And the path of the gentle winds is seen, Where the small waves dance, and the young woods lean. "And see where the brighter day-beams pour, How the rainbows hang in the sunny shower; And the morn and eve, with their pomp of hues, Shift o'er the bright planets and shed their dews; And 'twixt them both, o'er the teeming ground, With her shadowy cone the night goes round! 66 Away, away! in our blossoming bowers, In the soft air wrapping these spheres of ours, "Glide on in your beauty, ye youthful spheres, To weave the dance that measures the years; VOL. I.-8 Glide on, in the glory and gladness sent, To the veil of whose brow your lamps are dim." A FOREST HYMN. THE groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave, And spread the roof above them,-ere he framed The lofty vault, to gather and roll back The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood, Amid the cool and silence, he knelt down, And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks And supplication. For his simple heart Might not resist the sacred influences Which, from the stilly twilight of the place, Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect Only among the crowd, and under roofs That our frail hands have raised? Let me, at least, Here, in the shadow of this aged wood, Father, thy hand Hath reared these venerable columns, thou Didst weave this verdant roof. Thou didst look down Upon the naked earth, and, forthwith, rose And shot towards heaven. The century-living crow, Whose birth was in their tops, grew old and died The solitude. Thou art in the soft winds That run along the summit of these trees In music; thou art in the cooler breath That from the inmost darkness of the place |