92

THE CORAL INSECT.

Yet he was present then—
The once loved, the forsaken.

They were gathered for a bridal!
And now, now they are dying,
And young Love at the altar
Of broken faith is sighing.
Their summer life was stainless,

And not like her's who wore them;
They are faded, and the farewell
Of beauty lingers o'er them!

THE CORAL INSECT.

BY LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY.

TOIL on! toil on! ye ephemeral train,

Who build in the tossing and treacherous main;
Toil on-for the wisdom of man ye mock,
With your sand-based structures and domes of rock
Your columns the fathomless fountains lave,
And your arches spring up to the crested wave.
Ye're a puny race, thus to boldly rear

A fabric so vast, in a realm so drear.

Ye bind the deep with your secret zone,
The ocean is sealed, and the surge a stone ;

THE CORAL INSECT.

93

Fresh wreaths from the coral pavement spring,
Like the terraced pride of Assyria's king;
The turf looks green where the breakers rolled;
O'er the whirlpool ripens the rind of gold;
The sea-snatched isle is the home of men,
And mountains exult where the wave hath been.

But why do ye plant 'neath the billows dark
The wrecking reef for the gallant bark?
There are snares enough on the tented field,
'Mid the blossomed sweets that the valleys yield ;
There are serpents to coil, ere the flowers are up;
There's a poison drop in man's purest cup;
There are foes that watch for his cradle breath,
And why need ye sow the floods with death?

With mouldering bones the deeps are white,
From the ice-clad pole to the tropics bright;
The mermaid hath twisted her fingers cold
With the mesh of the sea-boy's curls of gold,
And the gods of ocean have frowned to see
The mariner's bed in their halls of glee ;-
Hath earth no graves, that ye thus must spread
The boundless sea for the thronging dead?

Ye build-ye build--but ye enter not in,

Like the tribes whom the desert devoured in their

sin;

From the land of promise ye fade and die,

Ere its verdure gleams forth on your weary eye ;

04

TO A WATERFOWL.

As the kings of the cloud-crowned pyramid,
Their noteless bones in oblivion hid,

Ye slumber unmarked 'mid the desolate main,
While the wonder and pride of your works remain.

TO A WATERFOWL.

BY W. C. BRYANT,

WHITHER, 'midst falling dew,

While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue

Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler's eye

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,
As, darkly painted on the crimson sky,

Thy figure floats along.

Seek'st thou the plashy brink
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
On the chafed ocean side?

There is a Power whose care

Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,--
The desert and illimitable air,-

Lone wandering, but not lost.

C. Bryant.