Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

"Her heart is broke! O God! my grief, It is too great to bear!"

'Twas such a foggy time as makes

Old sextons, Sir! like me,

Rest on their spades to cough; the spring Was late uncommonly.

And then the hot days, all at once,
They came, we knew not how;
You looked about for shade, when scarce
A leaf was on a bough.

It happened then ('twas in the bower
A furlong up the wood:

Perhaps you know the place, and yet
I scarce know how you should,—)

No path leads thither, 'tis not nigh
To any pasture-plot ;

But clustered near the chattering brook,
Lone hollies marked the spot.

Those hollies of themselves a shape
As of an arbor took,

A close, round arbor; and it stands
Not three strides from a brook.

Within this arbor, which was still
With scarlet berries hung,

Were these three friends, one Sunday morn
Just as the first bell rung.

'Tis sweet to hear a brook, 'tis sweet

To hear the Sabbath-bell,

'Tis sweet to hear them both at once,

Deep in a woody dell.

His limbs along the moss, his head

Upon a mossy heap.

With shut-up senses, Edward lay:
That brook e'en on a working day
Might chatter one to sleep.

And he had passed a restless night,
And was not well in health;
The women sat down by his side,
And talked as 'twere by stealth.

"The sun peeps through the close thick leaves,

See, dearest Ellen! see!

"Tis in the leaves, a little sun,

No bigger than your ee;

"A tiny sun, and it has got A perfect glory too;

Ten thousand threads and hairs of light,

Make up a glory, gay and bright,

Round that small orb, so blue."

And then they argued of those rays,
What color they might be;

Says this," they're mostly green;" says that,

[ocr errors]

They're amber-like to me.

So they sat chatting, while bad thoughts
Were troubling Edward's rest;
But soon they heard his hard quick pants,
And the thumping in his breast.

"A mother too!" these self-same words
Did Edward mutter plain;

His face was drawn back on itself,
With horror and huge pain.

Both groaned at once, for both knew well
What thoughts were in his mind;
When he waked up, and stared like one
That had been just struck blind.

He sat upright; and ere the dream
Had had time to depart,

"O God, forgive me! (he exclaimed)

I have torn out her heart."

Then Ellen shrieked, and forthwith burst

Into ungentle laughter;

And Mary shivered, where she sat,

And never she smiled after.

Carmen reliquum in futurum tempus relegatum. To-morrow! and To

morrow! and To-morrow !————

ODES AND MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

DEJECTION: AN ODE.

Late, late yestreen I saw the new Moon,
With the old Moon in her arms;

And I fear, I fear, my Master dear!

We shall have a deadly storm.

BALLAD OF SIR PATRICK SPENCE.

I.

WELL! If the Bard was weather-wise, who made
The grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spence,
This night, so tranquil now, will not go hence
nroused by winds, that ply a busier trade

Than those which mould yon cloud in lazy flakes,
Or the dull sobbing draft, that moans and rakes
Upon the strings of this Eolian lute,
Which better far were mute.

For lo the New-moon winter-bright!
And overspread with phantom light,
(With swimming phantom light o'erspread
But rimmed and circled by a silver thread)
I see the old Moon in her lap, foretelling

The coming on of rain and squally blast.

And oh that even now the gust were swelling,

And the slant night-shower driving loud and fast!

Those sounds which oft have raised me, whilst they awed,

And sent my soul abroad,

Might now, perhaps, their wonted impulse give,

Might startle this dull pain, and make it move and live!

II.

A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear,

A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief,

Which finds no natural outlet, no relief,
In word, or sigh, or tear-

O Lady in this wan and heartless mood,
To other thoughts by yonder throstle woo'd,

All this long eve, so balmy and serene,
Have I been gazing on the western sky,

And its peculiar tint of yellow green : And still I gaze-and with how blank an eye! And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars, That give away their motion to the stars; Those stars, that glide behind them or between, Now sparkling, now bedimmed, but always seen : Yon crescent Moon as fixed as if it grew In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue; I see them all so excellently fair,

I see, not feel how beautiful they are!

My genial spirits fail ;

III.

And what can these avail

To lift the smothering weight from off my breast? It were a vain endeavor,

Though I should gaze forever

On that green light that lingers in the west:

I

may not hope from outward forms to win

The passion and the life, whose fountains are within

IV.

O Lady! we receive but what we give,
And in our life alone does nature live:
Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud!
And would we aught behold, of higher worth,
Than that inanimate cold world allowed
To the poor loveless ever-anxious crowd,
Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth,
A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud
Enveloping the Earth-

And from the soul itself must there be sent
A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth,
Of all sweet sounds the life and element!

« ZurückWeiter »