Ye feelingly reprove;

And daily in the conscious breast,

Your visitations are a test

And exercise of love.

When some great change gives boundless scope To an exulting Nation's hope,

Oft, startled and made wise

By your low-breathed interpretings,

The simply meek foretaste the springs

Of bitter contraries.

Ye daunt the proud array of war,
Pervade the lonely ocean far

As sail hath been unfurled;
For dancers in the festive hall
What ghastly partners hath your call
Fetched from the shadowy world.

"Tis said, that warnings ye dispense, Emboldened by a keener sense;

That men have lived for whom, With dread precision, ye made clear The hour that in a distant year Should knell them to the tomb.

Unwelcome insight! Yet there are
Blest times when mystery is laid bare,
Truth shows a glorious face,

While on that isthmus which commands
The councils of both worlds, she stands,
Sage spirits! by your grace.

God, who instructs the brutes to scent
All changes of the element,

Whose wisdom fixed the scale

Of natures, for our wants provides,
By higher, sometimes humbler, guides,
When lights of reason fail.

MEMORY.

A PEN to register; a key -
That winds through secret wards;

Are well assigned to memory

By allegoric Bards.

As aptly, also, might be given

A Pencil to her hand;

That, softening objects, sometimes even Outstrips the heart's demand;

That smoothes foregone distress, the lines Of lingering care subdues,

Long-vanished happiness refines,

And clothes in brighter hues;

Yet, like a tool of Fancy, works
Those Spectres to dilate

That startle Conscience, as she lurks

Within her lonely seat.

O! that our lives, which flee so fast,

In purity were such,

That not an image of the past

Should fear that pencil's touch!

Retirement then might hourly look
Upon a soothing scene,

Age steal to his allotted nook
Contented and serene;

With heart as calm as lakes that sleep,
In frosty moonlight glistening;
Or mountain rivers, where they creep
Along a channel smooth and deep,

To their own far-off murmurs listening.

SONNET.

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,
The holy time is quiet as a Nun

Breathless with adoration; the broad sun

Is sinking down in its tranquillity;

The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea.
Listen! the mighty Being is awake,

And doth with his eternal motion make

A sound like thunder-everlastingly.

Dear Child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here,
If thou appear untouched by solemn thought,

Thy nature is not therefore less divine:
Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year;
And worship'st at the Temple's inner shrine,
God being with thee when we know it not.

TO A SEXTON.

LET thy wheelbarrow alone —
Wherefore, Sexton, piling still
In thy bone-house bone on bone?

'Tis already like a hill

In a field of battle made,

Where three thousand skulls are laid;

These died in peace each with the other, —

Father, sister, friend, and brother.

Mark the spot to which I point!

From this platform, eight feet square,

Take not even a finger-joint:

Andrew's whole fireside is there.

Here, alone, before thine eyes,

Simon's sickly daughter lies,

From weakness now, and pain defended,
Whom he twenty winters tended.

Look but at the gardener's pride

How he glories, when he sees
Roses, lilies, side by side,
Violets in families!

By the heart of Man, his tears,

By his hopes and by his fears,

Thou, too heedless, art the Warden

Of a far superior garden.

Thus then, each to other dear,
Let them all in quiet lie,

Andrew there, and Susan here,
Neighbors in mortality.

And, should I live through sun and rain
Seven widowed years without my Jane?
O Sexton, do not then remove her,

Let one grave hold the Loved and Lover!

ODE,

COMPOSED ON MAY MORNING.

WHILE from the purpling east departs
The star that led the dawn,
Blithe Flora from her couch upstarts,
For May is on the lawn.

A quickening hope, a freshening glee,
Foreran the expected Power,

Whose first-drawn breath, from bush and tree,
Shakes off that pearly shower.

All Nature welcomes Her whose sway
Tempers the year's extremes;
Who scattereth lustres o'er noonday,

Like morning's dewy gleams;
While mellow warble, sprightly trill,

The tremulous heart excite; And hums the balmy air to still The balance of delight.