Nor ermined pomp, nor regal sway
Forbade its rankling there.
No fearless truth his ear addressed,
Though thousands sang his praise;
A hollow-hearted thing at best
Was all their courtly phrase.
I saw Suspicion cloud his day,
And fear his firmness move;
And felt there was no perfect sway
Save what is built on love.
"Show me a king."-They brought a child
Clad in his robe of white,
His golden curls waved loose and wild,
His full blue eye was bright.
A haughty warrior strode that way,
Whose crest had never bowed
Beneath his brother of the clay
In battle or in crowd:
Yet down before that babe he bent,
A captive to his charms,
And meek, as with a slave's intent,
Received him in his arms.
Beauty was near, and love's warm sigh
Burst forth from manhood's breast,
While pride was kindling in that eye
Which saw its power confest:-
"Sing me a song," the urchin cried,
And from her lips did part,
A strain to kneeling man denied,
Rich music of the heart.
A sage austere, for learning famed,
Frown'd with abstracted air:
"Tell me a tale," the child exclaimed,
And boldly climbed his chair:
While he (how wondrous was the change!)
Poured forth, in language free,
Enforc'd with gestures strong and strange,
"I sought a king :"-but Nature cried
Who conquers beauty, power and pride,
Thus with a smile or tear:
The anointed monarch's eye may wake,
His bosom grieve alone,
But infant Innocence doth make
The human heart its throne.
I HEARD a stranger's hearse move heavily
Along the pavement. Its deep gloomy pall
No hand of kindred or of friend upbore.
But from the cloud, that veiled his western couch,
The lingering sun shed forth one transient ray,
Like sad and tender farewell to some plant
Which he had nourished. On the giddy crowd
Went dancing in their own enchanted maze,
Drowning the echo of those tardy wheels
Which hoarsely warn'd them of a time to die.
I saw a sable train in sorrow bend
Around a tomb.-There was a stifled sob,
And now and then a pearly tear fell down
Upon the tangled grass.-But then there came
The damp clod harshly on the coffin lid,
Curdling the life blood at the mourner's heart,
While audibly it spake to every ear
"There is a time to die."
As if from every mound and sepulchre
In that lone cemetery-from the sward
Where slept the span-long infant-to the grave
Of him who dandled on his wearied knee
Three generations-from the turf that veil'd
The wreck of mouldering beauty, to the bed
Where shrank the loathed beggar-rose a cry
From all those habitants of silence-"Yea!-
There is a time to die."
Methought that truth,
In every tongue, and dialect, and tone,
Peal'd o'er each region of the rolling globe;
The simoon breathed it, and the earthquake groan'd
A hollow, deep response-the avalanche
Wrote it in terror on a snowy scroll
The red volcano belch'd it forth in flames
Old Ocean bore it on his whelming surge,
And yon, pure, broad, cerulean arch grew dark,
With death's eternal darts.—But joyous Man,
To whom kind heaven the ceaseless warning sent,
Turn'd to his phantom pleasures, and deferr'd,
To some convenient hour, the time to die.
FORGOTTEN FLOWERS TO A BRIDE.
WE were left behind, but we would not stay,
We found your clue, and have kept the way,
For, sooth to tell, the track was plain
Of a bliss like yours, in a world of pain.
-How little we thought, when so richly we drest,
To go to your wedding, and vie with the best,
When we made our toilette, with such elegant care,
That we might not disgrace an occasion so rare,
To be whirl'd in a coach, at this violent rate,
From county to county, and State to State!
-Though we travell'd incog, yet we trembled with fear,
For the accents of strangers fell hoarse on our ear;
We could hear every word, as we quietly lay
In the snug box of tin, where they stow'd us away:
But how would our friends at a distance have known
If, charm'd by our beauty, they'd made us their own?
-All unus'd to the taverns and roads, as we were,
Our baggage and bones were a terrible care:
Yet we've 'scaped every peril, the journey is o'er,
And hooded and cloak'd, we are safe at your door.
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