A CHILD'S EVENING PRAYER. ERE on my bed my limbs I lay, God grant me grace my prayers to say: In strength and health for many a year; And may I pay him reverence due; Amen. THE VISIONARY HOPE. SAD lot, to have no hope! Though lowly kneeling He strove in vain! the dull sighs from his chest Against his will the stifling load revealing, Though Nature forced; though like some captive guest, Though obscure pangs made curses of his dreams, That Hope, which was his inward bliss and boast, Which waned and died, yet ever near him stood, Though changed in nature, wander where he wouldFor Love's despair is but Hope's pining ghost! For this one hope he makes his hourly moan, He wishes and can wish for this alone! Pierced, as with light from Heaven, before its gleams (So the love-stricken visionary deems) Disease would vanish, like a summer shower, Whose dews fling sunshine from the noontide bower! THE HAPPY HUSBAND. OFT, oft methinks, the while with Thee A promise and a mystery, A pledge of more than passing life, A pulse of love, that ne'er can sleep! Of transient joys that ask no sting From jealous fears, or coy denying ; But born beneath Love's brooding wing And into tenderness soon dying, Wheel out their giddy moment, then Resign the soul to love again ; A more precipitated vein, Of notes, that eddy in the flow Of smoothest song, they come, they go, And leave their sweeter understrain RECOLLECTIONS OF LOVE I. How warm this woodland wild Recess ! II. Eight springs have flown, since last I lay On seaward Quantock's heathy hills, Where quiet sounds from hidden rills Float here and there, like things astray, And high o'er head the sky-lark shrills. No voice as yet had made the air IV. As when a mother doth explore V. You stood before me like a thought, A dream remembered in a dream. But when those meek eyes first did seem To tell me, Love within you wroughtO Greta, dear domestic stream! VI. Has not, since then, Love's prompture deep, Has not Love's whisper evermore Been ceaseless as thy gentle roar? ON REVISITING THE SEA-SHORE, AFTER LONG ABSENCE, UNDER STRONG MEDICAL RECOMMENDA- GOD be with thee, gladsome ocean! Dissuading spake the mild physician, "Those briny waves for thee are death!" But my soul fulfilled her mission, And lo! I breathe untroubled breath! Fashion's pining sons and daughters, Me a thousand hopes and pleasures, Dreams, (the soul herself forsaking,) A blessed shadow of this Earth! O ye hopes, that stir within me, I can not die, if Life be Love. III. MEDITATIVE POEMS. IN BLANK VERSE. YEA, he deserves to find himself deceived, HYMN SCHILLER. BEFORE SUNRISE, IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI. Besides the Rivers, Arve and Arveiron, which have their sources in the foot of Mont Blanc, five conspicuous torrents rush down its sides; and within a few paces of the Glaciers, the Gentiana Major grows in immense numbers with its "flowers of loveliest blue." HAST thou a charm to stay the morning-star In his steep course? So long he seems to pause Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful Form! O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee, Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer G* |