YES! in the sea of life enisled,
With echoing straits between us thrown, Dotting the shoreless watery wild, We mortal millions live alone. The islands feel the enclasping flow, And then their endless bounds they know.
But when the moon their hollows lights, And they are swept by balms of spring, And in their glens, on starry nights, The nightingales divinely sing;
And lovely notes, from shore to shore, Across the sounds and channels pour-
Oh! then a longing like despair
Is to their farthest caverns sent; For surely once, they feel, we were Parts of a single continent!
Now round us spreads the watery plain- Oh might our marges meet again!
Who order'd, that their longing's fire Should be, as soon as kindled, cool'd? Who renders vain their deep desire?— A God, a God their severance ruled! And bade betwixt their shores to be The unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea.
WHERE lies the land to which the ship would go?
Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know.
And where the land she travels from? Away,
Far, far behind, is all that they can say.
On sunny noons upon the deck's smooth face, Linked arm in arm, how pleasant here to pace; Or, o'er the stern reclining, watch below The foaming wake far widening as we go.
On stormy nights when wild north-westers rave, How proud a thing to fight with wind and wave! The dripping sailor on the reeling mast Exults to bear, and scorns to wish it past.
Where lies the land to which the ship would go? Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know. And where the land she travels from? Away, Far, far behind, is all that they can say.
SAY NOT THE STRUGGLE NOUGHT AVAILETH
SAY not, the struggle nought availeth, The labour and the wounds are vain, The enemy faints not, nor faileth,
And as things have been they remain.
If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars; It may be, in yon smoke concealed, Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers,
And, but for you, possess the field.
For while the tired waves, vainly breaking, Seem here no painful inch to gain, Far back, through creeks and inlets making, Comes silent flooding in, the main;
And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light, In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly, But westward, look, the land is bright.
I STROVE with none, for none was worth the strife, Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art;
I warmed both hands before the fire of life, It sinks, and I am ready to depart.
TO HIM who in the love of Nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language; for his gayer hours She has a voice of gladness, and a smile And eloquence of beauty, and she glides Into his darker musings, with a mild And healing sympathy, that steals away Their sharpness, ere he is aware, When thoughts Of the last bitter hour come like a blight Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, And breathless darkness, and the narrow house, Make thee to shudder and grow sick at heart;-
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings, while from all around
*Reprinted from Bryant's Complete Poems, by permission of D. Appleton and Company.
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air— Comes a still voice:-
Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground, Where thy pale form was laid with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again, And, lost each human trace, surrendering up Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix forever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.
Yet not to thine eternal resting place Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down With patriarchs of the infant world-with kings, The powerful of the earth-the wise, the good, Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, All in one mighty sepulcher. The hills Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun,-the vales Stretching in pensive quietness between; The venerable woods-rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, poured round all, Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste,—
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread The globe are but a handful to the tribes That slumber in its bosom.-Take the wings Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness, Or lose thyself in the continuous woods Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound, Save his own dashings—yet the dead are there; And millions in those solitudes, since first The flight of years began, have laid them down In their last sleep-the dead reign there alone. So shalt thou rest, and what if thou withdraw In silence from the living, and no friend Take note of thy departure? All that breathe Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care Plod on, and each one as before will chase His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave Their mirth and their employments, and shall come And make their bed with thee. As the long train Of ages glides away, the sons of men-
The youth in life's fresh spring, and he who goes In the full strength of years, matron and maid, The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man— Shall one by one be gathered to thy side, By those, who in their turn shall follow them.
So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan, which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
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