Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“

A region of drought, where no river glides,
Nor rippling brook with osiered sides;
Where sedgy pool, nor bubbling fount,
Nor tree, nor cloud, nor misty mount,
Appears to refresh the aching eye;

But the barren earth, and the burning sky,
And the blank horizon, round and round,
Spread, void of living sight or sound.

And here, while the night-winds round me sigh,
And the stars burn bright in the midnight sky,
As I sit apart by the desert stone,
Like Elijah at Horeb's cave alone,
A still small voice comes through the wild,
Like a father consoling his fretful child,
Which banishes bitterness, wrath and fear,
Saying,-MAN Is Distant, but GOD IS NEAR!

THE AWAKENING OF ENDYMION.

Lone upon a mountain, the pine-trees wailing round him,

Lone upon a mountain the Grecian youth is laid; Sleep, mystic sleep, for many a year has bound him, Yet his beauty, like a statue's, pale and fair, is undecayed,

When will he awaken?

When will he awaken? a loud voice hath been crying Night after night, and the cry has been in vain ; Winds, woods, and waves found echoes for replying, But the tones of the beloved ones were never heard again.

When will he awaken?

Asked the midnight's silver queen.

Never mortal eye has looked upon his sleeping; Parents, kindred, comrades have mourned for him as dead;

By day the gathered clouds have had him in their keeping,

And at night the solemn shadows round his rest are shed.

When will he awaken ?

Long has been the cry of faithful Love's imploring; Long has Hope been watching with soft eyes fixed above;

When will the Fates, the life of life restoring,
Own themselves vanquished by much-enduring
Love?

When will he awaken?
Asks the midnight's weary queen.

Beautiful the sleep that she has watched untiring,
Lighted up with visions from yonder radiant sky,
Full of an immortal's glorious inspiring,
Softened by a woman's meek and loving sigh.
When will he awaken?

He has been dreaming of old heroic stories,
And the poet's world has entered in his soul;
He has grown conscious of life's ancestral glories,
When sages and when kings first upheld the mind's
control.

When will he awaken?

Asks the midnight's stately queen.

Lo, the appointed midnight! the present hour is fated;

It is Endymion's planet that rises on the air; How long, how tenderly his goddess love has waited; Waited with a love too mighty for despair! Soon he will awaken!

Soft amid the pines is a sound as if of singing, Tones that seem the lute's from the breathing

flowers depart;

Not a wind that wanders o'er Mount Latmos but is bringing

Music that is murmured from Nature's inmost heart. Soon he will awaken

To his and midnight's queen!

Lovely is the green earth,-she knows the hour is holy;

Starry are the heavens, lit with eternal joy ; Light like their own is dawning sweet and slowly O'er the fair and sculptured forehead of that yet dreaming boy.

Soon he will awaken!

Red as the red rose towards the morning turning, Warms the youth's lip to the watcher's near his

own;

While the dark eyes open,bright, intense, and burning With a life more glorious than, ere they closed, was known.

Yes, he has awakened
For the midnight's happy queen!

What is this old history, but a lesson given,

How true love still conquers by the deep strength of truth,

How all the impulses, whose native home is heaven, Sanctify the visions of hope, and faith, and youth?

"T is for such they waken!

When every worldly thought is utterly forsaken, Comes the starry midnight, felt by life's gifted

few;

Then will the spirit from its earthly sleep awaken To a being more intense, more spiritual, and true. So doth the soul awaken,

Like that youth to night's fair queen!

THE INFANT'S DREAM.

Oh! cradle me on thy knee, mamma,

And sing me the holy strain

That soothed me last, as you fondly prest
My glowing cheek to your soft white breast;
For I saw a scene when I slumbered last,
That I fain would see again.

And smile as you then did smile, mamma,
And weep as you then did weep;
Then fix on me thy glistening eye,
And gaze and gaze 'till the tear be dry,
Then rock me gently, and sing and sigh,
Till you lull me fast asleep.

For I dream'd a heavenly dream, mamma,
While slumbering on thy knee,

I lived in a land where forms divine

In kingdoms of glory eternally shine,

And the world I'd give, if the world were mine,
Again that land to see.

I fancied we roam'd in a wood, mamma,
And we rested, as under a bough;
Then near me a butterfly, flaunted in pride;
And I chased it away through the forest wide,
And the night came on and I lost my guide,
And I knew not what to do.

My heart grew sick with fear, mamma,

And I loudly wept for thee;

But a white-rob'd maiden appear'd in the air,
And she flung back the curls of her golden hair,
And she kiss'd me softly ere I was aware,
Saying "come pretty babe with me."

My tears and fears she beguiled, mamma,
And she led me far away;

We enter'd the door of the dark, dark tomb,
We pass'd through a long, long vault of gloom;
Then open'd our eyes on a land of bloom,
And a sky of endless day.

And heavenly forms were there, mamma,
And lovely cherubs bright;

They smiled when they saw me, but I was amaz'd,
And wond'ring, round me, I gaz'd and gaz'd,
And songs I heard, and sunny beams blaz'd;
All glorious in the land of light.

But soon came a shining throng, mamma,
Of white-winged babes to me;
Their eyes looked love, and their sweet lips smil'd,
And they marvell'd to meet with an earth-born child;
And they gloried that I from the earth was exil'd,
Saying, "here love, blest thou shalt be."

Then I mixed with the heavenly throng, mamma,
With cherub and seraphim fair;
And saw as I roam'd the regions of peace,

The spirits which came from this world of distress; And there was the joy no tongue can express,

For they know no sorrow there.

Do you mind when sister Jane, mamma,

Lay dead, a short time agone?

Oh! you gaz'd on the sad, but lovely wreck,
With a full flood of woe, you could not check,
And your heart was so sore you wish'd it would
break,

But it lov'd, and you still sobbed on!
But Oh! had you been with me, mamma,
In realms of unknown care;

And seen what I saw, you ne'er had cried, Though they buried pretty Jane in the grave when she died,

For shining with the blest, and adorn'd like a bride, Sweet sister Jane was there.

Do you mind that silly old man, mamma,

Who came very late to our door,

And the night was dark, and the tempest loud,
And his heart was sick, and his soul was proud,
And his ragged old mantle serv'd for his shroud,
Ere the midnight hour was o'er?

And think what a weight of wo, mamma,

Made heavy each long drawn sigh,

As the good man sat on papa's old chair,
While the rain dripp'd down from his thin grey hair,
And fast as the big tear of speechless care

Ran down from his glazing eye.

And think what a heavenly look, mamma,
Flash'd through each trembling tear,

As he told how he went to the baron's strong hold,
Saying "Oh! let me in for the night is so cold,"
But the rich man cried, "go sleep in the wold,
For we shield no beggars here."

Well, he was in glory too, mamma,

As happy as the blest can be ;

He needed no alms in the mansions of light,
For he sat with the patriarchs, clothed in white,
And there was not a seraph had a crown more bright,
Nor a costlier robe than he.

Now sing, for I fain would sleep mamma,

And dream as I dream'd before,

For sound was my slumber, and sweet was my rest, While my spirit in the kingdom'of Life was a guest, And the heart that has throbb'd in the climes of the blest,

Can love this world no more.

"There is a comfort in the strength of love; "Twill make a thing endurable, which else Would overset the brain or break the beart." WORDSWORTH.

VOICES OF THE TRUE HEARTED.

No. 12.

THE BEAUTIFUL.

BY JOHN G. WHITTIER.

"A beautiful form is better than a beautiful face; a beautiful behavior is better than a beautiful form; it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures; it is the finest of the fine arts."-Emerson's Essays, Second Series, iv. p. 162.

[ocr errors]

A few days since, I was walking with a friend, who, unfortunately for himself, seldom meets with any thing in the world of realities worthy of com. parison with the ideal of his fancy, which, like the bird in the Arabian tale, glides perpetually before him, always near, yet never overtaken. I felt my arm suddenly pressed. "Did you see that lady, who has just passed us?" he inquired. I turned and threw back a glance. I see her," I replied; "a good figure, and quite a graceful step-what of her?" Why, she is almost beautiful,-in fact very nearly perfect," said my friend. "I have seen her several times before, and were it not for a chin slightly out of proportion, I should be obliged to confess that there is at least one handsome woman in the city." "And but one, I suppose," said I, laughingly. "That I am sure of," said he. "I have been to all the churches, from the Catholic to the Mormon, and on all the Corporations, and there is not a handsome woman here, although she whom we have just passed comes nearer the standard than any other."

[ocr errors]

woods-scattered trees with moist sward and bright mosses at their roots-great clumps of green shadow, where limb entwists with limb, and the rustle of one leaf stirs a hundred others-stretching up steep hill-sides, flooding with green beauty the valleys, or arching over with leaves the sharp ravines,every tree and shrub unlike its neighbor in size and proportion-the old and storm-broken leaning on the young and vigorous-intricate and confused, without order or method! Who would exchange this for artificial French gardens, where every tree stands stiff and regular, clipped and trimmed into unvarying conformity, like so many grenadiers under reWho would fix for ever the loveliest cloud-work of view? Who wants eternal sunshine or shadow? an autumn sunset; or hang over him an everlasting moonlight? If the stream had no quiet eddying place, could we so admire its cascade over the rocks? Were there no clouds, could we so hail the sky shining through them in its still, calm purity? Who shall venture to ask our kind Mother Nature to remove from our sight any one of her forms or colors? Who shall decide which is beautiful, or otherwise,

in itself considered?

There are too many like my fastidious friend, who go through the world from Dan to Beersheeba, finding all barren”—who have always some fault or other to find with Nature and Providence, seeming to consider themselves especially ill-used because the one does not always coincide with their taste, nor the other with their narrow notions of personal convenience. In one of his early poems, Coleridge has beautifully expressed a truth, which is not the less important because it is not generally admitted. I have not in my mind at this moment the entire passage, but the idea is briefly this: that the mind gives to all things their coloring, their gloom or gladness; that the pleasure we derive from external Nature is primarily from ourselves :

Just as if there were any standard of beauty,-a fixed, arbitrary model of form and feature, and color! The beauty which my friend seemed in search of, was that of proportion and coloring; mechanical exactness; a due combination of soft curves, and obtuse angles, of warm carnation, and marble purity! Such a man, for aught I can see, might love a graven image, like the girl of Florence, who pined into a shadow for the Apollo Belvidere, looking coldly on her with his stony eyes, from his niche in the Vatican. One thing is certain; he will never find his faultless piece of artistical perfection, by searching for it amidst flesh and blood realities. Nature does not, as far as I can perceive, work with square and compass, or The real difficulty of these life-long hunters after lay on her colors by the rules of royal artists, or the the Beautiful, exists in their own spirits. They dunces of the academies. She eschews regular out-set up certain models of perfection in their imaginalines. She does not shape her forms by a common model. Not one of Eve's numerous progeny in all respects resembles her who first culled the flowers of Eden. It is in the infinite variety and picturesque inequality of Nature, that her great charm and uncloying beauty consists. Look at her primitive

"From the mind itself must issue forth A light, a glory, a fair luminous mist, Enveloping the earth."

tions, and then go about the world in the vain expectation of finding them actually wrought out according to pattern; very unreasonably calculating that nature will suspend her everlasting laws for the purpose of creating faultless prodigies for their especial gratification.

The authors of "Gaities and Gravities," give it | winter, seemed the diminutive, smoke-stained woas their opinion, that no object of sight is regard- men of Lapland, who wrapped him in their furs, ed by us as a simple, disconnected form, but that an and ministered to his necessities with kindness and instantaneous reflection as to its history, purpose, or gentle words of compassion. Lovely to the homeassociations, converts it into a concrete one-a pro-sick heart of Park seemed the dark maids of Sego, cess, they shrewdly remark, which no thinking being as they sung their low and simple song of welcome can prevent, and which can only be avoided by the beside his bed, and sought to comfort the white unmeaning and stolid stare of "a goose on the com- stranger, who had no mother to bring him milk, mon, or a cow on the green." The senses and the and no wife to grind him corn." O! talk as we faculties of the understanding are so blended with, may, of beauty as a thing to be chiselled from marand dependent upon, each other, that not one of them ble or wrought out on canvass,-speculate as we can exercise its office alone, and without the modi-may upon its colors and outlines, what is it but an fication of some extrinsic interference or suggestion. intellectual abstraction, after all? The heart feels Grateful or unpleasant associations cluster around a beauty of another kind;-looking through the outall which sense takes cognizance of: the beauty ward environment, it discovers a deeper and more which we discern in an external object is often but real loveliness. the reflection of our own minds.

others.

This was well understood by the old painters. In What is Beauty, after all? Ask the lover, who their pictures of Mary, the Virgin Mother, the beaukneels in homage to one who has no attractions for ty which melts and subdues the gazer, is that of the The cold on-looker wonders that he can call soul and the affections-uniting the awe and mystethat unclassic combination of features, and that awk-ry of that mother's miraculous allotment with the ward form, beautiful. Yet so it is. He sees, like Desdemona, her .. visage in her mind," or her affections. A light from within shines through the ex ternal uncomelinesss, softens, irradiates and glorifies That which to others seems common-place and unworthy of note, is to him, in the words of Spenser,

it.

"A sweet, attractive kind of grace,
A full assurance given by looks,
Continual comfort in a face,

irrepressible love, the unutterable tenderness of young maternity-Heaven's crowning miracle with Nature's holiest and sweetest instinct. And their

pale Magdalens, holy with the look of sins forgiven, how the divine beauty of their penitence sinks into the heart? Do we not feel that the only real deformity is sin, and that goodness evermore hallows and sanctifies its dwelling place? When the soul is at rest. when the passions and desires are all attuned to the divine harmony,—

44

[ocr errors]

Spirits moving musically
To a lute's well ordered law,"

human countenance?

The lineaments of Gospel books." "Handsome is that handsome does-hold up your heads, girls!" was the language of Primrose in the play, when addressing her daughters. The worthy matron was right. Would that all my female readers, who are sorrowing foolishly because they are do we not read the placid significance thereof in the not in all respects like Dubufe's Eve, or that Statue "I have seen," said Charles of the Venus," which enchants the world," could Lamb, "faces upon which the dove of peace sat be persuaded to listen to her. What is good look- brooding." In that simple and beautiful record of ing, as Horace Smith remarks, but looking good? Be a holy life, the Journal of John Woolman, there is good, be womanly, be gentle-generous in your a passage of which I have been more than once resympathies, heedful of the well-being of all around minded in my intercourse with my fellow beings:you, and my word for it, you will not lack kind" Some glances of real beauty may be seen in their words of admiration. Loving and pleasant associations faces, who dwell in true meekness. There is a harwill gather about you. Never mind the ugly reflec-mony in the sound of that voice to which divine love tion which your glass may give you. That mirror gives utterance." has no heart. But quite another picture is yours Quite the ugliest face I ever saw was that of a on the retina of human sympathy.. There the beau. woman whom the world calls beautiful. Through ty of holiness, of purity, of that inward grace" which its "silver veil" the evil and ungentle passions lookpasseth show," rests over it, softening and mellowed out, hideous and hateful. On the other hand, ing its features, just as the full, calm moonlight melts those of a rough landscape into harmonious lovelinesss. Hold up your heads, girls!" I repeat after Primrose. Why should you not?-Every mother's daughter of you can be beautiful. You can envelope yourselves in an atmosphere of moral and intellectual beauty, through which your otherwise plain faces will look forth like those of angels. Beautiful to Ledyard, stiffening in the cold of a Northern

there are faces which the multitude at the first glance pronounce homely, unattractive, and such as "nature fashions by the gross," which I always recognize with a warm heart-thrill; not for the world would I have one feature changed; they please me as they are; they are hallowed by kind memories; they are beautiful through their associations; nor are they any the less welcome, that with my admiration of them, "the stranger intermeddleth not.”

A CHRISTMAS HYMN.

BY ALFRED DOMMETT...

It was the calm and silent night!

Seven hundred years and fifty-three Had Rome been growing up to might,

And now was queen of land and sea. No sound was heard of clashing wars,

Peace brooded o'er the hushed 'domain: Apollo, Pallas, Jove, and Mars

Held undisturbed their ancient reign, In the solemn midnight, Centuries ago.

'T was in the calm and silent night, The senator of haughty Rome. Impatient urged his chariot's flight,

From lordly revel rolling home: Triumphal arches gleaming swell

His breast with thoughts of boundless sway; What recked the Roman what befell

A paltry province far away,
In the solemn midnight,
Centuries ago?

Within that province far away,
Went plodding home a weary boor;
A streak of light before him lay,

Fallen through a half-shut stable-door
Across his path. He passed,-for naught
Told what was going on within;
How keen the stars, his only thought,-
The air, how calm, and cold, and thin,
In the solemn midnight,
Centuries ago!

O, strange indifference! low and high

Drowsed over common joys and cares; The earth was still,-but knew not why The world was listening,-unawares. How calm a moment may precede

One that shall thrill the world for ever! To that still moment, none would heed, Man's doom was linked no more to sever, In the solemn midnight, Centuries ago.

It is the calm and solemn night!

A thousand bells ring out, and throw Their joyous peals abroad, and smite

The darkness,-charmed and holy now! The night that erst no shame had worn, To it a happy name is given; For in that stable lay, new-born, The peaceful prince of earth and heaven, In the solemn midnight, Centuries ago!

THE GOOD PART THAT SHALL NOT BE

:

TAKEN AWAY.

BY HENRY W. LONG FELLOW.

She dwells by Great Kenhawa's side,

In valleys green and cool;

And all her hopes and all her pride
Are in the village school.

Her soul, like the transparent air
That robes the hills above,
Though not of earth, encircles there
All things with arms of love.
And thus she walks among her girls
With praise and mild rebukes;
Subduing e'en rude village churls
By her angelic looks.

She reads to them at eventide,
Of One who came to save;
To cast the captive's chain aside,
And liberate the slave.

And oft the blessed time foretells
When all men shall be free;
And musical, as silver bells,

Their falling chains shall be.

And following her beloved Lord,

In decent poverty,

She makes her life one sweet record
And deed of charity.

For she was rich, and gave up all
To break the iron bands

Of those who waited in her hall,
And labored in her lands.

Long since, beyond the Southern Sea
Their outbound sails have sped,
While she, in meek humility,

Now earns her daily bread.

It is their prayers, which never cease, That clothe her with such grace; Their blessing is the light of peace That shines upon her face.

So should we live, that every hour
Should die, as dies a natural flower-
A self-reviving thing of power;

That every thought, and every deed,
May hold within itself the seed
Of future good, and future meed;

Esteeming sorrow,-whose employ
Is to develop not destroy,—

Far better than a barren joy. R. M. MILNES.

« AnkstesnisTęsti »