Puslapio vaizdai
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In silence, round me-the perpetual work
Of thy creation, finished, yet renewed

For ever.

Written on thy works I read

The lesson of thy own eternity.

Lo! all grow old and die—but see again,
How on the faltering footsteps of decay
Youth presses-ever gay and beautiful youth
In all its beautiful forms. These lofty trees
Wave not less proudly that their ancestors
Moulder beneath them. Oh, there is not lost
One of earth's charms: upon her bosom yet,
After the flight of untold centuries,

The freshness of her far beginning lies
And yet shall lie. Life mocks the idle hate
Of his arch enemy Death-yea, seats himself
Upon the tyrant's throne-the sepulchre,

And of the triumphs of his ghastly foe

Makes his own nourishment. For he came forth From thine own bosom, and shall have no end.

There have been holy men who hid themselves Deep in the woody wilderness, and gave

Their lives to thought and prayer, till they outlived The generation born with them, nor seemed

Less aged than the hoary trees and rocks

Around them ;-and there have been holy men
Who deemed it were not well to pass life thus.

M

But let me often to these solitudes

Retire, and in thy presence reassure

My feeble virtue. Here its enemies,

The passions, at thy plainer footsteps shrink
And tremble and are still. Oh, God! when thou
Dost scare the world with tempests, set on fire
The heavens with falling thunderbolts, or fill,
With all the waters of the firmament,

The swift dark whirlwind that uproots the woods
And drowns the villages; when, at thy call,
Uprises the great deep and throws himself
Upon the continent, and overwhelms
Its cities who forgets not, at the sight
Of these tremendous tokens of thy power,
His pride, and lays his strifes and follies by?
Oh, from these sterner aspects of thy face
Spare me and mine, nor let us need the wrath
Of the mad unchained elements to teach
Who rules them. Be it ours to meditate
In these calm shades thy milder majesty,
And to the beautiful order of thy works
Learn to conform the order of our lives.

'OH FAIREST OF THE RURAL MAIDS."

Он fairest of the rural maids!

Thy birth was in the forest shades;

Green boughs, and glimpses of the sky,
Were all that met thy infant eye.

Thy sports, thy wanderings, when a child,

Were ever in the sylvan wild;
And all the beauty of the place
Is in thy heart and on thy face.

The twilight of the trees and rocks
Is in the light shade of thy locks;
Thy step is as the wind, that weaves
Its playful way among the leaves.

Thine eyes are springs, in whose serene
And silent waters heaven is seen;
Their lashes are the herbs that look
On their young figures in the brook.

The forest depths, by foot unpressed,
Are not more sinless than thy breast;
The holy peace, that fills the air
Of those calm solitudes, is there.

"I BROKE THE SPELL THAT HELD ME LONG."

I BROKE the spell that held me long,
The dear, dear witchery of song.
I said, the poet's idle lore

Shall waste my prime of years no more,
For Poetry, though heavenly born,
Consorts with poverty and scorn.

I broke the spell-nor deemed its power
Could fetter me another hour.

Ah, thoughtless! how could I forget

Its causes were around me yet?

For wheresoe'er I looked, the while,

Was nature's everlasting smile.

Still came and lingered on my sight

Of flowers and streams the bloom and light,

And glory of the stars and sun;

And these and poetry are one.

They, ere the world had held me long,

Recalled me to the love of song.

JUNE.

I GAZED upon the glorious sky

And the green mountains round, And thought that when I came to lie Within the silent ground,

'Twere pleasant, that in flowery June,
When brooks send up a cheerful tune,
And groves a joyous sound,

The sexton's hand, my grave to make,
The rich, green mountain turf should break.

A cell within the frozen mould,

A coffin borne through sleet,

And icy clods above it rolled,

While fierce the tempests beat

Away! I will not think of these-
Blue be the sky and soft the breeze,
Earth green beneath the feet,

And be the damp mould gently pressed
my narrow place of rest.

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