Friend of my youth! with thee began my song,
And o'er thy bier its latest accents die;
Misled in phantom-peopled realms too long,-
Though not to me the muse aversé deny,
Sometimes, perhaps, her visions to descry,-
Such thriftless pastime should with youth be o'er;
And he who loved with thee his notes to try,
But for thy sake, such idlesse would deplore,—
And swears to meditate the thankless muse no more.
But, no! the freshness of that past shall still
Sacred to memory's holiest musings be; When through the ideal fields of song, at will,
He roved, and gathered chaplets wild with thee; When, reckless of the world, alone and free,
Like two proud barks, we kept our careless way, That sail by moonlight o'er the tranquil sea;
Their white apparel and their streamers gay,
Bright gleaming o'er the main, beneath the ghostly
And downward, far, reflected in the clear
Blue depths, the eye their fairy tackling sees; So, buoyant, they do seem to float in air, And silently obey the noiseless breeze ;Till, all too soon, as the rude winds may please, They part, for distant ports: Thee, gales benign Swift wafting, bore, by Heaven's all-wise decrees, To its own harbour sure, where each divine
And joyous vision, seen before in dreams, is thine.
Muses of Helicon! melodious race
Of Jove and golden-haired Mnemosyné!
Whose art from memory blots each sadder trace,
And drives each scowling form of grief away!
Who, round the violet fount, your measures gay
Once trod, and round the altar of great Jove;
Whence, wrapt in silvery clouds, your nightly way
Ye held, and ravishing strains of music wove,
That soothed the Thunderer's soul, and filled his
courts above!
Bright choir! with lips untempted, and with zone
Sparkling, and unapproached by touch profane;
Ye, to whose gladsome bosoms ne'er was known
The blight of sorrow, or the throb of pain;~
Rightly invoked,-if right the elected swain,
On your own mountain's side ye taught of yore, Whose honoured hand took not your gift in vain, Worthy the budding laurel bough it bore,—- 1 Farewell! a long Farewell! I worship you no more!
THE sun is sinking from the sky
In calm and cloudless majesty;
1 Hesiod. Theog. 1. i. 60. 30.
And cooler hours with gentle sway,
Succeed the fiery heat of day.
Forest and shore and rippling tide
Confess the evening's influence wide,
Seen lovelier in that fading light,
That heralds the approaching night;-
That magic colouring nature throws,
To deck her beautiful
When floating on the breeze of even,
Long clouds of purple streak the heaven,
With brighter tints of glory blending,
And darker hues of night descending.
While hastening to its shady rest
Each weary songster seeks its nest,
Chanting a last, a farewell lay,
As gloomier falls the parting day.
Broad Narraganset's bosom blue
Has shone with every varying hue;
The mystic alchemy of even
Its rich delusions all has given.
The silvery sheet unbounded spread,
First melting from the waters fled;
Next the wide path of beaten gold
Flashing with fiery sparkles rolled;-
As all its gorgeous glories died,
An amber tinge blushed o'er the tide ;
Faint and more faint, as more remote,
The lessening ripples peaceful float;
And now, one ruby line alone
Trembles, is paler, and is gone,-
And from the blue wave fades away
The last life-tint of dying day!
In darkness veiled, was seen no more
Connannicut's extended shore;
Each little isle with bosom green,
Descending mists impervious screen;
One gloomy shade o'er all the woods
Of forest-fringed Aquetnet broods;
Where solemn oak was seen before
Beside the rival sycamore,
Or pine and cedar lined the height,
All in one livery brown were dight.
But lo! with orb serene on high,
The round moon climbs the eastern sky;
The stars all quench their feebler rays
Before her universal blaze.
Round moon! how sweetly dost thou smile,
Above that green reposing isle,
Soft cradled in the illumined bay,
Where from its bank the shadows seem
Melting in filmy light away.
Far does thy tempered lustre stream,
Chequering the tufted groves on high,
While glens in gloom beneath them lie.
Oft sheeted with the ghostly beam,
Mid the thick forest's mass of shade,
The shingled roof is gleaming white,
Where labour, in the cultured glade,
Has all the wild a garden made.
And there with silvery tassels bright
The serried maize is waving slow,
While fitful shadows come and
Swift o'er its undulating seas,
As gently breathes the evening breeze.
Solemn it is, in greenwoods deep,
That magic light o'er nature's sleep;
Where in long ranks the pillars gray
Aloft their mingling structures bear,—
Mingling, in gloom or tracery fair,
Where find the unbroken beams their way,-
Or through close trellis flickering stray,
While sheeny leaflets here and there
Flutter, with momentary glow.
'Tis wayward life revealed below,
With 'chequered gleams of joy and wo!
And those pure realms above that shine,
So chaste, so vivid, so divine,
Are the sole type that heaven has shown
Of those more lovely realms, its own!
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