Imagens da página
PDF
ePub
[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

I.
Who is the Maid my spirit seeks,

Through cold reproof and slander's blight?
Has she Love's roses on her cheeks?

Is her's an eye of this world's light?
No,—wan and sunk with midnight prayer

Are the pale looks of her I love,
Or if, at times, a light be there,

Its beam is kindled from above.

II.
I chose not her, my soul's elect,

From those who seek their Maker's shrine

it shall no more be called Tophet, nor the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter; for they shall bury in Tophet till there be no place.”—Jer. vii. 32.

* These lines were suggested by a passage in St. Jerome's reply to some calumnious remarks that had been circulated upon his intimacy with the matron Paula :-“ Numquid me vestes sericæ, nitentes gemmæ, picta facies, aut auri rapuit ambitio ? Nulla fuit alia Romæ matronarum, quæ meam possit edomare mentem, nisi lugens atque jejunans, fletu pene cæcata.”—Epist. Si tibi putem.

[ocr errors]

In gems and garlands proudly deck'd,

As if themselves were things divine!
No-Heaven but faintly warms the breast
That beats beneath a broider'd veil;
And she who comes in glittering vest
To mourn her frailty, still is frail.*

III.

Not so the faded form I prize

And love, because its bloom is gone;
The glory in those sainted eyes

Is all the grace her brow puts on.
And ne'er was Beauty's dawn so bright,
So touching as that form's decay,
Which, like the altar's trembling light,
In holy lustre wastes away!

* Ου γαρ κυσοφορειν την διήρκεσαν δει.-Chrysost. Homil. 8. in Epist. ad Tim.

THE BIRD, LET LOOSE.

Air.-BEETHOVEN.

1.

THE bird, let loose in eastern skies,*
When hastening fondly home,

Ne'er stoops to earth her wing, nor flies
Where idle warblers roam.

But high she shoots through air and light,
Above all low delay,

Where nothing earthly bounds her flight,
Nor shadow dims her way.

II.

So grant me, GOD! from every care

And stain of passion free,

Aloft, through Virtue's purer air,
To hold my course to Thee!
No sin to cloud-no lure to stay

My Soul, as home she springs;—
Thy Sunshine on her joyful way,
Thy Freedom in her wings!

* The carrier-pigeon, it is well known, flies at an elevated pitch, in order to surmount every obstacle between her and the place to which she is destined.

OH! THOU WHO DRY'ST THE MOURNER'S

TEAR!

Air.-HAYDN.

“ He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.”—Psalm cxlvii. 3.

I.
OH! Thou who dry'st the mourner's tear,

How dark this world would be,
If, when deceived and wounded here,

We could not fly to Thee.
The friends who in our sunshine live,

When winter comes, are flown;
And he who has but tears to give,
Must
weep

those tears alone.
But Thou wilt heal that broken heart,

Which, like the plants that throw Their fragrance from the wounded part,

Breathes sweetness out of woe.

II.
When joy no longer soothes or cheers,

And even the hope that threw

A moment's sparkle o'er our tears,

Is dimm'd and vanish'd too!

Oh! who would bear life's stormy doom,

Did not thy Wing of Love

Come, brightly wafting through the gloom
Our peace-branch from above?

Then Sorrow, touch'd by Thee, grows bright
With more than Rapture's ray ;
As Darkness shows us worlds of light
We never saw by day!

WEEP NOT FOR THOSE.

Air.-AVISON.

I.

WEEP not for those whom the veil of the tomb,

In life's happy morning, hath hid from our eyes, Ere sin threw a blight o'er the spirit's young bloom, Or Earth had profaned what was born for the

skies.

Death chill'd the fair fountain, ere sorrow had stain'd it,

'Twas frozen in all the pure light of its course,

« AnteriorContinuar »