And thus I broke a heart that pour'd, Its tide of feelings out for thee, In draughts, by after-times deplored, Yet dear to memory.
But still the old, impassion'd ways And habits of my mind remain, And still unhappy light displays
Thine image chamber'd in my brain, And still it looks as when the hours Went by like flights of singing birds, Or that soft chain of spoken flowers, And airy gems-thy words.
Look out upon the stars, my love, And shame them with thine eyes, On which, than on the lights above, There hang more destinies. Night's beauty is the harmony
Of blending shades and light; Then, lady, up-look out, and be A sister to the night!-
Sleep not!-thine image wakes for aye
Within my watching breast:
Sleep not!-from her soft sleep should fly,
Who robs all hearts of rest.
Nay, lady, from thy slumbers break,
And make this darkness gay
With looks, whose brightness well might make Of darker nights a day.
WAS born in Boston in 1803. He is best known by his critical and philosophical writings, though as a poet he has great merit.
I LIKE a church, I like a cowl, I love a prophet of the soul, And on my heart monastic aisles
Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles, Yet not for all his faith can see Would I that cowled churchman be.
Why should the vest on him allure, Which I could not on me endure?
Not from a vain or shallow thought His awful Jove young Phidias brought; Never from lips of cunning fell
The thrilling Delphic oracle;
Out from the heart of nature roll'd The burdens of the Bible old; The litanies of nations came,
Like the volcano's tongue of flame, Up from the burning core below,- The canticles of love and wo.
The hand that rounded Peter's dome,
And groined the aisles of Christian Rome,
Wrought in a sad sincerity.
Himself from God he could not free; He builded better than he knew, The conscious stone to beauty grew.
Know'st thou what wove yon wood-bird's nest Of leaves, and feathers from her breast;
Or how the fish outbuilt her shell, Painting with morn each annual cell; Or how the sacred pine tree adds To her old leaves new myriads? Such and so grew these holy piles Whilst love and terror laid the tiles. Earth proudly wears the Parthenon As the best gem upon her zone; And Morning opes with haste her lids To gaze upon the Pyramids ; O'er England's Abbeys bends the sky As on its friends with kindred eye; For, out of Thought's interior sphere These wonders rose to upper air, And nature gladly gave them place, Adopted them into her race, And granted them an equal date With Andes and with Ararat.
These temples grew as grows the grass, Art might obey, but not surpass.
The passive Master lent his hand
To the vast Soul that o'er him plann'd,
And the same power that rear'd the shrine Bestrode the tribes that knelt within.
Ever the fiery Pentecost
Girds with one flame the countless host,
Trances the heart through chanting quires, And through the priest the mind inspires.
The word unto the prophet spoken, Was writ on tables yet unbroken; The word by seers or sibyls told In groves of oak or fanes of gold, Still floats upon the morning wind, Still whispers to the willing mind. One accent of the Holy Ghost The heedless world hath never lost. I know what say the Fathers wise,- The Book itself before me lies,- Old Chrysostom, best Augustine, And he who blent both in his line, The younger Golden Lips or mines, Taylor, the Shakspeare of divines; His words are music in my ear, I see his cowled portrait dear, And yet for all his faith could see, I would not the good bishop be.
"GOOD-B'YE, PROUD WORLD!"
GOOD-B'YE, proud world! I'm going home; Thou art not my friend; I am not thine : Too long through weary crowds I roam :A river ark on the ocean brine,
Too long I am toss'd like the driven foam: But now, proud world, I'm going home.
Good-b'ye to flattery's fawning face; To Grandeur with his wise grimace: To upstart Wealth's averted eye; To supple office, low and high;
To crowded halls, to court and street, To frozen hearts, and hasting feet, To those who go, and those who come,- Good-b'ye, proud world, I'm going home.
I go to seek my own hearth-stone Bosom'd in yon green hills alone; A secret lodge in a pleasant land, Whose groves the frolic fairies plann'd, Where arches green, the livelong day, Echo the black-bird's roundelay,
And evil men have never trod
A spot that is sacred to thought and GOD.
O, when I am safe in my sylvan home, I mock at the pride of Greece and Rome; And when I am stretch'd beneath the pines Where the evening star so holy shines, I laugh at the lore and pride of man, At the sophist schools, and the learned clan; For what are they all in their high conceit, When man in the bush with GOD may meet?
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