Imagens da página
PDF
ePub
[blocks in formation]

And longer had she sung- but, with a frown,
Revenge impatient rose ;

The oak-crowned sisters, and their chaste

queen,

Satyrs and sylvan boys, were seen Peeping from forth their alleys green; Brown Exercise rejoiced to hear;

And Sport leapt up, and seized his beechen sp

Last came Joy's ecstatic trial:
He, with viny crown advancing,

First to the lively pipe his hand addrest ;
But soon he saw the brisk-awakening viol,
Whose sweet entrancing voice he loved the
They would have thought who heard the st
They saw, in Tempe's vale, her native ma
Amidst the festal-sounding shades,

To some unwearied minstrel dancing,
While, as his flying fingers kissed the string
Love framed with Mirth a gay fantastic rou

He threw his blood-stained sword in thunder down; Loose were her tresses seen, her zone unbou

And, with a withering look,

The war-denouncing trumpet took,
And blew a blast so loud and dread,
Were ne'er prophetic sounds so full of woe!

And ever and anon he beat

The doubling drum with furious heat;
And though sometimes, each dreary pause between,
Dejected Pity, at his side,

Her soul-subduing voice applied,
Yet still he kept his wild, unaltered mien,
While each strained ball of sight seemed bursting

from his head.

Thy numbers, Jealousy, to naught were fixed,
Sad proof of thy distressful state;
Of differing themes the veering song was mixed;
And now it courted love, -now, raving,
called on Hate.

With eyes upraised, as one inspired,

Pale Melancholy sate retired;

And from her wild sequestered seat,

In notes by distance made more sweet,

And he, amidst his frolic play,

As if he would the charming air repay, Shook thousand odors from his dewy wings.

O Music! sphere-descended maid,
Friend of pleasure, wisdom's aid!
Why, goddess! why, to us denied,
Lay'st thou thy ancient lyre aside?
As, in that loved Athenian bower,
You learned an all-commanding power,
Thy mimic soul, O nymph endeared,
Can well recall what then it heard;
Where is thy native simple heart,
Devote to virtue, fancy, art?
Arise, as in that elder time,
Warm, energetic, chaste, sublime!
Thy wonders, in that godlike age,
Fill thy recording sister's page ;
'Tis said - and I believe the tale -
Thy humblest reed could more prevail,
Had more of strength, diviner rage,
Than all which charms this laggard age,

Poured through the mellow horn her pensive E'en all at once together found,

soul;

And, dashing soft from rocks around,
Bubbling runnels joined the sound;
Through glades and glooms the mingled meas-
ure stole ;

Oro'er some haunted stream, with fond delay,
Round an holy calm diffusing,

Love of peace, and lonely musing,
In hollow murmurs died away.

But O, how altered was its sprightlier tone
When Cheerfulness, a nymph of healthiest hue,
Her bow across her shoulder flung, .
Her buskins gemmed with morning dew,
Blew an inspiring air, that dale and thicket rung,-
The hunter's call, to faun and dryad known!

Cecilia's mingled world of sound.
O, bid our vain endeavors cease;
Revive the just designs of Greece !
Return in all thy simple state,
Confirm the tales her sons relate!

WILLIAM COL

A SONG FOR ST. CECILIA'S DAY,

FROM harmony, from heavenly harmony
This universal frame began;
When Nature underneath a heap
Of jarring atoms lay,
And could not heave her head,

The tuneful voice was heard from high,

Arise, ye more than dead!

Then cold and hot and moist and dry
In order to their stations leap,
And Music's power obey.
From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began:
From harmony to harmony,
Through all the compass of the notes it ran,
The diapason closing full in man.

What passion cannot Music raise and quell?
When Jubal struck the chorded shell,
His listening brethren stood around,
And, wondering, on their faces fell
To worship that celestial sound.
Less than a God they thought there could not dwell
Within the hollow of that shell,
That spoke so sweetly and so well.
What passion cannot Music raise and quell?

The trumpet's loud clangor

Excites us to arms,
With shrill notes of anger,

And mortal alarms,

The double double double beat
Of the thundering drum
Cries, hark! the foes come;
Charge, charge, 't is too late to retreat.

The soft complaining flute

In dying notes discovers
The woes of hopeless lovers,

Whose dirge is whispered by the warbling lute.

Sharp violins proclaim

Their jealous pangs, and desperation,

Fury, frantic indignation,

Depth of pains, and height of passion,

For the fair, disdainful dame.

But O, what art can teach,
What human voice can reach,
The sacred organ's praise?

Notes inspiring holy love,
Notes that wing their heavenly ways
To mend the choirs above.

Orpheus could lead the savage race;
And trees uprooted left their place,

Sequacious of the lyre;

But bright Cecilia raised the wonder higher; When to her organ vocal breath was given, An angel heard, and straight appeared

Mistaking earth for heaven.

GRAND CHORUS.

As from the power of sacred lays The spheres began to move,

[blocks in formation]

How poor, how rich, how abject, how august,
How complicate, how wonderful, is man!
How passing wonder He who made him such!
Who centred in our make such strange extremes,
From different natures marvellously mixed,
Connection exquisite of distant worlds!
Distinguished link in being's endless chain !
Midway from nothing to the Deity!
A beam ethereal, sullied, and absorpt!
Though sullied and dishonored, still divine!
Dim miniature of greatness absolute !
An heir of glory! a frail child of dust!
Helpless immortal! insect infinite!

A worm a God! - I tremble at myself,
And in myself am lost. At home, a stranger,
Thought wanders up and down, surprised, aghast,
And wondering at her own. How reason reels!
O, what a miracle to man is man!

Triumphantly distressed! What joy! what dread!
Alternately transported and alarmed!

What can preserve my life? or what destroy? An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave; Legions of angels can't confine me there.

DR. EDWARD YOUNG.

MAN-WOMAN.

Man's home is everywhere. On ocean's flood,
Where the strong ship with storm-defying tether
Doth link in stormy brotherhood
Earth's utmost zones together,
Where'er the red gold glows, the spice-trees wave,
Where the rich diamond ripens, mid the flame
Of vertic suns that ope the stranger's grave,
He with bronzed cheek and daring step doth

rove;

He with short pang and slight

Doth turn him from the checkered light Of the fair moon through his own forests dancing, Where music, joy, and love

Were his young hours entrancing;
And where ambition's thunder-claim
Points out his lot,

Or fitful wealth allures to roam,
There doth he make his home,
Repining not.

It is not thus with Woman. The far halls,

Though ruinous and lone,

Where first her pleased ear drank a nursingmother's tone;

The home with humble walls, Where breathed a parent's prayer around her bed;

The valley where, with playmates true, She culled the strawberry, bright with dew; The bower where Love her timid footsteps led; The hearthstone where her children grew;

The damp soil where she cast

The flower-seeds of her hope, and saw them bide the blast,

Affection with unfading tint recalls,
Lingering round the ivied walls,

Where every rose hath in its cup a bee,

Making fresh honey of remembered things, Each rose without a thorn, each bee bereft of stings.

LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY.

But, lovely child! thy magic stole
At once into my inmost soul,
With feelings as thy beauty fair,
And left no other vision there.

To me thy parents are unknown;
Glad would they be their child to own!
And well they must have loved before,
If since thy birth they loved not more.
Thou art a branch of noble stem,
And seeing thee I figure them.
What many a childless one would give,
If thou in their still home wouldst live,
Though in thy face no family-line
Might sweetly say, "This babe is mine"!
In time thou wouldst become the same
As their own child, all but the name !

JOHN WILSON.

[blocks in formation]

TO A SLEEPING CHILD. ART thou a thing of mortal birth Whose happy home is on our earth? Does human blood with life imbue Those wandering veins of heavenly blue That stray along thy forehead fair, Lost mid a gleam of golden hair? O, can that light and airy breath Steal from a being doomed to death? Those features to the grave be sent In sleep thus mutely eloquent?

Or art thou, what thy form would seem,

The phantom of a blessed dream?

A human shape I feel thou art
I feel it at my beating heart,

Those tremors both of soul and sense
Awoke by infant innocence !
Though dear the forms by fancy wove,
We love them with a transient love;
Thoughts from the living world intrude
Even on our deepest solitude;

[blocks in formation]

Concealing, but still showing, the fair realm
Of so much rapture, as green shadowing trees
With beauty shroud the brooklet. The red lips
Were parted, and the cheek upon the breast
Lay close, and, like the young leaf of the flower,

Wore the same color, rich and warm and fresh:
And such alone are beautiful. Its eye,
A full blue gem, most exquisitely set,
Looked archly on its world, the little imp,
As if it knew even then that such a wreath
Were not for all; and with its playful hands
It drew aside the robe that hid its realm,
And peeped and laughed aloud, and so it laid
Its head upon the shrine of such pure joys,
And, laughing, slept. And while it slept, the tears
Of the sweet mother fell upon its cheek,
Tears such as fall from April skies, and bring
The sunlight after. They were tears of joy;
And the true heart of that young mother then
Grew lighter, and she sang unconsciously
The silliest ballad-song that ever yet
Subdued the nursery's voices, and brought sleep
To fold her sabbath wings above its couch.

WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS.

FORTUNE.

FRAGMENT FROM "FANNY."

BUT Fortune, like some others of her sex, Delights in tantalizing and tormenting.

[ocr errors][merged small]

Eve never walked in Paradise more pure

Than on that morn when Satan played the devil With her and all her race. A lovesick wooer

Ne'er asked a kinder maiden, or more civil, Than Cleopatra was to Antony The day she left him on the Ionian sea.

The serpent-loveliest in his coiléd ring,

With eye that charms, and beauty that outvies The tints of the rainbow-bears upon his sting The deadliest venom. Ere the dolphin dies Its hues are brightest. Like an infant's breath Are tropic winds before the voice of death

Is heard upon the waters, summoning

The midnight earthquake from its sleep of years To do its task of woe. The clouds that fling The lightning brighten ere the bolt appears; The pantings of the warrior's heart are proud Upon that battle-morn whose night-dews wet his

shroud ;

The sun is loveliest as he sinks to rest;

So strength first made a way;

Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honor, pleasure:
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that alone, of all his treasure,
Rest in the bottom lay.

[blocks in formation]

"T WAS whispered in heaven, and muttered in hell,

The leaves of Autumn smile when fading fast; And echo caught faintly the sound as it fell; The swan's last song is sweetest.

[blocks in formation]

On the confines of earth 't was permitted to rest, And the depths of the ocean its presence confessed; 'T was seen in the lightning, and heard in the thunder;

'T will be found in the spheres, when riven

asunder;

Assists at his birth, and attends him in death;
'T was given to man with his earliest breath,
Presides o'er his happiness, honor, and health,
Is the prop of his house, and the end of his wealth.

It begins every hope, every wish it must bound, And though unassuming, with monarchs is crowned.

In the heaps of the miser 't is hoarded with care,
But is sure to be lost in his prodigal heir.
Without it the soldier and sailor may roam,
But woe to the wretch who expels it from home!
In the whispers of conscience its voice will be found,
Nor e'er in the whirlwind of passion be drowned.
It softens the heart; and, though deaf to the ear,
It will make it acutely and instantly hear.
But in shade let it rest, like a delicate flower, -
O, breathe on it softly; it dies in an hour.

MISS FANSHAWE.

THE GIFTS OF GOD.

WHEN God at first made man, Having a glass of blessings standing by, Let us (said he) pour on him all we can : Let the world's riches, which disperséd lie, Contract into a span.

FATHER LAND AND MOTHER TONGUE.

OUR Father Land and wouldst thou know Why we should call it Father Land?

It is that Adam here below

Was made of earth by Nature's hand.

[blocks in formation]
[ocr errors]

The thought was small; its issue great; a watchfire on the hill;

It sheds its radiance far adown, and cheers the valley still!

A nameless man, amid a crowd that thronged the daily mart,

Let fall a word of Hope and Love, unstudied, from the heart;

A whisper on the tumult thrown, - a transitory breath,

It raised a brother from the dust; it saved a soul from death.

O germ ! O fount ! O word of love! O thought at random cast!

Ye were but little at the first, but mighty at the last.

CHARLES MACKAY.

[blocks in formation]

Glide around my wakeful pillow with their praise or mild reproof,

A dreamer dropped a random thought; 't was As I listen to the murmur of the soft rain on the

old, and yet 't was new;

A simple fancy of the brain, but strong in being

true.

It shone upon a genial mind, and lo! its light became

A lamp of life, a beacon ray, a monitory flame.

roof.

And another comes to thrill me with her eyes'

delicious blue.

I forget, as gazing on her, that her heart was all

untrue;

« AnteriorContinuar »