers,
No sound in the hall;
Sleep and oblivion
Reign over all!
The book is completed,
And, closed, like the day;
And the hand that has written it
Lays it away.
Dim grow its fancies;
Forgotten they lie;
Like coals in the ashes,
They darken and die.
Song sinks into silence,
The story is told,
The windows are darken'd,
The hearth-stone is cold.
Darker and darker
The black shadows fall;
Sleep and oblivion
Reign over all.
The following exquisitely beautiful sonnet is extracted from an old number of Chambers's Edinburgh Journal.
THE first low fluttering breath of waking day
Stirs the wide air. Thin clouds of pearly haze
Float slowly o'er the sky to meet the rays
Of the unrisen sun-whose faint beams play
Among the drooping stars, kissing away
Their waning eyes to slumber. From the gaze
Like snow-ball at approach of vernal days,
The moon's pale circlet melts into the grey.
Glad ocean quivers to the gentle gleams
Of rosy light that touch his glorious brow,
And murmurs joy with all his thousand streams,
And earth's fair face is mantling with a glow,
Like youthful beauty's in its changeful hue,
When slumbers, rich with dreams, are bidding her adieu.
By ALARIC A. WATTS.
"Methinks it should have been impossible
Not to love all things in a world like this,
When even the breezes and the common air
Contain the power and spirit of harmony."- Coleridge.
HARP of the winds! What music can compare
With thy wild gush of melody:—or where
Mid this world's discords, may we hope to meet
Tones like to thine-so soothing and so sweet!
Harp of the winds! When summer zephyr wings
His airy flight across thy tremulous strings,
As if enamour'd of his breath, they move
With soft low murmurs-like the voice of Love
Ere passion deepens it, or sorrow mars
Its harmony with sighs! All earth-born jars
Confess thy soothing power, when strains like these
From thy bliss-breathing chords are borne upon the breeze!
But when a more pervading force compels
Their sweetness into strength,—and swiftly swells
Each tenderer tone to fulness,-what a strange
And spirit-stirring sense that fitful change
Wakes in my heart! Visions of days long past-
Hope-joy-pride-pain-and passion-with the blast
Come rushing on my soul,-till I believe
Some strong enchantment, purposed to deceive,
Hath fix'd its spell upon me; and I grieve
I may not burst its bonds! Anon the gale
Softly subsides, and whisperings wild prevail
Of inarticulate melody, which seem
Not music, but its shadow; what a dream
Is to reality, or as the swell,
Those who have felt alone have power to tell,
Of the full heart where love was late a guest,
Ere it recovers from its sweet unrest;
The charm is o'er! Each warring thought flits by,
Quell'd by that more than mortal minstrelsy!
Each turbulent feeling owns its sweet control,
And peace once more returns, and settles on my soul!
Harp of the winds! thy ever tuneful chords,
In language far more eloquent than words
Of earth's best skill'd philosophers, do teach
A deep and heavenly lesson! Could it reach,
With its impressive truths, the heart of man,
Then were he bless'd indeed: and he might scan
His coming miseries with delight! The storm
Of keen adversity would then deform
No more the calm stream of his thoughts, nor bring
Its wonted "grisly train" but rather wring
Sweetness from out his grief-till even the string
On which his sorrows hung, should make reply,
However rudely swept, in tones of melody!
JOHN MALCOLM, when he wrote these touching lines, must surely have contemplated his own premature death, which followed not long
"Oh alas, and alas!
Green grows the grass!
Like the waves we come, like the winds we pass."
YE tell me 'tis the opening hour; then ere the day be flown The casement ope, that I may see my last of suns go down,
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