Puslapio vaizdai
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GENIUS WAKING.

O, what rare and heavenly brightness
Flowed around thy plumes,
As a cascade's foamy whiteness
Lights a cavern's glooms!

Wheeling through the shadowy ocean,
Like a shape of light,

With serene and placid motion,
Thou wert dazzling bright.

From that cloudless region stooping,
Downward thou didst rush,
Not with pinion faint and drooping
But the 'tempest's gush.

Up again undaunted soaring,

Thou didst pierce the cloud,

When the warring winds were roaring
Fearfully and loud.

Where is now that restless longing

After higher things?

Come they not, like visions, thronging

On their airy wings?

Why should not their glow enchant thee
Upward to their bliss?

Surely danger cannot daunt thee

From a heaven like this.

But thou slumberest; faint and quivering

Hangs thy ruffled wing;

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Like a dove in winter shivering,

Or a feebler thing.

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GENIUS WAKING.

Where is now thy might and motion,

Thy imperial flight?

Where is now thy heart's devotion?
Where thy spirit's light?

Hark! his rustling plumage gathers

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Close, as when the storm-bird weathers

Ocean's hurrying tide.

Now his nodding beak is steady-
Wide his burning eye→
Now his opening wings are ready,

And his aim-how high!

Now he curves his neck, and proudly
Now is stretched for flight-

Hark! his wings-they thunder loudly,
And their flash-how bright!
Onward-onward over mountains,
Through the rock and storm,
Now, like sunset over fountains,
Flits his glancing form.

Glorious bird, thy dream has left thee-
Thou hast reached thy heaven-
Lingering slumber hath not reft thee

Of the glory given.

With a bold, a fearless pinion,

On thy starry road,

None, to fame's supreme dominion,
Mightier ever trode.

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BY LOUISA P. SMITH.

THEY were gathered for a bridal!
I knew it by their hue;
Fair as the summer moonlight
Upon the sleeping dew.

From their fair and fairy sisters

They were borne, without a sigh, For one remembered evening

To blossom and to die.

They were gathered for a bridal!
And fastened in a wreath;

But purer were the roses

Than the heart that lay beneath;
Yet the beaming eye was lovely,
And the coral lip was fair,
And the gazer looked and asked not
For the secret hidden there.

They were gathered for a bridal!

Where a thousand torches glistened, When the holy words were spoken, And the false and faithless listened

And answered to the vow

Which another heart had taken

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THE CORAL INSECT.

Yet he was present then-
The once loved, the forsaken.

They were gathered for a bridal!
And now, now they are dying,
And young Love at the altar
Of broken faith is sighing.
Their summer life was stainless,

And not like her's who wore them;
They are faded, and the farewell
Of beauty lingers o'er them!

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TOIL on! toil on! ye ephemeral train,

Who build in the tossing and treacherous main;
Toil on-for the wisdom of man ye mock,
With your sand-based structures and domes of rock:
Your columns the fathomless fountains lave,
And your arches spring up to the crested wave;
Ye're a puny race, thus to boldly rear
A fabric so vast, in a realm so drear.

Ye bind the deep with your secret zone,
The ocean is sealed, and the surge a stone;

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Fresh wreaths from the coral pavement spring,
Like the terraced pride of Assyria's king;
The turf looks green where the breakers rolled;
O'er the whirlpool ripens the rind of gold;
The sea-snatched isle is the home of men,
And mountains exult where the wave hath been..

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But why do ye plant 'neath the billows dark
The wrecking reef for the gallant bark ?
There are snares enough on the tented field,
'Mid the blossomed sweets that the valleys yield;
There are serpents to coil, ere the flowers are up;
There's a poison drop in man's purest cup;
There are foes that watch for his cradle breath,
And why need ye sow the floods with death?

With mouldering bones the deeps are white,
From the ice-clad pole to the tropics bright;
The mermaid hath twisted her fingers cold
With the mesh of the sea-boy's curls of gold,
And the gods of ocean have frowned to see
The mariner's bed in their halls of glee ;-
Hath earth no graves, that ye thus must spread
The boundless sea for the thronging dead 2

Ye build-ye build—but ye enter not in,

Like the tribes whom the desert devoured in their

sin;

From the land of promise ye fade and die,

Ere its verdure gleams forth on your weary eye;—

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