"UPON THE MOUNTAIN'S DISTANT HEAD."

UPON the mountain's distant head,

With trackless snows for ever white,
Where all is still, and cold, and dead,
Late shines the day's departing light.

But far below those icy rocks,

The vales, in summer bloom arrayed,
Woods full of birds, and fields of flocks,
Are dim with mist and dark with shade.

'Tis thus, from warm and kindly hearts,
And eyes where generous meanings burn,
Earliest the light of life departs,

But lingers with the cold and stern.

THE EVENING WIND.

SPIRIT that breathest through my lattice, thou
That cool'st the twilight of the sultry day,
Gratefully flows thy freshness round my brow:
Thou hast been out upon the deep at play,

Riding all day the wild blue waves till now,
Roughening their crests, and scattering high their spray

And swelling the white sail. I welcome thee
To the scorched land, thou wanderer of the sea!

Nor I alone-a thousand bosoms round
Inhale thee in the fulness of delight;
And languid forms rise up, and pulses bound
Livelier, at coming of the wind of night;
And, languishing to hear thy grateful sound,
Lies the vast inland stretched beyond the sight.

Go forth into the gathering shade; go forth,
God's blessing breathed upon the fainting earth!

Go, rock the little wood-bird in his nest,

Curl the still waters, bright with stars, and rouse

The wide old wood from his majestic rest,

Summoning from the innumerable boughs

The strange, deep harmonies that haunt his breast:
Pleasant shall be thy way where meekly bows

The shutting flower, and darkling waters pass,
And where the o'ershadowing branches sweep the grass.

The faint old man shall lean his silver head

To feel thee; thou shalt kiss the child asleep, And dry the moistened curls that overspread

His temples, while his breathing grows more deep: And they who stand about the sick man's bed,

Shall joy to listen to thy distant sweep,

And softly part his curtains to allow

Thy visit, grateful to his burning brow.

Go-but the circle of eternal change,

Which is the life of nature, shall restore,
With sounds and scents from all thy mighty range

Thee to thy birthplace of the deep once more;
Sweet odours in the sea-air, sweet and strange,

Shall tell the home-sick mariner of the shore;
And, listening to thy murmur, he shall deem
He hears the rustling leaf and running stream.

"WHEN THE FIRMAMENT QUIVERS WITH DAYLIGHT'S YOUNG BEAM."

WHEN the firmament quivers with daylight's young beam,
And the woodlands awaking burst into a hymn,

And the glow of the sky blazes back from the stream,
How the bright ones of heaven in the brightness grow dim.

Oh! 'tis sad, in that moment of glory and song,
To see, while the hill-tops are waiting the sun,
The glittering band that kept watch all night long
O'er Love and o'er Slumber, go out one by one:

Till the circle of ether, deep, ruddy, and vast,

Scarce glimmers with one of the train that were there; And their leader the day-star, the brightest and last, Twinkles faintly and fades in that desert of air.

Thus, Oblivion, from midst of whose shadow we came,
Steals o'er us again when life's twilight is gone;
And the crowd of bright names, in the heaven of fame,
Grow pale and are quenched as the years hasten on.

Let them fade-but we'll pray that the age, in whose flight,

Of ourselves and our friends the remembrance shall die, May rise o'er the world, with the gladness and light Of the morning that withers the stars from the sky.