so
 
 F-CAtIF( 
 
 LIBRARY^
 
 TITANIA'S BANQUET, 
 
 PICTURES OF WOMAN, 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHER POEMS. 
 
 GEORGE HILL. 
 
 - 
 
 THIRD EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 D. APPLETON & COMPANY, 
 
 90, 92 & 94 GRAND STREET. 
 iS/O.
 
 Entered, according to act of Congress, in the year 1869, by 
 
 GEORGE HILL, 
 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the 
 District of Connecticut.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THE first edition was published anony 
 mously, and with contents so limited, and to 
 some extent otherwise different from those of 
 the next (entitled " The Ruins of Athens, 
 Titania's Banquet, a Mask, and other Poems "), 
 that the author concluded, though, as he now 
 thinks, injudiciously, not to style the latter a 
 second. /;/ it, however, zvas mentioned the ap 
 pearance of the fanner. In consequence of 
 numerous additions and various other modifi 
 cations, the present edition differs materially 
 from both. 
 
 62378O
 
 4 PREFACE. 
 
 The titles of some of the pieces considered, 
 it perhaps may appear needless for him to re 
 mark that they were suggested by either ob 
 jects or incidents observed by him while ab 
 sent from the United States.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 TITANIA'S BANQUET, ....... 9 
 
 PICTURES OF WOMAN: 
 
 1. The Spanish Mountain-girl, ..... 32 
 
 2. Leila, . . 35 
 
 3. Mary, . . . . . . 36 
 
 4. Genevieve, . ..... 37 
 
 5. In Memoriam, ...... 38 
 
 6. The Portrait, . . . . -. . .40 
 
 7. Ruth, 4 2 
 
 8. Lavinia, ........ 43 
 
 9. The Unnamed, . . . . . . 45 
 
 10. A Health to Agnes, . . . . . -47 
 
 11. Sue, . . . . . . . . 48 
 
 12. To the Subject of a Portrait, . . . . -49 
 
 13. Night-piece to Helen, ..... 50 
 
 14. Gertrude, ...... 5 1 
 
 15. To Edith, silent, ...... 52 
 
 16. Eugenia, ........ 52 
 
 17. Marion, . . . . . . 53 
 
 1 8. Anacreontica Casta, ...... 54 
 
 19. The Cavalier's Serenade, ..... 55 
 
 THE RUINS OF ATHENS, . . . . . . 5 6 
 
 The Maiden's Song to the Violets, ..... 71 
 
 To a Flower found among Ruins, . . . . -73
 
 O CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Lost Pleiad, 75 
 
 To a Migrating Sea-bird, . . . . . 77 
 
 To Sweet-brier Blossoms, ...... 79 
 
 To an Ancient Gold Coin, . . . . . .80 
 
 Lament of the Emigrating Indian, ..... 84 
 
 To a Flower from the Athenian Acropolis, . . . .86 
 
 Evening at Sea, ....... 88 
 
 Love and Reason, ....... 90 
 
 The G!en and the Burial, ...... 93 
 
 To Young Wood-roses, ....... 96 
 
 SONNETS : 
 
 1. May, . . . . . . . . 97 
 
 2. To a Young Mother, . , . . . .98 
 
 3. Twilight at Sea, off Delos, ..... 98 
 
 4. Crossing the Beach of Aboukir Bay, . . . -99 
 
 5. Napoleon, ....... 100 
 
 6. Recollections of Greece, ...... 101 
 
 7. Absence, ....... 101 
 
 8. To the Author of the " Life of Ashmun," . . . 102 
 
 9. To the Painter of the Panorama of Quebec, . . 103 
 
 10. Scio, ........ 103 
 
 11. Love of Spiritual Beauty, ..... 104 
 
 12. The Grave of Fitz-Greene Halleck, . . . .105 
 
 13. Scene revisited after the Death of a Friend. . . 106 
 Early Spring, ........ 107 
 
 The Mariner's Farewell, ...... 108 
 
 Autumn in Greece, ....... 109 
 
 Song of the Grecian Youth, ...... in 
 
 Cape Colonna, ........ 112 
 
 To a Withered Rose from the Banks of the Meles, . . . 114 
 The Self-exiled's Farewell, . . . . . .116 
 
 The Self-exiled's Return, . . . . . . 118 
 
 IDLINGS WITH NATURE, ....... 120 
 
 Battle of San Jacinto, ...... 136 
 
 Poetry of the Woods, ....... 138
 
 CONTENTS. 7 
 
 PACE 
 
 The Fall of the Oak, ....... 140 
 
 Ruins of the Temple of Jupiter Panhellenius, .... 143 
 
 Life, ......... 145 
 
 PIECES OF A RELIGIOUS CHARACTER: 
 
 1. The Two Worlds, . . . . . . 147 
 
 2. The Past and the Present, ..... 148 
 
 3. The Nuns' Evening-Hymn, . . . . . 149 
 
 4. JEge&n Vespers, . . . . . .150 
 
 5. The Death of St. Clara, 151 
 
 6. To the Infant Saviour, ..... 152 
 
 7. The Penance of St. Mary, . . . 154 
 
 8. Penitence, ....... 155 
 
 9. Matins, ........ 156 
 
 10. Life beyond the Grave, ..... 157 
 
 Circe and Telemachus, ....... 158 
 
 The Artist's Grave, ....... 161 
 
 DEFINITIONS : 
 
 The Time-server, . , . . . .162 
 
 The Pulpit Quack, ...... 162 
 
 The Revel, .163 
 
 Song, . 164 
 
 Vision of June, . . . .165 
 
 To a Nun heard singing, ...... 166 
 
 To a Picture, ^7 
 
 Leaders of the American Revolution, . . . 167 
 
 Relics of Nobility, l68 
 
 To a White Lily .168 
 
 Written in an Album, ....... 169 
 
 Mitylene, ... ... 170 
 
 Version of a Greek Relic, . . .170 
 
 Epistle to a Belle, ....... 171 
 
 Scotch Epistle, ... *74
 
 TITANIA'S BANQUET. 
 
 SCENE. An open Plot in a Forest. 
 
 Enter two Fairies. 
 
 o 
 
 FIRST FAIRY. 
 
 H, come to my bower, 
 
 At the noontide hour, 
 And wait not for the moon ! 
 Oh, come where the wood-flowers drip and twine ! 
 We have bees for pipers, dew for wine ; 
 Oh, come ! for the rose fades soon. 
 
 SECOND FAIRY. 
 
 Said the Fairy-knight, 
 I am a Sprite 
 Of the free and sunny air ; 
 I may not be your love, and dwell 
 Where the pale flowers weep, and the cold founts well, 
 And your bower, where the owls hoot, share.
 
 10 TITANIA'S BANQUET. 
 
 I am a lover of the light, and like 
 Not these your shadowy, unfrequented haunts, 
 These leafy cloisters, whose pale nun, the shy 
 Cold wood-rose, ever weeps in her dank cell. 
 The owl no more winks at a sunbeam here 
 Than at a star at midnight. List ! what stirs ? 
 
 FIRST FAIRY. 
 
 The toad slinks to her covert, and the gnat 
 Gives o'er his hum. Some charm's abroad. 
 
 SECOND FAIRY. 
 
 If SO, 
 
 Titania comes ; these hushed portents are still 
 Her harbingers. 
 
 FIRST FAIRY. 
 
 Yon star that but now winked 
 In the horizon, like a glowworm on 
 Some low, moist bank look ! where it mounts and 
 
 burns 
 Bright o'er our heads. 
 
 SECOND FAIRY. 
 
 It is her torch-bearer. 
 
 TITANIA and her Train approach. 
 FIRST FAIRY. 
 
 A motley troop !
 
 TITANIA'S BANQUET. u 
 
 SECOND FAIRY. 
 
 A motley ! one would think 
 
 She'd, of their henchmen, robbed the courts of all 
 The shadowy kings 'twixt here and Mariban. 
 There's one that wears a feather in his cap 
 Plucked from the gray hood of a Lapland owl 
 Look ! with a snow-flake on it. The bright shell, 
 Wherewith yon dwarf elf bonnets his swart brow, 
 Is from a shoal of Muscat ; and the robe, 
 Spangled with gold, and strung with small white pearls, 
 The Spirit of the brown and buskined leg 
 Trails at his sun-burnt knee, was once the ear 
 Of a small mouse that burrows in an isle 
 Where their gold apples watched the Hesperides. 
 
 FIRST FAIRY, 
 
 What holds she by a silken twine ? a beetle ? 
 
 SECOND FAIRY. 
 
 An Ethiop sent him from the reeds of Nile 
 
 To be her trumpeter. His spots of green 
 
 And gold her fancy won. The dolt ! there's no 
 
 More music in his horn than in the scream 
 
 Of Scylla's seamews. Yet he swears he has 
 
 Heard a star sing, and into silence charmed 
 
 The chords of Memnon ; nay, unsphered the moon, 
 
 Mistaking his dull drone for the sad harp
 
 12 TITANIA'S BANQUET. 
 
 Of her Endymion. The knave ! he'll thrive 
 At court. 
 
 FIRST FAIRY. 
 
 Ay ; should he not, he were no knave. 
 
 Flourish. Enter TITANIA and her Train. 
 TITANIA. 
 
 A weary march we've had ; now rest. 
 
 Enter PUCK. 
 TITANIA. 
 
 Whence come 
 You, Puck? 
 
 PUCK. 
 
 From where 'tis noon when here 'tis midnight. 
 
 TITANIA. 
 
 Met you with Oberon ? 
 
 PUCK. 
 
 No, Queen ! nor did 
 
 I chance to hear of him : but, if you'll send 
 A messenger to Ormus, to the girl, 
 The Arab fisherman's daughter, her who sits 
 By the sea-bank, and, like a mermaid, sings, 
 Braiding her dark locks with small, golden coins, 
 Stamped with strange legends and the images
 
 TITANIA'S BANQUET. 13 
 
 And superscriptions of old Eastern kings, 
 Belike you'll find him sleeping in her lap. 
 
 FAIRY. [Aside.'} 
 
 Pale as the snow-drop at her foot ! Now will 
 She pinch this Ismael siren into more 
 Colors than spot an Indian shell. 
 
 TITANIA. 
 
 What elf 
 To-night has seen him ? Speak ! Will none obey ? 
 
 FAIRY. 
 
 Within a green plot of the wood, 
 
 An aged, withered oak there stood, 
 
 Like a hermit, gray and lone, 
 
 Breathing forth his orison, 
 
 Or a wizard, near the centre 
 
 Of whose dread round no Sprite may venture, 
 
 A withered leaf was, here and there, 
 
 Heard, at times, to twirl in air, 
 
 All beside was still and bare ; 
 
 Rank the grass beyond it grew, 
 
 On each blade a drop of dew, 
 
 But where, in the cold moon's ray, 
 
 Dim and jagged its shadow lay, 
 
 Grass nor grew, nor dew was sprinkled, 
 
 Sprite nor tripped, nor glowworm twinkled ;
 
 14 TITANIA'S BANQUET. 
 
 There saw I the Elfin King 
 Sleeping in a fairy ring. 
 
 TITANIA. 
 
 There let him sleep. What Spirit have we here ? 
 An Ethiop ? He has the brow of one. 
 
 PUCK. 
 
 Your majesty ! I found him in a grot 
 
 By the Dead Sea. I questioned him of whence 
 
 And what he was ; whereat he shook his head, 
 
 And, with his sooty finger, pressed his lip. 
 
 He makes no answer, but points to the shore ; 
 
 Arrived at which, I heard a low strange voice, 
 
 As of a sea-nymph singing in her cave, 
 
 And looking down, a thousand feet below 
 
 The water's unmoved surface, roofs discovered, 
 
 Columns, and battlements, and pavements, strown 
 
 With gems, and gold, and sea-weeds, intermixed, 
 
 Lit up by subterranean fires, and lamps 
 
 Of subtile naphtha ; sitting by which, a Sprite, 
 
 In likeness of a Nereid, from a book 
 
 Chanted strange symbols. I had heard the tale 
 
 Of Sodom and Gomorrah, now the haunts 
 
 Of powers, 'tis said, that sway the elements 
 
 Of fire and water, so, surmised that she 
 
 Muttered some charm of virtue to withhold 
 
 Their submarine dominions from the grasp 
 
 Of hostile demons, who might else invade
 
 TITANIA'S BANQUET. 
 
 Them for their riches. With a pearl, I found 
 
 Loosed from a shell of the Arabian Sea, 
 
 I won this Fairy, as I deem he is, 
 
 To join my troop ; not doubting but he might 
 
 Be tempted, by the pleasures of our court, 
 
 To exchange for them the sullen life he led 
 
 In sultry waters and the oozy halls 
 
 Of sunken cities, and, in time, disclose 
 
 The secret of the charm that guards their treasures. 
 
 They call him Asphalt. More of him I know not. 
 
 TITANIA. 
 Is your troop ready ? 
 
 PUCK. 
 
 They are sleeping, Queen. 
 Black and white elves, brown and gray, 
 You are summoned ; elves, obey ! 
 Come from crevice, nook, and hole, 
 Lily-cup, and cell of mole, 
 Bower, and bank of moss-turf green, 
 At the bidding of your Queen. 
 
 Enter Troop. 
 TITANIA. 
 
 Fairies, know that we do expect, to-night, 
 To grace our revelry, a puissant Spirit, 
 Who sways the sceptre of an Orient king, 
 One of the famed enchanters that, of old,
 
 l6 TITANIA'S BANQUET. 
 
 Where the Chaldean reed now rustles, saw 
 
 Their proud seats pinnacled amid the clouds. 
 
 Him, as it chanced, with all his palaces, 
 
 An earthquake swallowed, long before the flood. 
 
 Thus sepulchred, his seat of empire is, 
 
 Fathoms below the deep sea-bed, possessed 
 
 By this same Spirit, or, as he is styled, 
 
 Prince of the Gnomes, the swart elves, whose haunts are 
 
 The unhewn chambers of the rock, the deep 
 
 And sunless- caverns. Him I would receive 
 
 With all due form, seeing he doubtless deems 
 
 Us, who these wild and wooded walks frequent, 
 
 Strangers to the imperial pomp, the gold, 
 
 The gems, and syrups, that endow the East. 
 
 Therefore, mark well my bidding, nor alone 
 
 Mark, but see done, with speed that shall outstrip 
 
 The meteor's glance, no sooner seen than o'er. 
 
 FIRST FAIRY. 
 
 The solid earth to us is as a shadow. 
 
 SECOND FAIRY. 
 
 We'll dart through as sunbeams do through air. 
 
 TITANIA. 
 
 I would have all things rare and delicate : 
 
 Wines in old jars, stamped with the seals of kings
 
 TITANIA'S BANQUET. 17 
 
 Whose sepulchres were dust long ere the Sophi 
 
 Revelled in Shushan ; liquors in crystal cups, 
 
 Whose blush would shame the morning's, and whose 
 
 sparkle 
 
 Dim the tear she lets fall upon the rose, 
 The sun-stone, or the pearl that Egypt's Queen 
 Drank to her paramour. 
 
 ASPHALT. 
 
 I know of such, 
 
 That have so long been buried in the vaults 
 Of inhumed cities, they would drink the light 
 As sands do water glow like liquid gold. 
 
 TITANIA. 
 
 Spices I'll have from Ceylon, such as scent 
 
 The sea-air for a thousand leagues ; incense 
 
 Of gums of Afric, sweeter than the lip 
 
 Of Cupid, moist with Cytherea's kiss, 
 
 Than musk-wood, or Sabaea's odorous fire ; 
 
 Fruits from all climes within the signs that bound 
 
 The sun's march, ripening on their branches, brought 
 
 In vases moulded of transparent earth ; 
 
 Syrups of Hybla, and the bags of bees 
 
 That hive the Orient's nectared blush. Away ! 
 
 [Exeunt PUCK and his Troop. 
 FAIRY. 
 
 Shall we have music ?
 
 1 8 TITANIA'S BANQUET. 
 
 TITANIA. 
 
 Such as shall unsphere 
 The Pleiades. 
 
 FAIRY. 
 
 O Queen ! I know a bower 
 In flowery Thessaly, an odorous shade, 
 Where the Athenian with the nightingale 
 In singing strove, and broke her heart. There do 
 The winged musicians at this hour resort, 
 Startling the midnight silence, till each leaf 
 Seems a melodious tongue. Thither will I, 
 And so bewitch them with a song I heard 
 A star sing to a mermaid, as she lay, 
 Her white arm floating, like a moonbeam, on 
 The still sea-wave, that they hall hither flock, 
 Like halcyons, to a sea-nymph's wreathed s,hell. 
 
 [F,xit, singing. 
 
 My couch is not where the wpod-flowers drip 
 In the noontide shade ; but I lie, 
 
 When day is done, 
 
 Where a curtain's spun 
 Of the mist of the sunset sky. 
 
 The moon's cold ray 
 
 Is not my day,
 
 TITANIA'S BANQUET. 19 
 
 But I wake, as fades the star, 
 
 The winking light, 
 
 That follows the night 
 O'er the green sea-isles afar. 
 
 TITANIA. 
 
 My subtle minister, you've power to shape 
 The elements ? 
 
 ASPHALT. 
 
 I have ; what would the Queen ? 
 
 TITANIA. 
 
 Rear me a palace straight, whose pride shall shame 
 
 All we have heard of Babylonian bowers, 
 
 Of Memphian columns, and the pictured roofs 
 
 Of Mongol capitals ; wherein to dwell, 
 
 The gods (if such there be) would gladly quit 
 
 Their famed Olympus. 
 
 ASPHALT. 
 
 To hear is to obey. 
 
 [Palace rises to the sound of subterranean music. 
 FAIRY. 
 
 Oh, glorious ! The airy vault of heaven, 
 Sprinkled at midnight with ten thousand stars,
 
 20 TITANIA'S BANQUET. 
 
 Is not more lustrous than this lamplit dome ; 
 The columns seem of gold and ivory, 
 The capitals of sparkling stones, that show 
 Like tops of clouds at sunset. 
 
 TITANIA. 
 
 Glorious ! 
 What trump is that? 
 
 ASPHALT. 
 
 The Prince's. I should know 
 His flourish, since full many a time it has 
 At midnight summoned me. 'Tis of a shell 
 That once was blown before the argosy 
 Of a sea-king of Oman. 
 
 FAIRY. 
 
 Look ! this way 
 
 He comes, preceded by a sooty troop, 
 Whose pennons, by their lurid torches lit, 
 Seem shreds of banners, whose dim blazonry 
 Is seen to droop where Egypt pyramids 
 The dust of her old conquerors. 
 
 ASPHALT. 
 
 Such they are ; 
 
 Woven of threads of Ophir gold by maids, 
 Whose mummies were uncatacombed and sold
 
 TITANIA'S BANQUET. 21 
 
 For incense, long ere stricken by the sun, 
 The stony lyre of Theban Memnon 1 rang. 
 
 FAIRY. 
 
 A swart troop, truly ! but sparkling with gems, 
 As they had robbed the Orient, or shaken 
 The powdered gold from Berenice's hair. 2 
 
 Flourish. Enter the PRINCE and his Train. 
 TITANIA. 
 
 Welcome to Fairy-land ! You see not here 
 The wealth and pomp of Orient courts ; and yet, 
 To excuse our entertainment, were to seem 
 To task your courtesy. Your wish is ours. 
 
 PRINCE. 
 
 Thanks, gentle Queen ! This palace were a home 
 For proud Semiramis. True it is that we 
 Inherit the once gorgeous halls of kings, 
 Where throned they sat, each like a sun beneath 
 The glorious awning of an evening cloud ; 
 But they are such no more. The imagery, 
 On the stained roofs of their long-buried domes, 
 Is dim with subterranean damps, and lit 
 As graves by tomb-lamps by the dull, cold rays 
 Of lurid torches by nepenthe fed ; 
 
 1 Statue of Memnon, said to sound when so stricken. 
 
 2 The constellation of that name.
 
 22 TITANIA'S BANQUET. 
 
 And all the rich embroidery, wherewith 
 
 Their walls were decked, is now but hanging shreds, 
 
 The air that's moved but by an insect's wing, 
 
 Would shake to dust. The carved flowers, that 
 
 wreathed 
 
 Their lofty capitals, are cropped by time ; 
 And mouldered bones the pavement strew, which once 
 The looms of Persia did conspire to deck 
 In colors richer than the scarf of Iris. 
 Their wines, their goblets, gems, and gold, are ours ; 
 But seldom do we breathe the upper air, 
 And gaze upon the vault beneath whose light 
 You nightly hold your sprightly revels. 
 
 Enter MESSENGER. 
 MESSENGER. 
 
 Queen, we've done your bidding well, 
 Caught the dew-drop as it fell, 
 Cold and pure as maiden's eye, 
 From the summer sunset sky. 
 Syrups of the Orient 
 In king-cups 1 we here present; 
 Flowers, untasted by the bee, 
 'Tis a feast to smell and see ; 
 Violets, as nun's eye meek ; 
 Roses, shamefaced as her check ; 
 
 1 The flowers so called.
 
 TITANIA'S BANQUET. 23 
 
 Cloying, till lovesick to death, 
 
 The musk zephyr with their breath, 
 
 Sweeter than Aurora's, sent 
 
 From her Indian spice-wood tent ; 
 
 Lilies, whiter than e'er set 
 
 Dian in her coronet ; 
 
 Snow-drops, you would say are snow ; 
 
 Berries of the mistletoe ; 
 
 Cherries, like to maiden's lips ; 
 
 Comfits of the tropic ; drips 
 
 Not from old Hymettus, honey 
 
 Sweeter than we bring thee ; sunny 
 
 Gums we have, that, if fired, shall 
 
 With fragrance so your sense inthrall, 
 
 You'll think yourself, nay, wish to be, 
 
 Evermore an odorous tree ; 
 
 Emmet's eyes, as small and bright 
 
 As diamond-dust ; with mushrooms, light 
 
 As froth of milk, or thistle-top ; 
 
 Nuts, sweet as pines of Tempe, drop ; 
 
 Thigh of home-bound bee, so yellow, 
 
 Ne'er was gold that was its fellow ; 
 
 Ants, seethed as red in fountain hot 
 
 As e'er was crab in huswife's pot ; 
 
 Grapes, through which the sun, see ! passes, 
 
 As they were wine in crystal glasses ; 
 
 Water from the spring, 1 we're told, 
 
 Makes a young maid of an old, 
 
 1 Fons Juventutis.
 
 24 TITANIA'S BANQUET. 
 
 That if, with chaste lip, you drink it, 
 Poured by Hebe you will think it, 
 From beakers she has kissed, that never 
 Lose their spicery, sweet forever. 
 But, why further tell how, sought 
 Through air, earth, and sea, we've brought 
 All that's sweet to eye, smell, taste, 
 To deck out your fairy feast ? 
 Stars are winking, time fast flics ; 
 Strike up, minstrels ! Tables, rise ! 
 
 [They rise to tlie sound of subterranean music, -with 
 Spirits, like Wood-nymphs, as A ttendants. 
 
 PRINCE. 
 
 Sure Orpheus plays, and, at his bidding, comes, 
 Unseated from the Stygian shore, Elysium ! 
 
 FIRST FAIRY. 
 
 The wine that sparkles in yon crystal cup 
 Is liquid ruby ! 
 
 SECOND FAIRY. 
 
 Its foam liquid pearl ! 
 
 THIRD FAIRY. 
 
 I'd pawn my immortality for but 
 
 Three drops of such nectareous brightness. Pray, 
 
 What mole unearthed it ?
 
 TITANIA'S BANQUET. 2J 
 
 ASPHALT. 
 
 One whose burrow is 
 The sods of Babylon. 'Tis from a jar 
 Stamped with the seal of Queen Semiramis 
 A dove bearing a dagger in its beak : 
 A bright and drowsy liquor, of which she 
 Would make her lovers drink, and, when they dreamed 
 Their souls were revelling in Elysium, slew them. 
 
 As the Banquet proceeds, enter PUCK and OBERON, invisible to the 
 Banqueters. 
 
 OBERON. \To PUCK.] 
 
 You see this flower. I plucked it from the root 
 Of a Cimmerian hemlock. It was ne'er 
 Touched by a sunbeam ; the cold drops that slake 
 Its speckled cup fell, in the moon's eclipse, 
 From a dead leaf of nightshade. Mark you ? 
 
 PUCK. 
 
 Ay. 
 
 OBERON. 
 
 Take it, and, when their mirth is highest, shake 
 The dew from it into the charmed air, 
 And, like a dream from the vexed sleeper's eye 
 Woke by a thunder-clap, these conjured shapes 
 Of pillars, goblets, and attendant nymphs, 
 
 Will, in an instant, vanish into nothing. 
 
 2
 
 26 TITANIA'S BANQUET. 
 
 PUCK. 
 
 Your Majesty ! the ripple is not spent 
 
 That wet my buskin, as but now I trod 
 
 The Red Sea shallows ; and full oft, to-night, 
 
 I've done your biddings in the farthest Ind. 
 
 I'm hungrier than a sea-frith at low ebb, 
 
 And thirstier than its sands, and much more prize 
 
 A drop of the bright liquor which I see, 
 
 At your Queen's lip, her merry eye out-sparkle, 
 
 Than all the gems of Pegu, though each were 
 
 A diamond, and that an Alp. Oh, no I 
 
 I'm in rare mood to help you make a feast, 
 
 But not to mar one. 
 
 OBERON. 
 
 Go ! One service more, 
 
 And then we'll rob the bee of sweets she hives 
 From the Arabian rose, or, if you will, 
 Sup with the Orient on spiced dew, 
 And feel her odorous sigh fan us to sleep. 
 
 [Exit PUCK, singing: 
 
 Said the Fairy-knight, 
 The will-o'-wisp light 
 Fast flies, I wearily follow ; 
 
 Oh ! where shall I sleep, my love ? Oh ! where ? 
 The dew falls chill, and mirk is the air, 
 As I roam o'er hill and hollow.
 
 TITANIA'S BANQUET. 2"J 
 
 Said his love, I've a bower, 
 
 Where, at midnight hour, 
 The wood-crickets merrily sing ; 
 
 And thine it shall be, 
 
 When you win for me 
 The gold on the beetle-fly's wing. 
 
 PRINCE. 
 
 Methought I heard strange music in the air. 
 
 TITANIA. 
 
 'Twas but the sighing of some passing breeze. 
 
 [After a brief interval, PUCK docs as he -was bidden, and, amid 
 electric flashes and intonations, the scene vanishes. 
 
 OBERON. 
 
 Ha ! bravely done ! 
 
 \Exit. 
 PRINCE. 
 
 What mockery is this ? 
 
 TITANIA. 
 
 Some trick, I trow, of Puck and Oberon. 
 Be not surprised ! 
 
 PRINCE. 
 
 I do but smile, yet trust 
 Your lord's not often in these humors. 
 
 TITANIA. 
 
 Oh! 
 Often, but ever, since the Arabian girl 

 
 28 TITANIA'S BANQUET. 
 
 Enticed him with her spells to leave our troop 
 
 And green-wood haunts, for sultry moons, and sands 
 
 Whose love-bower weaves the scorched beach-shrub ; 
 
 where, 
 
 With help of herb, ill-boding star, and sign 
 Of puissant charm, whose powers she knows, they still 
 Conspire to plague us. Hence the elements, 
 She holds obedient to her will, misrule 
 Wildly confounds : Hyperion's wheels now seem 
 To fire the solstice, and, anon, to slake 
 Their burning axle in the icy urn 
 Of grim Aquarius. Our summer sleep 
 We tent with curtains by the musk-rose spun 
 Her odorous leaves not doubting, when we wake, 
 To hear her bedfellow, the lark, or bee, 
 As he goes singing to his early work : 
 But lo 1 at morn, shaking the hoar-frost from 
 Her feathery hood, in these, our green-roofed coverts, 
 Shivers the owl. The flower that laughs to-day, 
 As all the year were June, to-morrow weeps 
 Congealed drops, and like the maid whose bridal 
 Trim was her burial's * in robes she dons 
 To greet her paramour, the zephyr, dies. 
 E'en now you see the moon, whose rising seemed 
 Aurora's, sadly, as if she had failed 
 To meet Endymion, put out her light, 
 And go with veiled face, weeping to bed. 
 
 1 See an epigram ascribed to Erinna.
 
 TITANIA'S BANQUET. 29 
 
 PRINCE. 
 
 E'en let her ! We have had our revelries, 
 And, as with mortals, so with fairies, joy 
 Is still a hurried guest, whose lips, ere we 
 Can well return their greeting, sigh adieu ! 
 The huntsman's stirring, and the matin-song 
 Warns the night-goblin to his earthy bed, 
 And bids the day-star, that anon will thrust 
 His torch into the morning's chamber, rouse 
 Her troop of winged serenaders. We 
 Must hence. Away ! [To his train.~\ 
 
 TITANIA. 
 
 To ship ! I have a Sprite 
 
 Whose song has power to set the ocean flowing, 
 As 'twere a brook, and loose the hurricane. 
 
 [Flourish. Exeunt oinnes. 
 
 Scene changes to the Deck of a Ship under Sail. 
 
 Flourish. Enter TITANIA, the PRINCE, and their Trains. 
 
 00 0f the (Slfitt Jttwnuw. 
 
 One elf, I trow, is diving now 
 
 For the small pearl, and one 
 
 The honey-bee, o'er hill and lea 
 
 Goes chasing in the sun ; 
 
 And one, the knave, has pilfered from 
 
 The nautilus his boat, 
 
 And takes his idle pastime where 
 
 The water-lilies float :
 
 30 TITANIA'S BANQUET. 
 
 And some the mote, for the gold of his coat, 
 
 By the light of the will-o'-wisp follow ; 
 
 And others trip where the wood-crickets pipe 
 
 To the owl, in the grassy hollow ; 
 
 And some, as crows the cock for day, 
 
 The fire-fly lights to bed. 
 
 Oh, go ! my Sprite late wears the night 
 
 And see them hither sped. 
 
 Haste ! hither whip them with this end 
 Of spider's web ; oh, haste ! 
 For fairy-time at matin-chime 
 Must end, 'tis midnight past ; 
 As gallant a crew as the ocean-dew 
 E'er sprinkled, I'll need ere morn ; 
 Blow, wind, oh, blow ! till not a wave 
 Leap from the deep unshorn. 
 
 Blow ! till the sea a bubble be, 
 
 And toss it to the sky, 
 
 Till the sands we tread of the ocean-bed 
 
 As the summer-fountain's, dry : 
 
 The upper shelves are ours, my elves, 
 
 Are ours, and soon the nether 
 
 With sea-flowers we shall sprinkled see, 
 
 And pearls like dew-drops gather. 
 
 Hesperia's ! lea and green isles we 
 Have left, and, by the moon, 
 
 1 Cape Verde, anciently called Hesperium, the plural form of which is 
 here used.
 
 TITANIA'S BANQUET. 31 
 
 Seen dark Leone's castled rock, 
 Like armed spectre, frown : 
 And soon we'll seaward leave the star 
 That lights the southern pole, 
 And Indian winds feel o'er the deep 
 Their waves of perfume roll. 
 
 More hands ! From lake, elves, bower and brake, 
 
 Oh haste, ere morn be up ; 
 
 Our ocean then the brook, I ween, 
 
 Our ship the wood-flower cup. 
 
 Oh, from the night an hour, ere light, 
 
 A long, long hour to borrow ! 
 
 But crowing cocks are fairy-clocks 
 
 That mind us of the morrow. 
 
 Ha ! hither they come, skimming the foam, 
 
 A gallant crew but, list ! 
 
 The lark I hear, the day-star cheer, 
 
 And see ! it lights the mist. 
 
 Our work is done, the port is won, 
 
 So wind and wave, oh stay ! 
 
 The matin-bell bids night farewell 
 
 And fairy-time. Away ! 
 
 [Flourish. Exeunt oiuncs.
 
 PICTURES OF WOMAN 
 
 i. 
 
 THE SPANISH MOUNTAIN-GIRL. 
 
 Dnlces rcminiscitur Argos. 
 
 Vt'rg. 
 
 FROM old Nevada's snow> crest 
 The vapors, as they flee, 
 Melt into air ; gone are the showers ; 
 Each bough has now its buds or flowers, 
 And every flower its bee. 
 
 The birds of June a merry tune 
 Pipe to the morn; and, hark ! 
 There comes, bedight in kirtle gay 
 And broidered snood, a girl whose lay 
 Seems borrowed of the lark ; 
 
 A thing all lightness, life, and glee, 
 One of the shapes we seem
 
 PICTURES OF WOMAN. 33 
 
 To meet in visions of the night, 
 And, should they greet our waking sight, 
 Imagine that we dream ; 
 
 With glossy ringlet, brow that is 
 
 As falling snow-flake white, 
 Half-hidden by its jetty braid ; 
 And eye, like dew-drop in the shade, 
 
 At once both dark and bright ; 
 
 And cheek, whereon the sunny clime 
 
 Its brown tint gently throws 
 Gently, as it reluctant were 
 To leave its print on thing so fair, 
 
 A shadow on a rose. 
 
 She stops, looks up, where scents the air, 
 
 A flower of gorgeous dye, 
 Whose vase, the work of Moorish hands, 
 A lady sprinkles, as it stands 
 
 Upon a balcony 
 
 Forth leaning from a window high, 
 
 From curtains that half shroud 
 I ler maiden form, with tress of gold, 
 And brow that mocks their snow-white fold, 
 Like Uian from a cloud.
 
 34 PICTURES OF WOMAN. 
 
 Nor vase nor lady fair she sees, 
 
 Nor gay flower's odorous bloom, 
 That mountain-girl, but stands with eye 
 That seems communing with the sky 
 Her visions are of home. 
 
 Some lone recess, beyond the line 
 
 Of inland summits wild, 
 That flower recalls, where, with bright hue 
 Firing the dell, its fellows grew, 
 
 And she, a happy child. 
 
 She sees, beside the mountain-brook, 
 
 Beneath the old cork-tree, 
 And toppling crag, a vine-thatched shed, 
 Perched, like the eagle, high o'er head, 
 
 The home of liberty ; 
 
 The rivulet, the olive-shade, 
 
 The grassy plot, the flock, 
 The garden, if for use, yet sweet 
 And gay with tulip, mignonette, 
 
 And shrub that loves the rock ; 
 
 The gray church-tower, whence called, at eve, 
 
 The bell her thoughts to heaven ; 
 Where, as through pictured lattice dim 
 The twilight stole, and rose the hymn, 
 She wept, and was forgiven.
 
 PICTURES OF WOMAN. 35 
 
 Mate, sister, mother, may not from 
 
 Her dreaming eye depart, 
 Nor one the source of gentler fears, 
 More dear than all for whom she wears 
 
 The token at her heart. 
 
 Till, see ! the rose has left her cheek, 
 
 The gay, bright glance her eye ; 
 Her song has ceased, and motionless 
 She stands, an image of distress, 
 
 A seeming Niobe. 
 
 Go ! simple girl, go ! whither thou 
 
 That flower wilt once more see 
 Fire the old rocks, where sparkling well, 
 Founts that the wild vines shade, and dwell 
 
 The pure, the brave, the free ! 
 
 II. 
 LEILA. 
 
 TIT" HEN Leila first we meet, perchance 
 ^ * We little note beside 
 The timidness, that still betrays 
 The beauties it would hide ; 
 But one by one they look out from 
 Her blushes and her eyes,
 
 36 PICTURES OF WOMAN. 
 
 Like tints from the unfolding rose, 
 And stars from twilight skies. 
 
 And thoughts are hers and words, or grave 
 
 Or joyous, ever bent 
 
 Each present hour shall be such as 
 
 No future needs repent. 
 
 In soul or face she shows no trace 
 
 Of one from Eden driven, 
 
 But, like the rainbow, seems, though born 
 
 Of earth, a part of heaven. 
 
 III. 
 MARY. 
 
 " Non mille quod absens." 
 
 A ND thou hast past, with fading flowers 
 ^r 1 And falling leaves, away ; 
 Hast set, thou Pleiad, lost to hope, 
 But not to memory ! 
 Though far and foreign were the clime, 
 And lone the spot, where thou art laid, 
 Absence might not thy soul divide 
 From mine, nor time thine image shade. 
 
 A spirit that, though housed within 
 A frail and failing form,
 
 PICTURES OF WOMAN. 37 
 
 Triumphed o'er sorrow, pain, as shines 
 
 A star above the storm ; 
 
 That, as the rainbow spans the cloud, 
 
 At summer's sunset close, 
 
 As Death his shadows gathered round, 
 
 More bright and lofty rose. 
 
 With flowers that perish as they bloom 1 
 'Twas meet that thou shouldst die, 
 And gently yield thy soul, as they 
 Their sweets, without a sigh. 
 Though early reft of earthly hope, 
 From earthly trouble free, 
 The grief is selfish that laments 
 The loss of one like thee. 
 
 IV. 
 TO GENEVIEVE. 
 
 r I ""HERE'S beauty in thy cheek and eye, 
 
 Though darkly bright the light they shed, 
 The beauty imaged by a sky 
 
 Whose sun, not twilight glow, has fled. 
 Though richest gems thy brow entwine, 
 
 The fairer for each shading tress, 
 To me they but unheeded shine, 
 
 While gazing on thy loveliness. 
 
 1 Autumn flowers.
 
 38 PICTURES OF WOMAN. 
 
 That downcast eye, that placid cheek 
 
 So softly fair the shaded rose 
 And low and quiet tones, but speak 
 
 Of gentle passions in repose ; 
 A mind with God and man at peace, 
 
 Like waters, gliding calm, at even, 
 And blending, in their tranquil face, 
 
 The softer tints of earth and heaven. 
 
 v. 
 
 IN MEMORIAM. 
 
 T ADY ! till thee I bade farewell, 
 *"* I little deemed remembrance o'er 
 One feeling would regret to dwell 
 
 At parting from my native shore ; 
 But who may on thee gaze, nor feel, 
 
 Feel, with a sigh, the hope were vain, 
 The wish that time or change should steal 
 
 Thy image from his heart and brain. 
 
 Yet not alone with joy we gaze 
 
 On one so innocent and fair ; 
 Pity looks forward to the days 
 
 Of blighted hope or wasting care. 
 Sure there are those we might regret 
 
 Were born, if not in youth to die ;
 
 PICTURES OF WOMAN. 39 
 
 We would prolong their stay, and yet 
 Feel that their home is in the sky. 
 
 Lady ! I go where roams the bee 
 
 Through bowers that bloom, though summer flies, 
 And isles are sprinkled o'er the sea, 
 
 Like relics of a Paradise : 
 But what are scenes, the mind may dress 
 
 Yet Nature fairer paints, to me ? 
 The more they charm, they not the less 
 
 Will but remind my heart of thee ; 
 
 Will but remind me, with a sigh, 
 
 Of hours so blest, for they were thine, 
 I half regret that they, since I 
 
 May not recall them, e'er were mine. 
 Our ship flies fast a single star 
 
 Shines on her dark and troubled way ; 
 And such thine image, lone and far, 
 
 Along the path of memory. 
 
 Oh, still in soul for time that cheek 
 
 Must shade, that eye dim ever be 
 The Psyche Love may elsewhere seek, 
 
 But ne'er shall find if not in thee ; 
 Still make us feel, though long if fled 
 
 Each Eden guest, yet, kindly given, 
 Some few we have who do but need 
 
 Absence from earth to be of heaven.
 
 40 PICTURES OF WOMAN. 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE PORTRAIT. 
 
 " Though lost to life, yet not to memory." 
 
 Anon. 
 
 T)AINTER, my thanks ! This form, this face, 
 
 A Seem not the work of art ; 
 
 This melting glance, soft blush, how like 
 
 The picture in my heart ! 
 
 Too well, alas ! as, blending here 
 
 The lights and shades remain, 
 
 I feel they want but life, to be 
 
 The lineaments they feign. 
 
 For here are eyes as softly blue 
 
 As half-blown violets ; hair 
 
 The wreath it graces gently binds, 
 
 Yet leaves to sport in air ; 
 
 And lips, twin-sisters of the rose 
 
 That buds in either cheek, 
 
 Seeming as if they more than breathed, 
 
 And, if they would, might speak. 
 
 Here's, too, the brow, we'd say that, ere 
 
 Whose fairy arch she drew, 
 
 Her softest pencil, Nature chose 
 
 And dipped in twilight dew ; 
 
 And here the neck, beside which, where 
 
 The shadows shun the light,
 
 PICTURES OF WOMAN. 41 
 
 The lily were not graceful, nor 
 Were falling snow-flake white. 
 
 Fairer in soul than e'en in face ! 
 With thee how flew the hours, 
 As all our words were singing birds, 
 And all our thoughts were flowers ! 
 They were too happy to return ; 
 But who shall wish for me 
 The power e'en happier to recall, 
 If e'er, like them, to flee? 
 
 Yet to the fading canvas why 
 
 The lineaments impart 
 
 Of those, though gone, who seem as here ? 
 
 Still imaged to the heart ; 
 
 Pictured where still, to memory's eye, 
 
 Imperishably dwell 
 
 The forms whose mould is not of clay, 
 
 The idols of her cell. 
 
 Painter ! thy tints so well may feign, 
 
 That we, perchance, shall seem, 
 
 As on each life-like light and shade 
 
 We gaze, to more than dream : 
 
 The more we miss some part from time 
 
 No pencil ever stole ; 
 
 Those eyes ne'er move, those lips are mute, 
 
 And who shall paint the soul !
 
 42 PICTURES OF WOMAN. 
 
 VII. 
 
 RUTH, OR SPIRITUAL BEAUTY. 
 
 T N Ruth we feel 'tis not her cheek, 
 A Though with the rose it vie, 
 
 Her eye that shames the violet, 
 
 Breath as from Araby ; 
 
 Tones like to those the dying wind 
 Wakes in the lyre, 1 but 'tis 
 The loveliness, each outward grace 
 But images, we prize : 
 
 The beauty of the soul a flower 
 That ever blooms, survives 
 Form, feature, nay, not but till they 
 Have perished, chiefly lives. 
 
 Though of the few whose image time 
 Sees uncffaced remain, 
 Of those we sigh to e'er have met, 
 If ne'er to meet again, 
 
 No wild-wood flower, that seeks the shade, 
 Unknown but to the bee, 
 Of summer's mid-day glance more shy, 
 Than of the world's eye she : 
 
 1 /Eolian harp.
 
 PICTURES OF WOMAN. 43 
 
 A soul whose passions are but as 
 The rippling wave, which o'er, 
 The still, pure fount heaven sees reflect 
 Its image, as before. 
 
 VIII. 
 LAVINIA. 
 
 I/EW are the dead the living mourn, 
 * And thousands owe to pride 
 
 The stone that marks, yet mocks the dust 
 
 Oblivion else would hide ; 
 
 The loving and the loved like thee, 
 
 Pass not unwept away, 
 
 But tears their pale, cold relics steep, 
 
 As dews the close of day. 
 
 The offerings at thy grave should be 
 
 Things beautiful, but frail ; 
 
 Sad tokens buds, that half-blown die, 
 
 And flowers untimely pale ; 
 
 And dews of summer, soon exhaled, 
 
 When brightest ever fleetest, 
 
 And broken music, sprightly sounds 
 
 Of strains that cease when sweetest. 
 
 Thy spirit seemed from some high sphere, 
 Some sinless Eden, sent,
 
 44 PICTURES OF WOMAN. 
 
 That Heaven might more reverenced be, 
 
 And we more innocent ; 
 
 Of lighter essence, ever bent 
 
 From earthly bonds to spring, 
 
 As it had caught the seraphs' fire, 
 
 And heard the cherubs sing ; 
 
 Yet wanting not though aiming still 
 
 At virtues high and rare 
 
 The sympathies that simpler joys 
 
 And humbler sorrows share ; 
 
 Nor sportive fancies, feelings light, 
 
 But innocent, nor words 
 
 Whose tones express but joyousness, 
 
 Like songs of morning birds. 
 
 Vain were our hopes, our offerings vain : 
 
 The angels would not rest, 
 
 Till they, where thou wert wished for long, 
 
 Had placed thee with the blest ; 
 
 Translated, as the starry sign 
 
 We nightly see arise, 
 
 And shine above the mists of earth, 
 
 A virgin l of the skies. 
 
 i 
 
 It is not that the tribute here 
 Of humble flowers I twine, 
 
 1 The constellation of the Virgin.
 
 PICTURES OF WOMAN. 45 
 
 Befit, all frail and scentless as 
 
 They are, a soul like thine. 
 
 Thy virtues need no stone ; the heart 
 
 Their monument shall be, 
 
 Where lies thine image, mourned by love, 
 
 And watched by memory, 
 
 IX. 
 THE UNNAMED. 
 
 "I "HE time is gone, forever gone, 
 Nor mourn I much its flight, 
 When woman was my song by day, 
 Nor less my dream by night ; 
 Yet one there is long be it ere 
 She grace the choirs above ! 
 With whom to be perhaps for me 
 Were still again to love. 
 
 Her eye is like a summer eve, 
 
 So tranquil, soft its ray, 
 
 The window, image of a soul 
 
 At peace, or grave, or gay : 
 
 And what's her cheek like, but the morn ? 
 
 Where still, if one be past, 
 
 Appears some new, yet lovelier hue 
 
 Perchance than was the last.
 
 46 PICTURES OF WOMAN. 
 
 Proclaimer of some thought each is, 
 
 Some feeling, more intent 
 
 On others' wishes than her own, 
 
 Nor merely innocent ; 
 
 Thought, feeling, that, as imaged there, 
 
 Oh, more than words may tell, 
 
 If woman yet so lovely be, 
 
 What was she ere she fell. 
 
 When hers we hear, all other tones, 
 
 However sweet, seem mute ; 
 
 To such, of old, 'twere said each Muse 
 
 Had lent her voice and lute ; 
 
 To words that, breathing of the rose 
 
 From lips like its young flowers, 
 
 The happiness, as well as song, 
 
 Recall of Eden hours. 
 
 Sought by the world, her presence less 
 
 She thinks it needs than prayer, 
 
 Her charity a constant guest, 
 
 Herself a stranger there ; 
 
 To flattery bars her ear, but not 
 
 To misery her door, 
 
 Loves all God loves, but chiefly sees 
 
 His image in the poor. 
 
 Some heavenly guest, not dweller here, 
 In soul and face, she seems;
 
 PICTURES OF WOMAN. 47 
 
 In her the loveliness we see 
 
 Of which the poet dreams. 
 
 Ah ! well, perhaps, that few like her 
 
 To our fond gaze are given, 
 
 Lest earth should claim, and haply win, 
 
 The love we owe to Heaven. 
 
 x. 
 
 A HEALTH TO AGNES. 
 
 T)RING me a bright, a stainless shell, 
 That murmurs of the ocean-wave, 
 Arid fill it with the drops that well 
 
 From some old, haunted fountain-cave ! 
 To her, whose brow would blush to wear 
 
 The Teian wreath, a draught from high ! 
 By earth though treasured, born of air 
 
 The wine whose Hebe is the sky. 
 
 The cup is here and rightly filled, 
 
 That I would drain to love and thee ; 
 And here are flowers, whose dews, distilled 
 
 From skies of summer, soon will flee. 
 Put by the rose ! 'twill ever breathe, 
 
 In fancy, of the Teian bowl ; 
 And crown thee with the lily-wreath ! 
 
 'Tis spotless as thy virgin soul.
 
 48 PICTURES OF WOMAN. 
 
 XI. 
 
 SUE. 
 
 nPHOUGH pretty, Sue's nor proud nor vain, 
 
 Yet, as the moon, unsteady ; 
 Flighty one'd think her with champagne, 
 Or like drop slightly heady. 
 
 Now in her cheek we see the rose, 
 Anon, the lily blow ; 
 Mercurius 1 rules the fickle pulse 
 That bids them come and go. 
 
 At one she's seen, in crape, off bidding 
 Psalms, sermons, at a vendue ; 
 At ten, at ball or circus, flirting, 
 And merrier than its "Andrew." 
 
 This hour she's sighing for some gay 
 Glib-tongued madcap to tease her ; 
 The next the wight must solemn be 
 As ghost or ghoul, who'd please her. 
 
 Now sprightly, chatty, sparkling like 
 A beaker of sal soda ; 
 Anorr, mum, sad, as devotee 
 Immured in a pagoda. 
 
 1 Planet Mercury.
 
 PICTURES OF WOMAN. 49 
 
 This week should she some grandee wed 
 Magnificent as Mago, 
 The next, for a divorce, we'd see 
 Her steaming to Chicago. 
 
 And sure, if she were helpmate mine, 
 I doubt I'd so adore her, 
 On a like errand, rain or shine, 
 As not be there before her. 
 
 XII. 
 
 TO THE SUBJECT OF A PORTRAIT. 
 
 " Quanto minus est cum reliquis versari quam tui memtnisse ! " 
 
 Shenstone. 
 
 ONE ! but by love, as imaged here, 
 
 Still seen a never-setting star 
 In skies that else were lone and dark, 
 A sleepless watcher, bright, though far. 
 No fears disturb, no sorrow dims 
 Thy spirit's pure and tranquil eye ; 
 Thy sun the light of God's own face, 
 Thy life one blest eternity. 
 
 And as, of orbs that shining note 
 The needle's course, it heeds but one, 
 So turn, from eyes that fondest smile, 
 Our steadfast thoughts to thee alone.
 
 50 PICTURES OF WOMAN. 
 
 'Twas meet that thou shouldst early die, 
 Like dews, that linger not till even, 
 But, having earth refreshed, return, 
 At morning, to their native heaven. 
 
 III. 
 NIGHT-PIECE TO HELEN. 
 
 HE dew-drop sparkles on the tree, 
 The moonbeam on the lake, 
 The air is stirred 
 But where the bird 
 His night-song trills awake ! 
 Oh ! say not to the rose he sings, 
 
 Or to the lights on high, 
 But to the flower upon thy cheek, 
 The star that's in thine eye ! 
 
 To cheeks less fair, and eyes less bright 
 Leave slumber ; up ! and bid 
 Each star and flower, 
 The midnight hour 
 Unfolds, her beauty hide ; 
 When thine we see, no thought have we 
 
 Of theirs ; and who will say, 
 While thee we hear how long soe'er 
 The night they wish for day ?
 
 PICTURES OF WOMAN. 5 1 
 
 XIV. 
 GERTRUDE. 
 
 ' I CHOUGH beauty, youth, be hers, not where 
 
 The midnight hour bid flee 
 The dance, the song, but where the sad, 
 The suffering are, is she. 
 The dying feels, to hear her low, 
 Sweet tones, as if forgiven, 
 Forgets he's here, and seems, in hers, 
 To see the smile of heaven. 
 
 Not for her own but others' ills 
 She mourns, and not the less 
 Their good, as if but hers alone, 
 She makes her happiness : 
 All for the love of Him whose love 
 She has the crucified ; 
 Aspiring still like Him to be, 
 Both as he lived and died. 
 
 Oh, blest ! to feel no tie, that binds 
 
 The soul to earth unriven, 
 
 And, like the angels, make and have, 
 
 Where'er she moves, a heaven. 
 
 This verse to her ! for had a soul 
 
 Like hers the tempter met, 
 
 This world, perchance, the paradise 
 
 Had been, it once was, yet.
 
 PICTURES OF WOMAN. 
 XV. 
 
 TO EDITH, SILENT. 
 
 OPEAK, lady, speak ! nor lest to words 
 ^ From other lips we'd listen fear ! 
 In them, perchance, we one, in thine 
 We every Muse may seem to hear. 
 
 'Tis not alone the Teian lute 
 Their tones recall ; they ever tell 
 Of feelings, wishes, calmly pure 
 As summer sky or fountain-well ; 
 
 Of thoughts, that, should they linger here, 
 Yet soon, like morning birds, above 
 Their wonted flight re-wing, to where 
 The cherubs sing, and seraphs love. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 EUGENIA. 
 
 T T ER soul is imaged in her face, 
 * And, as its lights the sky 
 Star after star reveals, so there 
 Some new-born charm we spy ; 
 Some grace of feeling, or of thought, 
 In cheek or eye expressed ;
 
 PICTURES OF WOMAN. 53 
 
 And tones are hers like those we hear 
 If dreaming of the blessed. 
 
 Love from all hearts that love she wins, 
 
 And ever, in return, 
 
 She has a smile for all that smile, 
 
 A tear for all that mourn. 
 
 Oh ! how can she, in soul or face, 
 
 Seem one from Eden driven, 
 
 On whom, as on a star, we may 
 
 Not gaze, nor think of heaven ! 
 
 XVII. 
 MARION. 
 
 T N others of her sex perchance 
 Some single " grace " we see 
 Here one, another there, adorn ; 
 In Marion meet the "three." 
 
 One moulds her feelings, one her thoughts, 
 And one each outward part : 
 In her that's nature which the work 
 Must elsewhere be of art. 
 
 Though we some flower the garden yields 
 To lovelier bloom may train,
 
 54 PICTURES OF WOMAN. 
 
 To think to more than emulate 
 The wild wood-rose, were vain. 
 
 9 
 
 Ne'er seems she then a thing of earth ? 
 Ne'er wears that brow a frown ? 
 Ne'er till she hears another's worth 
 Dispraised, or praised her own. 
 
 XVIII. 
 ANACREONTICA CASTA. 
 
 TO JULIA. 
 
 'T^HE bard of old, if he'd be gay, 
 
 " Crown me with myrtle, boy ! " would say, 
 "Bring rose, bring lights, nor let be mute 
 The soul that slumbers in the lute ! " 
 What need have I of them, to be 
 As blessed, if not as gay as he ? 
 
 What need of rose ? thy lips' perfume 
 And cheek have stole its scent and bloom ; 
 What need of lights, so long as I 
 A star see in thine either eye ? 
 Or why the lute-chord bid resign 
 The soul of song ? that soul is thine.
 
 PICTURES OF WOMAN. 55 
 
 XIX. 
 
 THE CAVALIER'S SERENADE. 
 
 In the manner of the Cavalier poets. 
 
 u 
 
 P ! bud and bloom, 
 The air perfume, 
 The night-bird nestles nigh ; 
 Nor to the stars, nor rose sings he, 
 But to thy cheek and eye ; 
 Her breath is sweet, but only till 
 Thine scents the night, will be, 
 
 And yon bright moon 
 
 Would set full soon, 
 Did not she wait for thee. 
 
 Oh, wake then ! Up ! and to my suit 
 A gentle ear incline ; 
 Or speak ! and I, unstruck my lute, 
 Will gently list with mine ; 
 
 For who may see 
 
 The darkness flee 
 From thy bright face, and hear 
 The music of thy voice, nor think 
 He listens to a sphere !
 
 THE RUINS OF ATHENS. 
 
 ATHENS was visited by the writer at a time when, abandoned by tlic 
 Greeks, and held by a few Mohammedan troops, it was in the state of all but 
 total ruin and desolation, from which it has since partially recovered. Its 
 present aspect, therefore, except in regard to the ancient remains, may little 
 accord with that exhibited in the following stanzas. Such, combined with 
 other long-continued and like calamitous effects, had been those of the 
 Greek Revolution, that, not only the place itself, with its forsaken, dilapi 
 dated dwellings, but the surrounding country, appeared not to have been 
 inhabited for centuries. As in the time of Xerxes, so then they were in the 
 hands of barbarian invaders, and the only Greek we remember to have seen 
 was a captive. The fading foliage, and tranquil, faintly-hazy atmosphere 
 of autumn, harmonized with and served much to heighten the effect of 
 other features of a picture, the impression made by which on the author's 
 mind he must ever despair adequately to describe. 
 
 THE watch-fires fade, and, melting into light 
 The stars recede in silence till the gun, 
 Far-flashing, ere the vapors of the night 
 Have vanished, thunders from the Parthenon. 1 
 O'er old Hymettus glows as bright a sun, 
 
 1 Remains of the temple so called.
 
 ATHENS. 57 
 
 Odors as fragrant scent the dewy air, 
 Fields bloom as freshly, streams as sparkling run, 
 As, gray Athenae ! still the pride were there 
 Thy time-worn brow has lost, and never more shall wear. 
 
 II. 
 
 No more the beautiful, but now the lone 
 Dethroned queen, all powerless she stands, 
 Mid shrines dismantled, wall and tower o'erthrown, 
 Memorials sad of days when her free bands 
 Wrested from kings their sceptres, and, with hands 
 Red with the blood of satraps, on her showered 
 The spoils of conquered gold of subject lands. 
 The isles their tributary tridents lowered 
 In homage at her feet ; she spake, and nations cowered. 
 
 in. 
 
 The bark flies on, and shuns the lonely shore, 
 The bay, whose wave seems never to have borne 
 A keel, or rippled to the dip of oar : 
 But the shy sea-bird there has found a lorn 
 And quiet home, and of the curlew o'er 
 The hills is heard the melancholy cry ; 
 And where she sat, the peerless, she, before 
 Whose arms the East bent her imperial eye, 
 Barbaric bands encamp, their blood-red signals fly.
 
 5 8 ATHENS. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The Roman he, whose eagles should have led, 
 Like guardian gods, her children to reclaim 
 The might that slumbers with her glorious dead, 
 The conqueror and the despoiler came ; 
 Chained to whose triumph-car, and taught to tame 
 Her free-born spirit to subjection, she, 
 Whose sword had been her sceptre, and whose name 
 A terror to imperial sway, her knee 
 Bent when to rise, ah ! when, a ruler of the free ? 
 
 v. 
 
 Morn hushed as midnight ! save perchance is heard 
 At times the hum of insect, or the grass 
 That sighs, or rustles by the lizard stirred : 
 And still we pause, and may, where empire was 
 And ruin is, no stone unheeded pass, 
 No rude memorial, which seems to wear 
 Vestige of that whose glory, as a glass 
 Shattered, but still replendent, lives : earth, air, 
 Whate'er recalls the past, its spirit breathe and share. 
 
 VI. 
 
 And many a scene, the Muse has pictured true 
 And time has hallowed, greets the passer-by, 
 That, wild of shape, or beautiful of hue, 
 He gladly hails, nor quits without a sigh :
 
 ATHENS. 59 
 
 For Nature here has shed o'er earth and sky 
 Her loveliest tints, and freely strown around 
 The wonders of her hand. Oh ! hither fly ! 
 Thou, who wouldst see variety abound, 
 Her fairer works invite, her sternly wild astound. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Ascend ! where slopes Hymettus to the plain, 
 And winds the pathway by the fountain-well : 
 Though trod no more, though blood the herbage stain, 
 And by the hearth-stone rusts the shattered shell, 
 That fired the roof, whose inmates vanquished fell 
 And left their bones unsepulchred ; yet ne'er 
 The vernal breeze, from Orient bank or dell, 
 Odors more sweet at morning poured, than there, 
 From clefts in wild bloom clad, float on the dewy air. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The daylight fades o'er old Cyllene's hill, 
 And broad and dun the mountain-shadows fall. 
 The stars are up and sparkling, as if still 
 Smiling upon their altars : * but the tall, 
 Dark cypress, gently, as a mourner, bends 
 Wet with the drops of evening, as with tears 
 
 1 Either to the planets Mars and Jupiter, or to the deities which they 
 represented, or, perhaps, to both, Athenian temples were dedicated, gigan 
 tic remains of which, in the latter instance, still remain.
 
 60 ATHENS. 
 
 Alike o'er shrine and worshipper, 1 and blends, 
 More deeply shadowy, with the night, that hears 
 The owl's lone wail, whose note some lonelier echo 
 cheers. 
 
 IX. 
 
 But high o'er all, lo ! towers the Parthenon." 
 She, like the last of an imperial line, 
 Has seen her sister structures, one by one, 
 To time their gods and worshippers resign, 
 And the stars twinkle through the weeds that twine 
 Their roofless capitals ; and, through the night, 
 Heard the hoarse drum, and the exploding mine, 
 The crash of columns, and the shock of fight, 
 From their dismantled shrines the guardian powers af 
 fright. 
 
 X. 
 
 Go ! thou, from whose forsaken heart are reft 
 The ties of home, and, where a dwelling-place 
 Not Jove himself the elements have left, 
 The grass-grown, undefined arena pace ! 
 Look on its rent, though tower-like, shafts, 3 and hear 
 The wild winds thunder in their aged face, 
 Then slowly turn thine eye, where moulders near 
 A Caesar's arch, 4 and the blue depth of space 
 Vaults, like a sepulchre, the wrecks of a past race. 
 
 1 Their ruined temples and dead worshippers. 
 
 2 Remains of the temple of Athenae on the Acropolis. 
 * Ruins of the temple of Jupiter Olympius. 
 
 4 Triumphal Arch of Hadrian.
 
 ATHENS. 6 1 
 
 XI. 
 
 Is it not better with the eremite 
 
 Where the weed rustles o'er his airy cave, 1 
 
 Perched on their summit through the long, still 
 
 night, 
 
 To sit, a watcher by an empire's grave, 
 While oft some fragment, sapped by dull decay, 
 In thunder breaks the silence, and the fowl 
 Of ruin hoots, and turn in scorn away 
 From all pride builds, time levels, till, where prowl 
 The wolf and bandit, claims her heritage the owl : 
 
 XII. 
 
 Or, led by Nature, won with Solitude, 
 
 Where since creation she has slept on flowers, 
 
 Wet with the noonday forest-dew, and wooed 
 
 By untamed choristers in unpruned bowers : 
 
 Where wells the fountain-stream from rock that 
 
 towers 
 
 O'er dells untrodden by the hunter, piled 
 Ere by its shadow measured were the hours 
 To human eye, the rampart of the wild, 
 Whose banner is the cloud, by carnage undefiled. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 The song is mute in Epicurus' shade, 
 And locked in Academe the Muses' well ; 
 
 1 A hermitage planted on the entablature of these columns.
 
 62 ATHENS. 
 
 Sage, sophist, each now moulders, silent laid 
 Where the weed withers o'er his nameless cell. 
 Dreamers ! but who the darkness shall dispel, 
 They strove with eye, still baffled, to explore ? 
 The shadowy bourne, whence who shall come to tell 
 What life awaits us on that mystic shore 
 No Delphic voice unveils, no seer's prophetic lore? 
 
 XIV. 
 
 And never more the voyager shall spy 
 Like guardian spirits, watching through the night 
 His home-bound bark from isle or headland high 
 Shrines, whose gray relics strew their mouldered site. 
 Warned from her home, each old poetic Sprite 
 Her altar worshipless laments to sec ; 
 From lonely dell, or lonelier mountain-height, 
 The Nymph of fountain, forest-shade, or tree, 
 As sighs each passing breeze, seems, weeping sent, to 
 flee. 
 
 xv. 
 
 A hero's dust has vanished where the foam 
 Breaks o'er the shattered and now tombless stone. 1 
 The waves, whose element he loved, here come 
 To leave but weeds with drifting sea-shells strewn 
 A thankless garland ; and the wind's low moan, 
 And sighing grass, and cricket's plaint, there heard, 
 But faintly breathe, as with reluctant tone, 
 
 1 Supposed sarcophagus of the tomb of Thcmistocles.
 
 ATHENS. 63 
 
 His dirge. The sands, by human foot unstirred, 
 The urnless ashes heap, the wave has disinterred. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 The scorpion lurks, the lizard breeds secure 
 
 Where towered the column, reared to him whose 
 
 name 
 
 Had scattered navies, like the whirlwind ; sure, 
 If aught Ambition's fiery wing ma> tame, 
 'Tis here ; the web the spider weaves, where Fame 
 Planted her proud but sunken shaft, 1 should be 
 To it a fetter. Here no homage claim, 
 Oh, Glory's favorite ! Victory's child ! Thy knee, 
 Thy dripping sword and plume, here vail to Mockery ! 
 
 
 
 XVII. 
 
 A small, gray Elf, all sprinkled o'er with dust 
 Of crumbling catacomb, and mouldering shred 
 Of banner and embroidered pall, and rust 
 Of arms, time-eaten monuments, that shed 
 A cankered gleam on dim escutcheons ; where 
 The groping antiquary pores, to spy 
 A what ? a name, perchance ne'er graven there ; 
 At whom the urchin, with his mimic eye, 
 Sits peering through a skull, and laughs continually. 
 
 1 A fallju calumn, conjectured to have been a part of the tomb.
 
 64 ATHENS. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 The pride here sepulchred, the glory mock ! 
 But not the spirit whose old trophies strew, 
 Like bones of Cyclopean mould, the rock 
 They pinnacled; though Conquest, where it grew, 
 Has slaked its ashes with her crimson dew, 
 And o'er the spot her shadow, Ruin flings, 
 At Freedom's call it once more wakes. Renew, 
 Might of old days, your youth ! The trumpet rings, 
 And Battle plumes his shaft, and Victory her wings. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 The foe retire, but other hordes may band 
 And build, where Hellas sees the crescent l wane, 
 In each old fastness of her mountain-land, 
 Rewaste her earth, relink her shattered chain ; 
 But Leuctra, Salamis, Plataea's plain, 
 And wild Thermopylae's heroic pass, 
 The monuments of Nature these remain. 
 Perished the stone, 5 but who the sighing grass 
 Wanders unheeded by where fell Leonidas 1 
 
 XX. 
 
 From cliff and cape the temple, slowly bowed, 
 May fall, the tomb commingle with the clay 
 
 1 Turkish rule. 
 
 2 In the pass a lion of stone was set up in honor of Leonidas.
 
 ATHENS. 65 
 
 It rose to shelter, and the mighty shroud 
 Their memory in deeper gloom, as they 
 Had never been ; her very name decay : 
 But from the spot, where rose her song in fight, 
 Her shout, as on the memorable day 
 She put the armed Orient to flight, 
 A spirit breathes, a power, no coming time shall blight. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Here stood the Greek, and there the Persian shrank, 
 Rider on rider thrown, and shield on shield ; 
 Bristling with spears, an iron crop, they sank, 
 As the ripe harvests to the sickle yield : 
 Tombless to rot and fertilize the field, 
 As weeds, they came as conquerors to reap. 
 Inglorious dust, by mute oblivion sealed, 
 Satrap and slave, alike forgotten, sleep ; 
 No tongue laments their fall, no tears their ashes steep. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Plataea, Marathon ! to these, as turns 
 The plough some warlike relic from its mould, 
 Shall point the sire ; the stripling as he learns 
 How the brave band, though nations were enrolled 
 To swell the Persian's, thinned his host of old 
 Shall feel the spark with thrilling memories fraught, 
 Fire his young breast, the closing ranks behold
 
 66 ATHENS. 
 
 Rush fearless on, the weapon grasp in thought, 
 And follow where they trod, and conquer where they 
 fought. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 The night wears late, and from her ancient bower 
 Owl chants to owl her solitary hymn ; 
 The dews are deepening, and the place and hour 
 As now the moon her crescent, pale and dim, 
 Withdraws from heaven, and the meteors shower 
 On high their vapory and silent light 
 Descend with something of a spectral power 
 Upon my spirit ; for I stand where night, 
 Ruin, and solitude, speak but of vanished might. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 The might of Greece ! whose story, from her birth 
 A ceaseless epic, ever breathes the lyre 
 A song-wave circling to the bounds of earth, 
 A marvel and a melody ; a fire 
 Unquenched, unquenchable. Castalia's choir 
 Mourn o'er their altars, worshipless, or gone ; 
 But the free air, their mountain-homes respire, 
 Has borne their music onward, with a tone 
 Shaking earth's tyrant race through every distant zone. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 The weary spirit, that forsaken plods 
 
 The world's wide wilderness, a home may find
 
 ATHENS. 67 
 
 Here, where the dwellings of long-banished gods, 
 And roofs long tenantless, to dust consigned, 
 Untomb the thoughts no spell has power to bind 
 The loved, but lost, whose soul's life is in ours, 
 As incense in sepulchral urns enshrined, 
 The sense of blighted or of wasted powers, 
 The hopes whose promised fruits have perished with 
 
 their flowers. 
 
 xxvr. 
 
 Approach ! but not thou favored one, thou light 
 And sportive insect, basking in the ray 
 Of youth and pleasure, heedless of the night. 
 Dreamer ! the shapes that in thy pathway play, 
 Thy morning pathway, elsewhere chase ! Away ! 
 Come not, till, like the fading weeds that twine 
 Yon time-worn capital, the thoughts that prey 
 On hopes of high but baffled aim, decline, 
 And, weary of the race, the goal unwon resign. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 Is thy hearth desolate, or trod by feet 
 Whose unfamiliar steps recall no sound 
 Of such as, in thine early days, to greet 
 Thy coming hastened ? Are the ties that bound 
 Thy heart's hopes severed ? Hast thou seen the ground 
 Close o'er her, thy young love, and felt for thee 
 That earth contained no other ? Look around ! 
 Here thou mayst find companions ; hither flee ! 
 Where glory, empire were, but long have ceased to be.
 
 68 ATHENS. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 Temple and tower, lo ! crushed and heaped in one 
 Wide tomb, that echoes to the Tartar's cry 
 And drum, heard rolling from the Parthenon, 
 The wild winds sweeping it, the owl's gray eye 
 Gleaming among its ruins, and the sigh 
 Of the long grass that unmolested waves. 
 Oh, ye, whose proud old monuments are by, 
 Arise ! one effort more ! E'en recreants, slaves, 
 The very stones should arm, heaped on heroic graves. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 But so it is : Earth from her old lap shakes 
 Cities as dust ; the myriads to-day, 
 If not to happiness, to hope awakes, 
 To-morrow fertilize their kindred clay. 
 The admired of nations, she, who scorned decay 
 And laughed at time, lo ! where she nightly hears 
 Barbaric foes their armed watch array, 
 Mid temples prostrate, weeds whose dewy tears 
 O'er roofless homes are wept, no friendly taper cheers. 
 
 xxx. 
 
 Here let me pause, and blend me with the things 
 That were, the shadowy world, that lives no more 
 But in the heart's cherished imaginings, 
 The mighty and the beautiful of yore :
 
 ATHENS. 69 
 
 It may not be ; the mount, the plain, the shore, 
 Whisper no living murmur, voice, or tread, 
 But the low rustling of the leaves, and roar 
 Of the dull, ceaseless surf, and the stars shed 
 Their light upon the flower whose beauty mocks the 
 dead. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 Day dawns ; and many a mountain known to song 
 
 Lifts her old altar, hymned by bird and bee, 
 
 As wheeling soars the eagle from among 
 
 Their dim, blue peaks, in lone sublimity : 
 
 Its incense is the breath of shrubbery, 
 
 Its smoke the clouds, as, borne from each high 
 
 place 
 
 Whose gods 1 have vanished, they dissolving flee. 
 Nature resumes her worship, and her face 
 Unveils to Him whose shrine and dwelling are all 
 space.* 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 Farewell to Greece ! The ship bounds on her way, 
 Freshens the breeze, and soon is seen no more, 
 As fast and far the lessening isles decay, 
 And headlands sink, Athenae's lonely shore. 
 Apart her chief the white deck paces o'er, 
 
 1 Pagan deities formerly worshipped there. 
 
 2 " Whose temple is all space." Pope.
 
 70 ATHENS. 
 
 And greets with stern delight his winged home : 
 Heedless is he how wind or wave may roar, 
 Nor knows a joy, let wreck or battle come, 
 Like that which now he feels o'er the blue deep to 
 roam.
 
 THE MAIDEN'S SONG TO THE 
 VIOLETS. 
 
 FAIR flowerets ! ye are laughing now, 
 Born for a little while, 
 So short-lived and of footstep shy, 
 Had mine not hither strayed, no eye 
 
 Had seen you bloom and smile. 
 I joy to meet you in my walk, 
 
 So daintily arrayed, 
 And yet 'tis not without a sigh, 
 To think how soon you fade, 
 Frail infants of the Spring ! 
 
 That play 
 
 In her green lap awhile, 
 Then pass away. 
 
 It were some comfort, might ye know 
 
 Ye are so fresh and fair, 
 That now unseen, unscented blow, 
 
 Save by the sun and air,
 
 72 MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Or one like me, who, chance-led, here 
 Surprised you, nurslings of the year 1 
 
 Here live, here die ! 
 Ye bloom not for the world's cold eye, 
 So heedless of the poem, we 
 Still spoken hear, or written see 
 By Nature, it cares not to look 
 On e'en the pictures of her book, 
 And such are ye. 
 
 Laugh while you may ! ere night, I fear 
 
 Your blossoms will be shed ; 
 'Twill grieve me, in my early walk, 
 
 To come and find you dead. 
 By this green bank, in this lone shade, 
 So long I've watched you, flowers, so long, 
 At morning and the even-song, 1 
 
 Ye in my path have played, 
 Like younger sisters, that I feel 
 A sadness o'er my spirit steal 
 At parting, and could almost pray 
 We might together pass away. 
 
 1 Vespers.
 
 TO A FLOWER FOUND AMONG 
 RUINS. 
 
 "\ I J HAT dost thou here, them lovely flower? 
 
 The beautiful and brave 
 Are silent now in this lone tower ; 
 
 Go ! wither o'er their grave ! 
 Wall-rent and moss-grown turrets moan, 
 
 And weed-clad arches sigh ; 
 For thee too sadly deep the tone 
 
 That speaks of times gone by. 
 
 Go, where the rose, the myrtle, blow ! 
 
 These halls are not for mirth ; 
 The echoes my lone footfall now 
 
 Awakes, seem not of earth. 
 The voice of song has with the wind 
 
 Of other times passed on, 
 And thou art left to bloom behind 
 
 In loveliness alone. 
 
 So from the past, the waste of thought 
 
 And feeling, haply springs 
 4
 
 74 MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Some hope how dark, alas, if not ! 
 
 To which the future clings ; 
 A flower that blooms where else but blight 
 
 And desolation dwell, 
 A star that sets not, though the night 
 
 Its beam may not dispel.
 
 THE LOST PLEIAD. 
 
 Sterope, one of the Pleiades, or Seven Stars, is said to have at a remote 
 period disappeared, having, according to mythology, been enamoured of a 
 mortal. l 
 
 nPHERE were seven sisters, and each wore 
 
 A starry crown, as, hand in hand, 
 By Hesper woke they led the hours, 
 The minstrels of his virgin band. 
 
 And Love would come at eve, as they 
 Were met their vesper hymn to sing, 
 And linger till it ceased, with eye 
 Of raptured gaze and folded wing. 
 
 For ne'er on earth, in air, were heard 
 More thrilling tones than, to the lyre a 
 Of heaven timed, rose from the lips, 
 The chords of that young virgin choir. 
 
 But they were coy, or seeming coy, 
 Those minstrels of the twilight hour, 
 
 1 Smith's Class. Die. 
 
 a The constellation so named, here supposed to intone what is termed 
 " the music of the spheres."
 
 76 MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Nuns of the sky, as cold and shy 
 As blossoms of the woodland bower. 
 
 'Twas eve, and Hesper came to wake 
 His starry troop, but wept ; for one, 
 The brightest, fairest of the group 
 Where all were bright and fair, was gone. 
 
 They found, within her bower, the harp 
 To which was tuned her vesper hymn, 
 The star-gems of her coronet, 
 And one was with a tear-drop dim. 
 
 They told how Love had lingered till 
 The twilight's earliest watch was o'er ; 
 But he was gone, and she, the mourned, 
 The lost one, seen in heaven no more.
 
 TO A MIGRATING SEA-BIRD. 
 
 r I ^HE wave still ripples to the shore, 
 
 Woke by thy parting wing ; 
 Yet, high, where glows the twilight o'er 
 
 Thy path, I see thee spring. 
 The airy goal is won, at last, 
 Whence the sure path, by instinct traced, 
 
 Notes thy unerring eye, 
 To lake, or pool of reedy moor, 
 Where, haply, thou hast built before, 
 
 And heard thy ducklings cry. 
 
 There choose thy mate, thy nursery weave, 
 
 Nor hawk nor man molest 
 Thy quiet brood, till on some eve 
 
 Like this, they quit their nest ; 
 By Cola's wild, unpruned recess, 
 That, to the hunter, bars ingress, 
 
 And suns of sultry beam ; 
 Or, where the water-lily sleeps, 
 Rustles the reed, the alder weeps, 
 
 By Lena's lake and stream.
 
 78 MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Lone bird ! a happy lot hast thou, 
 An empire kings might envy ! now, 
 
 Where icy storm-winds rock 
 Thy willowy cabin, lodged, anon 
 Diving where pools of Amazon 
 
 The tropic umbrage mock. 
 
 Birds have their cares as well as men ; 
 Yet, it may be, thy simple ken 
 
 Notes but the passing one ; 
 The future, past, alike unspied, 
 All memory would vainly hide, 
 
 And fear as vainly shun. 
 
 The graves, beneath thy roving wing, 
 Of former mate or nursling, bring 
 
 No tear into thine eye ; 
 But thy affections still obey 
 A kindlier law, unwept decay, 
 
 And unregretted die.
 
 TO SWEET-BRIER BLOSSOMS. 
 
 nuns ! sequestered by the woodland spring, 
 ^ Where haply few will see you bloom, or die, 
 No passing breeze your morning offering, 
 Your dewy sweets, forsakes but with a sigh. 
 
 Proudly yon shrubs their scentless buds unfold, 
 You, meekly blushing, timidly expand, 
 
 Blooming as Hebe's cheek, yet chastely cold 
 As moonlight lilies cropped by Dian's hand. 
 
 O'er such in Tempe-vale, and where they scent 
 The dews of Araby, the zephyr sighs ; 
 
 Such Eve, as weeping from its bowers she went, 
 Plucked as memorials of Paradise.
 
 TO AN ANCIENT GOLD COIN FOUND 
 ON THE PLAINS OF TROY. 
 
 " Thou com'st in such a questionable shape 
 That I will speak to thee." 
 
 Hamlet. 
 
 A COIN we call thee, but thy name and date 
 
 Defy, I ween, all probable conjecture ; 
 Perhaps, when Troy was in her palmy state, 
 
 Struck to commemorate some feat of Hector ; 
 Perhaps, coeval with the days of Jubal, 
 Cast by that Cain whose luckier name was Tubal. 1 
 
 Time-eaten relic ! within whose dim round 
 The memories of bygone ages dwell, 
 
 Like shapes sepulchral, disinhumed and bound 
 Within the magic ring by wizard spell ; 
 
 Thou cabinet of shadowy portraits, glass 
 
 Wherein the phantoms of dead empires pass ! 
 
 Rome, Carthage, Tyre, those war-ships on the tide 
 Of time, are now as they had never been : 
 
 1 "Tubal Cain ... an artificer in every work of brass and iion."- 
 Gen. iv. 23.
 
 MISCELLANEOUS. 8 1 
 
 Their battle-ensigns, that had earth defied, 
 
 Ages ago were struck, and piecemeal seen 
 Into its dark Lethean waves to drop, 
 While thou, a bubble, floatest at their top. 
 
 Thy fellow-bubbles Caesars, Caliphs, Sophis, 
 
 Kings, Consuls, Tribunes, Moguls, Magi, Sages 
 
 All who have left to dust their bones and trophies, 
 And names (where not misspelt) to after-ages 
 
 The lions, ne phis ultras, of their day, 
 
 The marvels, Trismegisti, where are they ? 
 
 Where Thoth, where Cheops, Ninus, Babel's founder, 
 And he, who saw himself, with much amaze 
 
 Of his own dream the practical expounder 
 
 Hurled from his throne, and, oxlike, sent to graze ! 
 
 Where many more of old and modern story, 
 
 Jew, Gentile, Greek, Barbarian, Whig, and Tory ! 
 
 Where was thy birthplace, thy primeval bed ? 
 
 Did Kaff infold thee in his rocky vest ? 
 Or wast thou shaken by the thunder's tread 
 
 From Gebeltar, 1 or Himalaya's crest ? 
 Tried in some now extinct volcano's fire ? 
 Or, brought from Ophir in a ship of Tyre ? 
 
 Were thy device and legend visible, 
 In that dilapidated face some mark 
 
 1 The ancient name of Gibraltar. See Bryant's Mythology.
 
 82 MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Haply the hierologist might spell, 
 
 Of ages styled, ere Belus reigned, " The Dark ; " 
 Some mystic type, perchance the monogram 
 Of some old Sheik anterior to Ham. 
 
 What transformations hast thou undergone ? 
 
 Yet still whate'er thy feature, form caressed : 
 How oft been cheaply lost, or dearly won ? 
 
 Yet still, wherever met, a welcome guest : 
 For doubtless thou hast travelled long and far, 
 Ere rags were cashed, or promises at par. 
 
 Thou mayst, when Ilium was destroyed by fire, 
 Have melted from the ear of some rich beauty, 
 
 Or, as a chord to love-lorn Sappho's lyre, 
 Or royal Nimrod's hunting-bow, done duty, 
 
 Or, brought at Aaron's bidding, helped to mould 
 
 The statue of a god the calf of gold. 
 
 Thou mayst with Cadmus into Greece have come, 
 Or been a link in Cecrops' coat-of-mail ; 
 
 Ulysses may have filched thee from his chum, 
 Or Homer pawned thee for a pot of ale, 
 
 Whose epic rhapsody too much of slaughter 
 
 Breathes, to have been a nursling of cold water. 
 
 Or was Troy but as some may deem proved fully 
 A dream ? the tumulus before my eye,
 
 MISCELLANEOUS. 83 
 
 Not heaped o'er Ajax, 1 but some other bully ? 
 
 Helen's abduction, an egregious lie ? 
 The Iliad's hero, a fictitious person ? 
 
 In short, the author a mere Greek Macpherson ? 
 
 What though old Priam's battle-trump no more 
 Rings, but the Turk, at Agamemnon's post, 
 
 Or where Pelides greatly sulked and swore, 
 Recumbent nods in opiate visions lost, 
 
 I scorn the pedant and his prosing lecture, 
 
 And go for Helen, Hecuba, and Hector. 
 
 For is not Tenedos in view, and does 
 
 Not woody Ida in the distance lift 
 Her dim crest like a thunder-cloud, and flows 
 
 Not lone Scamander where the sea-sands shift 
 And roars the surf, beyond whose surge the Greek 
 Moors, as ere Ilium fuit* his caique? 
 
 Would thou hadst ears, speech, intellect ! As 'tis, 
 I lock thee in my scrutoire, there to sleep 
 
 Till classed a theme for erudite surmise 
 
 And sage remark beyond the Western deep 
 
 With skeletons of mammoths, mermaids, mummies, 
 
 Brickbats from Babylon, and other dummies. 
 
 1 Called " The tomb of Ajax." In honor of him Alexander the Great is 
 said to have run round it thrice naked, "which," says Lady Mary, in her 
 " Oriental Letters," "was no doubt a great comfort to his ghost." 
 
 3 Fuit Ilium. Virg,
 
 LAMENT OF THE EMIGRATING 
 INDIAN. 
 
 T T ERE dwelt my tribe : these wooded hills, 
 
 These grassy plains were ours, 
 This forest with its lakes and streams, 
 Its game, its fruits, and flowers. 
 'Twill fall before the white man's stroke, 
 Like my own banished race, 
 Nor tree, nor stone, be left to mark 
 Our home, or burial-place. 
 
 The rifle of the settler, where 
 
 The red man roved, now rings : 
 
 Unheard his warwhoop, in his trail 
 
 The grass untrodden springs. 
 
 Beneath his hearth-stone breeds the snake, 
 
 The wild weeds o'er it wave ; 
 
 The bones are broken by the plough, 
 
 And driven from his grave. 
 
 Cold are our hearth-stones, desolate ; 
 Their smoke has passed away :
 
 MISCELLANEOUS. 85 
 
 Moss-grown they moulder by the lake, 
 Where quenched their brands decay. 
 Then let us go ! to wilds untamed 
 The wolf and panther flee : 
 The white man's home is for the slave, 
 The red man's for the free.
 
 TO A FLOWER FROM THE 
 ATHENIAN ACROPOLIS. 
 
 "T7RAIL, withered leaf! thy tints are shed, 
 
 Thine odor scents a distant air; 
 No spirit here survives the dead, 
 
 And seems to say, " The relic spare ! " 
 Around me flowers in sunshine sleep, 
 
 Whose dewy sweets arrest the bee, 
 Or blushing at my window peep, 
 
 Yet do I turn from them to thee. 
 
 For thou wast cradled, nurtured, where 
 
 The men, whose birth was Freedom's, rose ; 
 There still survive their trophies, there 
 
 The bones of heroes, gods/ repose; 
 Memorial of feelings high, 
 
 As met the mount my awe-struck gaze, 
 Whose relics, though in dust they lie, 
 
 Bespeak the pride of former days. 
 
 1 Athenians deified, as Theseus and Ercctheus.
 
 MISCELLANEOUS. 87 
 
 Prized in remembrance of a spot 
 
 Whose time-worn image haunts me still ; 
 For who has marked, and e'er forgot 
 
 The trophies of that glorious hill ? 
 Still, though in shattered pride, elate, 
 
 But soon to perish, like the flower 
 Sprung from the dust, that strews the seat, 
 
 The monuments, of vanished power !
 
 EVENING AT SEA. 
 
 *T^HE stars, through falling dews that steep 
 
 The shades of twilight, faintly shine, 
 And, though they weep not, seem to weep 
 
 In silence o'er the day's decline ; 
 O'er hours which vanish not, till they 
 
 Promise more brightly to return ; 
 But who for me, when gone for aye, 
 
 Will mourn nay, who will seem to mourn ? 
 
 Perchance, upon a desert shore 
 
 The sands shall heap my stoneless grave ; 
 Perchance, above me heedless roar 
 
 The thunder of the ocean-wave ; 
 The wind, whose voice its breakers mock, 
 
 Bear my last sigh unheard away ; 
 The shadow of the mountain-rock, 
 
 Forbid a flower to deck my clay. 
 
 And yet, so few my heart would own, 
 Its memories prize, methinks that I,
 
 MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Unheard, unwept, my dying moan 
 Could calmly breathe to earth and sky. 
 
 My life is like yon orb, to rise 
 Scarce dimly seen, lone, faint, and far ; 
 
 And death to me may be as is 
 The setting of that nameless star.
 
 LOVE AND REASON. 
 
 O AID Venus, " Cupid ! you're no more 
 *^ A child, to be with Hebe fooling ; 
 Methinks you'd be, as well as she, 
 The better for a little schooling. 
 There's Ganymede, a boy no bigger 
 Than you are, beat him, if you can ! 
 He sings and fiddles, rhymes and riddles, 
 In short, is quite the gentleman. 
 
 " I've had my day : Jove ! how these fogs 
 
 And bleak winds of Olympus rack us ! 
 
 Mars ogles less than he was wont, 
 
 And Vulcan 1 spends his nights with Bacchus 
 
 To leave you helpless to your kin, 
 
 Or step-dame, should he wed, were cruel : 
 
 I'm posed to think how you'll contrive, 
 
 When I'm defunct, to earn your gruel. 
 
 " I'm told there dwells, somewhere about 
 Parnasse, a nymph, hight Reason, famed 
 
 1 Her husband.
 
 MISCELLANEOUS. 9! 
 
 For brats like you, that better love 
 
 Their pastimes than their books reclaimed, 
 
 For fasting, single life, and vigils ; 
 
 And, what will better serve, as you know, 
 
 To make you mind your Greek and morals, 
 
 She's uglier than that vixen Juno. 
 
 " We'll put you with her for a month 
 A week for prose, and three for rhyme : 
 I learned to pen a billet-doux, 
 And thrum a lute, in half the time. 
 I'll straight dispatch my dove, to tell her 
 You'll make one of her bookish crew ; 
 So take your wing, but leave your quiver, 
 The sight of it might fright the ' blue.' " 
 
 He went. The dame was busy with 
 Her wonted round of freakish fancies ; 
 At length thought she, I'll go and see 
 How Cupid with the nymph advances. 
 The night was rough ; said Venus, " Sure 
 They'll not be out, this stormy weather. 
 The door not fast ? Within there, ho ! " 
 Reason and Love had fled together. 
 
 The pupil now the teacher plays ; 
 The nymph's Socratic nights are o'er ; 
 Upon her centre-table lie 
 The tales of Ovid, songs of Moore.
 
 92 MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 No crabbed, ethic tome illumes 
 Her midnight lamp, but, supper done, 
 Love tunes her lute, and with her sings 
 From Sappho and Anacreon. 
 
 Comfits from either Ind her pantry, 
 Brooches and beads her cabinets fill : 
 " Surely," thinks Reason, " this is better 
 Than Plato, pulse, and dishabille." 
 She deems him, what he swears to be, 
 Her ever true and loving lord ; 
 But soon the rogue is advertised 
 As having left her bed and board. 
 
 A bill is filed, and they arc parted ; 
 
 Neither to t'other much a debtor. 
 
 He to his champagne whistling goes, 
 
 She to her vigils and black-letter. 
 
 " Or young, or old," says Venus, " list ! 
 
 Believe it ! as if spoke by Jove, 
 
 Love ne'er was taught, or tamed by Reason, 
 
 And Reason never trust with Love ! "
 
 THE GLEN AND THE BURIAL. 
 
 A SCENE IN ANDRO, A GREEK ISLAND. 
 
 f ^ROM morn our weary march had wound 
 
 O'er heights by summer suns imbrowned ; 
 At length at eventide, it fell 
 Into a wild, sequestered dell, 
 Where shrub and blossom seemed to dress 
 A hermitage for loneliness ; 
 A dim retreat, where day the sprite 
 Had scarce disturbed, that walks at night ; 
 As thither, since creation's birth, 
 Had come no living thing of earth, 
 But blossoms there, and trees, which shade 
 
 As watching o'er some hidden treasure 
 Their shy, unscented sweets, had made 
 
 A paradise for their own pleasure. 
 No sound was heard, save bleat of goat, 
 Or chime of convent-bell remote. 
 
 And rocks, no summer rills bedew, 
 Like battlements in ruin proud,
 
 94 MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Hung o'er it, with the fading hue, 
 The stillness of an evening cloud : 
 
 A lone recess, where one, whose sigh 
 
 Is but for peace and heaven, might come, 
 Like a gray pilgrim to his home, 
 
 And feel 'twere happiness to die. 1 
 
 Midway, along the steep, unworn 
 
 By any track, a grassy plot 
 We found, by flock or scythe unshorn, 
 
 And chose it for a burial spot." 
 A stream whose murmur, from the shade 
 Of wild vine-bower, or mossy grot, 
 The silence more impressive made 
 Welled from a spring, so still and clear, 
 It seemed a nether hemisphere ; 
 
 A natural glass, wherein, I ween, 
 The nymph, if such there was, of tree, 
 
 Or fountain-wave, might have been seen, 
 In ancient days and summer hours, 
 Knitting her tresses with the flowers, 
 A solitary tribe, we see 
 There woo the breeze and lure the bee, 
 Breathing, like nuns in silent prayer, 
 Their souls into the quiet air. 
 
 1 The beauty of another valley, as seen by moonlight in this island, was 
 such as to make the writer almost wish that he might never leave it. 
 4 Of a marine officer, killed while we were crossing the island.
 
 MISCELLANEOUS. 95 
 
 Few, but sincere, the rites we paid : 
 A stone, a wreath upon it laid 
 Of frail but fragrant flowerets, told 
 Where one, the battle-fire, though rolled 
 O'er many a broken rank, had spared, 
 Lay where no kindred sleeper shared 
 His low, lorn couch, unknown, forgot, 
 In a lone isle's most lonely spot. 
 And thrice the flashing volley woke 
 The echoes, thrice rang out their knell 
 Old wood and owlet-haunted rock 
 A last and meet farewell !
 
 TO YOUNG WOOD-ROSES. 
 
 T7*AIR flowers ! your image, where the forest spring 
 
 Sequestered sleeps, Narcissus-like that eye, 
 Well may the breeze, that fans with gentle wing 
 Your odorous bloom, forsake it with a sigh ! 
 
 Waving, as if to greet the early sun, 
 
 Your tinctured kerchiefs, of his noontide ray 
 
 Beware ! or, ere his evening race be run, 
 You will have blown and withered in a day. 
 
 What mean your blushes, dewy tears, as now 
 You lowly bend, with eyes half raised to heaven ? 
 
 Baptized 1 we see you, but 'tis not, we know, 
 Because, poor babes ! you need to be forgiven. 
 
 You lowly bend, while we forget to kneel ; 
 
 Yet, ah ! how many, 1 ere your sweets be blown, 
 May wish, too late, the shame you seem to feel, 
 
 The tears you seem to shed, had been their own ! 
 
 1 Wet with dew. a Of the dying.
 
 SONNETS. 
 
 i. 
 
 MAY. 
 
 TO M- 
 
 NOW heaven l seems one bright, rejoicing eye, 
 And earth one flower. Blue violets recline 
 By bank or streamlet, imaging the sky, 
 
 And the blown rose shames every cheek but thine ; 
 The ground each moment, as some blossom springs, 
 
 Or leaf unfolds, puts forth a lovelier dye, 
 
 Wooed by the bee, or west-wind's musky sigh, 
 And each new morning some new songster brings. 
 
 And, hark ! the brooks their rocky prisons break, 
 
 And echo calls on echo to awake ; 
 The air is rife with dewy sweets, and wings 
 
 Rustling through wood, or dripping over lake. 
 Bird, bud, and leaf return, but not to me 
 With song or beauty, since they bring not thee. 
 
 1 Though the lexicographers make this word a monosyllable, yet, as it 
 
 cannot be pronounced but as a dissyllable, the writer, here and perhaps 
 
 elsewhere, with a view to the measure, has ventured to regard it as such, as 
 
 in one or more places does Tennyson at least, and also Spenser in the line 
 
 "As the great eye of heaven shined bright." 
 
 5
 
 98 SONNETS. 
 
 II. 
 
 TO A YOUNG MOTHER. 
 
 "\ "I T HAT things of thee may yield a semblance meet, 
 
 And him, thy fairy portraiture ? a flower 
 And bud, moon and attending star, a sweet 
 
 Voice, and its sweeter echo. Time has small power 
 O'er features the mind moulds, and such, O shrine 
 Of truth and childlike gentleness ! are thine, 
 
 Imperishably lovely. Roses, where 
 They once have bloomed, a fragrance leave behind, 
 And harmony will linger on the wind, 
 
 And suns continue to light up the air 
 When set, and garlands may the altar-stone, 
 
 Though ruin claim the broken relic, twine ; 
 Types of the beauty that, though youth be gone, 
 
 Beams from the soul nay, then may chiefly shine. 
 
 in. 
 
 TWILIGHT. AT SEA, OFF DELOS. 
 
 WEET is the hour to him that, on the sea, 
 
 Far gleaming spies the solitary sail, 
 Or walks remote by woods, where folds the bee 
 Her weary wing, and flowers the sweets exhale 
 They hoard by day, and the lone night-bird's wail
 
 SONNETS. 99 
 
 Disturbs the echoes of the forest-wild ; 
 
 The hour, when winds are still, and stars are pale, 
 And earth and heaven seem once more reconciled. 
 
 And, look ! her blush steals on the dewy air, 
 Her silver girdle for the nightly chase 
 
 As Dian belts, and, from her cloudy chair 
 O'er Cynthus, 1 smiles, with half-averted face, 
 
 Her farewell to the sun. Long ! ere the light 
 
 Of this calm eve shall set in memory's night. 
 
 IV. 
 
 CROSSING THE BEACH OF ABOUKIR BAY 
 IN EGYPT. 
 
 r I ''HE moon is up, by light clouds swiftly past, 
 
 Laden with tribute for the infant Nile ; 
 Peeping, at times, from the ethereal waste, 
 
 Some solitary star, with fitful smile, 
 
 Trims her small lamp, whose beam may not beguile 
 The desert's loneliness ; and on the shore, 
 
 Aboukir's thundering surf untombs the pile 
 The wave-worn relics it had earthed before. 
 Far other was the scene, the light, the roar, 
 
 When, like a lurid meteor of the sky, 
 
 1 This mountain, so called, remarkable as the reputed birthplace and 
 hunting-ground of Apollo and Diana, we found to be a mere rocky hill of 
 no very great elevation. They must have been satisfied with small game. 
 The remains of the far-famed Delian temples the Greeks were converting 
 into lime !
 
 100 SONNETS. 
 
 Nelson's red cross unfurled its death-sign o'er 
 
 The astonished Gaul, 1 or he, s whose white plume high, 
 Still, like a standard, led the van of fight, 
 Headlong careering, smote the Ottomite. 
 
 v. 
 
 NAPOLEON. 3 
 
 T)AUSE ! for a spirit still pervades the spot, 
 A power by dull Oblivion's wand unlaid 
 The memory of him, whose name to blot 
 
 Time must despair, and whose imperial shade 
 Yet awes the world ; his goal a lonely isle, 4 
 
 But course, the comet's, that, its meteor-car 
 Urging from some remote abyss, the while 
 
 It rushes onward, kindles from a star 
 Of twinkling lustre to a sunlike flame, 
 
 And from its " hair shakes pestilence and war," 
 Firing the firmament ; to whom kings came 
 
 And sued as bondmen, at whose feet were laid 
 
 Nations in chains, whose eagles were displayed 
 Till earth became a camp, and right a name. 
 
 1 The battle of the Nile was fought in this bay. 
 
 a Murat in the battle of Aboukir, who here made one of his most cele 
 brated charges. Before it began, Bonaparte said to him, " This battle will 
 decide the fate of the world." Murat replied, "Of the army at least" The 
 Turks were defeated with a loss of twenty thousand men. 
 
 1 Who here fought the battle of Aboukir. * St. Helena.
 
 SONNETS. 101 
 
 VI. 
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF GREECE. 
 
 > r I ^WAS late my lot to tread those ancient shores, 
 
 Where now the Spirit of old inspiration 
 Mourns by the fount whose Nymph no longer pours 
 
 A hallowed stream ; and of a mighty nation 
 Stemming in story, as the eagle soars 
 
 Against the wind, the ebbing stream of time 
 To mark the mountain birthplace and the grave ; 
 The home of freedom trodden by the slave ; 
 
 The ruinous dwelling of that soul sublime, 
 Whose voice is silent now, on shore and wave, 
 
 As it had never sounded a mute thunder ! 
 
 But not the less we pause, in silent wonder, 
 By tomb, or temple, or old stream, or dell, 
 Where poet mused, sage thought, or patriot fell. 
 
 VII. 
 
 ABSENCE. 
 
 T GATHERED many flowers of many tints 
 Roses that blush like innocence suspected 
 In maiden cheeks ; the coinage Flora mints, 
 
 Bright marigolds ; narcissus-cups, reflected 
 By cold fount-wells ; tulips, more gayly drest 
 
 Than May-day queens ; soft-eyed anemones ;
 
 102 SONNETS. 
 
 And lilies whiter than e'er shamed the breast 
 Of infant Dian, or the snow-flake. These 
 Chose I, to please, if any thing might please, 
 
 As with thy portraiture, my loneliness; 
 The fairest chose, as images of thee, 
 
 Nor vainly fair, had they been like thee less ; 
 But soon I found my sole relief must be, 
 
 Not emblems of thee, but forgetfulness. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 TO THE AUTHOR OF THE " LIFE OF 
 
 ASHMUN." 
 
 nr^HY task is o'er, a monument thou here 
 
 Hast built, wherein the memory of him, 
 Whose tribute rightly were a nation's tear, 
 
 Shall, like a star no earth-born vapors dim, 
 Survive, embalmed like relics in perfumes, 
 Or regal dust in Cyclopean tombs. 
 
 I met thee in life's early day, and still 
 Have watched thy course too long, through years 
 gone by, 
 
 Stealing unheard, yet, as the Alpine rill 
 Swells to the torrent, destined to a high 
 
 And loud celebrity, the glorious crown 
 He wins, who strives truth, virtue, to promote ; 
 
 And long shall Afric in her heart enthrone 
 Thy worth, thy words long treasure in her thought.
 
 SONNETS. 103 
 
 IX. 
 
 TO THE PAINTER OF THE PANORAMA OF 
 QUEBEC. 1 
 
 T)AINTERS we have, that, like the Florentine 
 Or Flemish pencil, visions may have caught, 
 Of which the lifelike portraitures, once seen, 
 
 Forever haunt us, seem with feeling fraught, 
 
 Nay, breath, nor picture only form, but thought : 
 Yet do we turn from them, and own the power 
 
 Of Nature clear, blue heaven, or grassy lap 
 Where sleeps the still lake in its forest-bower, 
 
 Time-mantled peak, upon whose mossy cap 
 The snow, untouched by Summer, lies, whose breast 
 The gorgeous draperies Autumn weaves invest : 
 
 But thou hast seized her pencil, and so true 
 Portrayed her, in her Northern colors drest, 
 
 Sombre, or soft, that them in thine we view. 
 
 x. 
 
 SCIO. 
 
 ~P)ASS we the peak, by summer suns imbrowned ; 
 -*- The headland, imaged by the quiet deep 
 Dim, distant isles, like clouds reposing, bound ; 
 The ruin, watch-tower, beetling o'er the steep ; 
 
 1 The late distinguished landscape-painter, Richard R. Gibson, of 
 Washington, D. C.
 
 104 SONNETS. 
 
 And lo ! a spot as of enchanted ground ! 
 
 O gracious God ! that we, as here, should see 
 Thy fairest works by human hand defaced ! * 
 
 Look on this Eden of the bird and bee ! 
 Where Love, 'twould seem, his paradise had placed ; 
 Yet here the Moslem, dull, as in a waste, 
 
 Like tiger from the relics of his prey 
 Unroused, by no avenging weapon chased, 
 
 Must make a solitude, where Nature, gay 
 
 With bird and blossom, makes a holiday. 
 
 XI. 
 LOVE OF SPIRITUAL BEAUTY. 
 
 ESTORE thy blush unto the summer rose, 
 
 Thine eye, so softly shadowy, darkly bright, 
 Unto the twilight, hair unto the night, 
 Neck to the lily, forehead to the snows, 
 
 1 This island, when visited by the writer, had but partially recovered 
 from the devastation which accompanied the massacre at the commence 
 ment of the Greek Revolution. It was formerly called " The Paradise of 
 the Islands," and appears to have been a favorite place of residence, even 
 with some Europeans. 
 
 We visited the relic called " The School of Homer" (there being a tra 
 dition that he there taught poetry and music), but missed the statue men 
 tioned in the subjoined notice of it by Chandler : " It appears to have been 
 an open temple of Cybele, formed on the top of a rock. In the centre is the 
 image of the goddess, the head and an arm wanting. She is represented as 
 sitting. The chair has a lion carved on each side, and on the back." 
 
 Either in this island, or in the vicinity of Smyrna, Homer was probably 
 born.
 
 SONNETS. 105 
 
 Hand that no jewel but itself needs wear 
 To Cupid's statue, for 'twill shame its white 
 
 And, like the stone's, is infantinely fair ; 
 
 Thy breath to incense by the vernal air 
 Borne from some bower of Araby, thy lips 
 
 To half-blown pink-buds, sweets, of which the bee 
 Of those that scent the morning earliest sips. 
 
 All are but ornaments, not parts, of thee. 
 I woo not them, whate'er their loveliness : 
 I woo the soul, and they it do but dress. 
 
 XII. 
 
 THE GRAVE OF FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. 1 
 
 Read at the dedication of his monument in Guilford, Connecticut, 8th 
 July, 1869. 
 
 T N thee no gorgeous capital, no mart, 
 
 Known wheresoe'er a wave rolls, though we see, 
 Yet, Guilford, even thine no humble part 
 
 In memory's pageant henceforth e'er shall be. 
 The earth that heaps thy relics, Halleck, where 
 No name more famed sepulchral shaft shall bear, 
 Full many a pilgrim-bard from many a shore 
 Shall wend to greet, till time shall be no more ; 
 The spot, henceforth to genius ever dear, 
 Shall gladly hail nor quit without a tear ; 
 
 1 See the first note to the piece entitled " Idlings with Nature."
 
 106 SONNETS. 
 
 Some strain of thy imperishable lyre 
 Recall, and, ere reluctant he retire, 
 Exclaim, " In thee, O Fame's lamented son ! 
 A thousand poets we have lost in one." 
 
 XIII. 
 
 SCENE REVISITED AFTER THE DEATH OF 
 A FRIEND. 
 
 A SNOW-WHITE beach, a narrow path, that winds, 
 
 Like a foam-ripple, by the river-wave, 
 O'erhung with cedars and cone-dropping pines : 
 
 And, see ! the stream lies couched, as in a cave, 
 In this lone nook, and wears his lily-crown, 1 
 Disturbed but by the water-king, 3 that down 
 
 Darts, as if bent to battle with his peer, 
 The shape, with sword-like beak and bristling crest, 
 
 That ever mocks him, imaged in the clear 
 Still flood, the semblance' of a sky at rest. 
 
 But where is she, whose gentle footsteps seem 
 Yet uneffaced, since, arm in arm, we went 
 
 By this calm water ? vanished ! as a dream, 
 A star that melts into the firmament. 
 
 1 The water-lil}*. a The kingfisher bird.
 
 EARLY SPRING. 
 
 AS yet, no blossoms by the rill 
 And sheltering hill-side, peep : 
 Herbage and earlier wood-flower, till 
 
 The bluebird wakes them, sleep. 
 He comes ! the messenger of Spring, 
 
 With his glad minstrelsy, 
 And bearing in his herald wing 
 The tincture of her sky. 
 
 Soon, as before fresh dews and flowers 
 
 Shall strew the lap of May ; 
 How unlike gone and happier hours 
 
 That bid farewell for aye ! 
 Sweet minstrel ! doubly sweet, might I, 
 
 Like thee, those hours forget ; 
 As 'tis, I listen with a sigh, 
 
 A feeling of regret.
 
 THE MARINER'S FAREWELL. 
 
 HT^HE cape is cleared, before us lies 
 Our path, the bright blue main ; 
 
 The land fades far, 
 
 And cord and spar 
 The swelling topsails strain ; 
 Our good ship bounds before the breeze, 
 That freshens fast and fair, 
 
 And skims the sea 
 
 As light and free, 
 As if she moved in air. 
 
 One mute farewell, one look, as, where 
 The blue sky meets the foam, 
 
 Headland and isle 
 
 Fast fade the while, 
 Then proudly greet our home ! 
 
 No care have we, 
 
 So winds blow free 
 And fair, my merry crew ! 
 And, hark ! the sea-bird bids good-night- 
 
 Our native land, adieu !
 
 AUTUMN IN GREECE. 
 
 A ROUND me are the relics sad 
 
 Of Hellas in her palmy hour ; 
 O'er which the weeds, that sighing fade 
 
 Or silent droop, their dead leaves shower. 
 I look forth upon shore and sea, 
 
 Dim, distant isles, and cloudless skies, 
 And all is lone, as it should be, 
 
 Where Ruin dwells, and Nature dies. 
 
 I see with fainter colors glow 
 
 Hills, late by vernal blossoms crowned ; 
 I hear the wind, with whisper low, 
 
 Its farewell fragrance breathe around; 
 The lizard, through the long, dry fern, 
 
 Darts rustling, and her dewy pall 
 The spider spreads o'er rifled urn, 
 
 O'er leafless brake, and prostrate wall. 
 
 I note the few, pale, drooping flowers, 
 That loiter by the green hill-side :
 
 110 MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Unprized their sweets, the bee to bowers 
 And fields of richer bloom has hied ; 
 
 I see their cups with cold dews wet, 
 And feel the fading wreath, they twine 
 
 For Autumn's brow, so few, as yet, 
 My joyous hours, were meet for mine. 
 
 By bank and brake the bird flits lone, 
 
 With fitful note, no longer glad ; 
 Like his, my early mates are gone, 
 
 Like his, my song is low and sad ; 
 Too deeply sad, where Empire's grave 
 
 And Nature's but of ruin tell ; 
 Where summer flowers no longer wave, 
 
 And autumn's seem to sigh farewell.
 
 SONG OF THE GRECIAN YOUTH. 
 
 Illustrating a representation of a maiden, presenting a goblet and gar 
 land to a Grecian youth. 
 
 T7*ILL not for me the cup with wine ! 
 
 It sparkles like thine eye ; 
 For me no wreath of roses twine ! 
 They breathe but of thy sigh. 
 But pledge me in oblivion's wave, 
 And I will drink to thee ; 
 And of a sleepy fragrance let 
 The wreath, you weave me, be. 
 
 Of night-blown poppies weave the wreath, 
 
 With dews of Lethe wet ! 
 
 For though 'tis sweet to think of thee, 
 
 'Twere sweeter to forget. 
 
 It is not wine that can efface 
 
 Thy image from my brain ; 
 
 But pledge me in oblivion's wave, 
 
 And I the cup will drain.
 
 CAPE COLONNA, IN GREECE. 
 
 " Save where Tritonia's airy shrine adorns 
 Colonna's cliff, and gleams along the wave." 
 
 Byron. 
 
 >'*T^IS summer's eve. The winds are still, 
 
 So calmly hushed the waters lie, 
 So softly bright, they seem to blend 
 In airy distance with the sky. 
 What gorgeous hues of beauty, o'er 
 Laconia's hills and mountains rolled, 
 Their summits veil ! where sinks the sun, 
 A monarch to his couch of gold. 
 From them I turn, from isles, along 
 Whose wild and dusky outlines driven, 
 The rosy twilight fades, till light 
 Their starry fires the watch of heaven ; 
 Turn to the ruin, 1 lone and dim, 
 That bears the name, and should have crowned, 
 By sea-dews wept, the dust of him a 
 
 1 Remains of the temple of Minerva Sunias. 
 
 a Byron, whose name we found there inscribed. This cape was the 
 scene of Falconer's poem, " The Shipwreck." The beauty of the view from 
 it, on a calm summer evening, like that on which we visited it, has perhaps 
 hardly a parallel. We subsequently met with an Albanian, who said he had
 
 MISCELLANEOUS. 1 13 
 
 Whose song, though mute, seems breathed around. 
 
 Chieftain ! whose call, by sea and shore, 
 
 The men of Greece in arms obeyed ; 
 
 Soldier ! whose charge had led them where 
 
 Shall foremost wave her battle-blade, 
 
 Here should thy relics rest, beside 
 
 This time-worn ruin, gray and rent, 
 
 Thy name thy epitaph, the stone, 
 
 That name inscribes, thy monument. 
 
 been one of Byron's soldiers, and spoke of him with much enthusiasm, slap- 
 ing his breast, looking heavenward, and exclaiming, " Beerotn! Beerom!" 
 as he called him. At another time, having landed at a lonely place below 
 Smyrna, we were accosted by a poor fellow who, in broken English, said 
 that he had been a servant of Byron, and was with him when he died. He 
 described his person correctly, and spoke of him with tears. He was a de 
 serter from an Austrian man-of-war, and begged to be taken to our ship, a 
 favor that, because he was such, was unfortunately quite inadmissible. The 
 thought subsequently occurred that possibly he was the " Tite," a foreign 
 servant, who is mentioned as having been with the poet in Greece.
 
 TO A WITHERED ROSE FROM THE 
 BANKS OF THE MELES. 1 
 
 / "T V HOU mind'st me when by banks we strayed, 
 
 The oleander made one flower, 
 And spied thee, dripping in their shade, 
 A Naiad in her bower ; 
 
 With dewy, downcast eye, and cheek, 
 That half a blush disclosed a thing 
 
 Betwixt a bud and blossom, meek, 
 Young daughter of the Spring ; 
 
 With breath, that had betrayed, unspied, 
 Thy lurking-place, tempting the bee, 
 
 In search of other sweets, aside 
 To steal a kiss from thee, 
 
 And me, as, shrinking at my feet, 
 Thy dewy eye looked up to mine, 
 
 1 On the banks of this small but beautiful river, and in the vicinity of 
 Smyrna, Homer is said to have been born, while his mother was present at 
 some rural festival. Hence he was called Melesigenes. See a translation 
 prefixed to Buckley's " Odyssey," of a very curious and, if authentic, in 
 teresting notice of him, ascribed to Herodotus.
 
 MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 To leave thee to thy mossy seat, 
 And canopy of vine. 
 
 Go ! relic of a faded wreath, 
 
 Bid her, to whom I send thee, o'er 
 
 Thy dead leaf sigh ! and it will breathe 
 More sweetlv than before.
 
 THE SELF-EXILED'S FAREWELL. 
 
 In this and the next piece, the author is supposed to personate, not him 
 self, but an unfortunate friend, on his leaving the country, and returning to 
 it after an absence of some years. 
 
 RIGHT are your skies, no lovelier bend 
 
 O'er the blossoms and fruits of the year ; 
 And if Liberty e'er found a home, or a friend, 
 
 But where man is a stranger, 'tis here. 
 But the spirit from tyrants has little to fear, 
 
 In the pride of her apathy free ; 
 And with few years before me, to sadden or cheer, 
 My lone path I trace o'er the sea. 
 
 To the land of the olive, the orange, and vine, 
 
 Of the rose, and the nightingale's song, 
 Scenes seeming of Eden they soothe not a mind 
 
 That but broods over sorrow and wrong. 
 'Tis the land whose gone glories in memory live 
 
 Like the twilight her summer eves cast, 
 And where he, whom the present has little to give, 
 
 Communion may hold with the past :
 
 MISCELLANEOUS. 117 
 
 May pause and may ponder by ruins, that moan 
 
 To the wind, as complaining of Time, 
 Or, if mute, like the spirit that, stern and alone, 
 
 Stands hushed in her grief and sublime. 
 They hear not, they speak not, and yet, in their face 
 
 And their echoes, a look and a tone 
 The forsaken, the friendless, may fancy they trace 
 
 A feeling, a fate, like their own. 
 
 But the white sail is set, and our ship flings the foam, 
 
 Like a courser that chafes to be free : 
 Farewell bids the sea-bird ; e'en she has a home, 
 
 But, my spirit ! where smiles it for thee ? 
 Shall I go to the spot where my forefathers sleep, 
 
 Halls but to the stranger now known ? 
 No eye there is left me to smile, or to weep ; 
 
 Let the wind, let the wave, waft me on !
 
 THE SELF-EXILED'S RETURN. 1 
 
 E land is made, the port is nigh, 
 But dark and chill the wintry sky, 
 Not the deep blue, the golden hue, 
 
 Of climes late left, where summer hours 
 Returning suns so soon renew, 
 
 We hardly miss their vanished flowers. 
 And, though old rock, and woodland cape, 
 And beacon-tower, with airy shape, 
 Seem, coming swiftly up from ocean, 
 To greet us with a joyous motion, 
 And the wild scream of the sea-mew 
 Be like a welcome rude, but true 
 I heed them not ; unfelt they come 
 To him, for whom there waits no home, 
 No tear, no smile, whose sympathy 
 He haply feels, or cares should be ; 
 No hand, perchance, whose greetings tell 
 The lips were true that sighed farewell. 
 For I am as the drift I see 
 
 1 See note prefixed to the piece next preceding this.
 
 MISCELLANEOUS. IK) 
 
 The surge, to where it grew, return, 
 And earth alike and ocean spu^n. 
 My childhood hearth is desolate, 
 
 Or trod alone by stranger feet ; 
 Nor sister more, nor early mate, 
 
 My coming there with smiles shall greet. 
 Unprized, perhaps, or gone are all 
 
 Mine eye there met, my heart held dear. 
 The feelings I may not recall 
 
 Of hours remembered with a tear. 
 
 If thither led, 'twill be to hear 
 No kindred voices, to behold 
 No features but the changed or cold.
 
 IDLINGS WITH NATURE. 1 
 
 RADLED among the wild sequestered hills, 
 A stream of such small note as haply wins 
 Some village beauty in her rural home, 
 With quiet wave meanders to the sea. 
 
 From mere, reflected by whose willowy pool 
 The heron meditates, it issuing winds 
 By grassy slope and woodland shade obscure, 
 Where, neophyte in Greek, but deeply versed 
 In tongues wherewith the pupils Nature schools 
 Winds, waters, and the winged choirs commune, 
 I spent my happier, and, if truant oft 
 To lettered for her pictured volume, yet 
 
 1 Entitled, in a former edition, "Rambles in Autumn." The descrip 
 tive parts of this piece relate chiefly to a beautiful valley and its environs 
 at least as they were in the author's early days in the township of Guil- 
 ford, Connecticut. A portion of the woods belonged to the mother of Hal- 
 leek, the poet, and therefore was doubtless familiar to him in his boyhood. 
 In a cemetery, at the head of this valley, stands his monument (dedicated 
 on the 8th of July, 1869), a costly and beautiful structure, for which the 
 township is indebted chiefly to the exertions of his friend and biographer, 
 General James Grant Wilson, of the city of New York.
 
 IDLINGS WITH NATURE. 121 
 
 Perchance my not least profitable hours; 
 
 Recumbent, through the long, lone summer-day, 
 
 With other vagrant elf, in green-wood shade, 
 
 Or if at times roused to more active sport 
 
 Like the great children of the busy world, 
 
 Pursuing what we either saw elude 
 
 Our grasp, or, haply, disappoint if won 
 
 Now the gay butterfly, now glancing where 
 
 Her wing out-hummed the bee, the bird * whose plumes 
 
 Seem borrowed of the rainbow, or the tints 
 
 Of every flower that hives for her its sweets. 
 
 Into the meadows from the woodland hills 
 At intervals projecting may be seen 
 A long, low cape of verdant upland, crowned 
 
 r 
 
 At its extremity with beech and oak, 
 
 As 'twere a veteran outpost, planted there 
 
 To watch and check incursions of the stream ; 
 
 Who, swollen at certain changes of the moon, 
 
 Like lunatic that deems himself a king, 
 
 Quits his scant channel, as he did disdain 
 
 The crown of tributary sedge he strews, 
 
 Flooding his banks. And, looking oceanward, 
 
 A ledge, at times, of old fantastic rock 
 
 Lifts its huge form, with trees of knotty growth 
 
 Shot slanting from its briery clefts, profuse 
 
 Of unpruned shrub, of vine and flower, that shun 
 
 1 Humming-bird. 
 
 6
 
 122 IDLINGS WITH NATURE. 
 
 The cultured walk, and, nun-like, seem to trim 
 
 Their lone retreat for no eye but their own 
 
 The bramble, that the purple berry, like 
 
 A ruby in a wood-nymph's chaplet, wears ; 
 
 Sumachs, whose scarlet shames the conchs of Tyre ; 
 
 Deep-dyed lobelia, 1 gorgeous as a bride 
 
 Of Ind, and firing with her torch the gloom 
 
 Alder or other growth of dark, dull leaf, 
 
 As envious of her queenlike beauty, sheds ; 
 
 Bright constellations of red columbines, 
 
 Like ear-drops pendent from the fern-fringed edge 
 
 Of rock, in whose dun shade, as fearful lest 
 
 Some eye should note her sweets, the violet lurks ; 
 
 The golden lily with her speckled cup ; 
 
 The meadow-pink, waving her crimson cap ; 
 
 Frail wind-flowers, that their snowy kerchiefs spread 
 
 To shield their beauty from the April air ; 
 
 The flaunting ivy, 2 thrusting forth her bloom, 
 
 Like village maid vain of her charms ; the brier, 3 
 
 Whose rose out-scents the Arabian spring ; and, rare, 
 
 Some shy, cold blossom, Flora's nun, that loves 
 
 To hide her blushing beauty from the world, 
 
 And die unseen lone dwellers of the rough 
 
 And tangled ways, with which we sympathize, 
 
 As things, though beautiful and not without 
 
 A seeming sense of their own loveliness, 
 
 1 The cardinai-hower. 
 
 a The common misnomer, as also is "laurel," of a species of Kali!a, 
 
 3 Sweetbrier.
 
 IDLINGS WITH NATURE. 123 
 
 That spring, and bloom, and to their graves go down, 
 Like humble worth, unnoticed and unwept. 
 
 And far beyond and at the valley's head, 
 Frowns o'er the scene a forest of old trees, 
 Dusky, and printing on the northern sky 
 His shaggy outline, nor less crowns the hills, 
 On this side, rocky, high, and rudely piled, 
 On that, with lazy slope, grassy and green ; 
 Both stretching towards the ocean, till they end, 
 Like headlands, in the sea-like meadow flats. 
 
 It is a spot where I have spent the hours 
 We feel the least reluctance to recall. 
 There did my boyhood sport, or idly gaze 
 Upon the still and gorgeous scenery 
 Of wood, and sky, and clouds in whose bright shapes 
 It feigned a world of airy images, 
 Gay shapes of living things, castles and spires, 
 Turrets and battlements, and gilded roofs 
 All I had pictured of old fairy-land 
 And sighed (if boy may sigh) to see them fade, 
 And think they were too beautiful to last. 
 There did I lie, seeking the thickest shade 
 By wild vine thrown, and let the noontide scene 
 Impress me, passive as the stream whose face 
 I saw its dream-like imagery reflect ; 
 Or haply watched the eagle with my hand
 
 124 IDLINGS WITH NATURE. 
 
 Shading my eye, as, wheeling slow, he soared 
 Till dwindled to a speck or turned to air 
 And longed to have his wing, wherewith, at will, 
 To roam those wondrous regions, and to visit 
 Far distant lands, whereof I heard strange tales, 
 And some, I live to find, more strange than true. 
 
 It was among my earliest haunts and last, 
 That solitary vale, and, ere I bade 
 What seemed must be a long farewell to home, 
 I spent a day of rambling there, to dwell 
 Once more upon its features, as I would 
 Upon a friend's, so long known and so loved 
 He wellnigh seems a portion of myself. 
 
 It was a morn in autumn, such as, ere 
 The first snow falls, like a pleased guest returns, 
 Once more to smile a bright, but brief farewell. 
 The web hung without motion from the tree ; 
 The down, that, shaken from the thistle-top, 
 Stood tiptoe, rose not into the still air ; 
 And, freighted with the caterpillar, rolled 
 In her silk shroud, the willow leaf had dropped, 
 And lay at anchor on the pool, which seemed 
 The thing it imaged an inverted heaven. 
 The fox had to his covert slunk, and left 
 The cock to strut amid his dames secure, 
 Though the dew told where late his foot had been,
 
 IDLINGS WITH NATURE. 125 
 
 And a low baying, where the far-off hills 
 
 Rose wooded, that the hound was on his track. 
 
 The eagle shook the hoar-frost from his wing, 
 
 And, soaring, faced a sun without a cloud ; 
 
 And a faint haziness, as it had been 
 
 A white transparent veil, flung o'er a nun 
 
 Bending in worship at the altar, lent 
 
 A deeper softness and solemnity 
 
 To scenes, though gorgeous as the trains the East 
 
 Sees sweep the bannered aisles that urn her kings, 
 
 Yet sad as they; woods, in whose fading pomp, 
 
 Though summer cheered them with a lingering smile 
 
 And hung upon their sheltered skirts, was read 
 
 To her gay pensioners a sad farewell. 
 
 A brook-side loiterer, the wood-rose, had 
 
 Tendered her sweets, and, with a blush, retired ; 
 
 Her sapphire crown the gentian wore, but stood 
 
 Hourly prepared to cast her robe and die ; 
 
 The butterfly her wing, bedropped with gold, 
 
 Had folded till some kindlier sun's return ; 
 
 The breeze, that haunts the river-marge and chants 
 
 A drowsy song among the reeds, lay hushed ; 
 
 The woodland thrush his pipe of many stops 
 
 No longer at Aurora's window heard 
 
 Long ere she left her bed had closed, or made 
 
 No more nor better music than the crow, 
 
 The sentinel that, from the topmost bough 
 
 Of an old oak, whose frown imbrowned the dell, 
 
 With cry discordant challenged my approach.
 
 126 IDLINGS WITH NATURE. 
 
 So, in the bright, warm sunshine venturing forth, 
 
 With no companion but a friend, my dog, 
 
 I took a skiff, and let the quiet flood 
 
 Of that lone stream drift me along, at times 
 
 Dipping my oar, thereby to shun some cape 
 
 Or reef of sand, or headland of shell-bank. 
 
 Now from some log, on which he basked, or shelf, 
 
 A tortoise dropped, or prowling muskrat dived, 
 
 Whisking, as if with mischievous intent, 
 
 The blinding spray-drops, from his whip-like tail, 
 
 Into my eyes ; or, from the reeds would spring, 
 
 Whirring, the meadow-wren, or, lighting, start 
 
 And stare and sputter from their bending tops, 
 
 As if indignant and no less amazed 
 
 That I, with causeless and ill-timed approach, 
 
 Should thus upon the privacy intrude 
 
 And urgent duties of her precious life ; 
 
 Or meditative heron, perched, where lay 
 
 The mouldering wreck of some old hulk, half sunk 
 
 And strewn with barnacles, would slowly thrust 
 
 Above the sedge, his long, lank neck, then crouch, 
 
 Till, floundering upward with an awkward flap 
 
 Of his dank wing, and knot of sea-grass seen 
 
 Dangling from his long legs, he slowly urged 
 
 His flight to stream or shallow, more remote : 
 
 Or crow, caught sleeping at his morning watch, 
 
 Bestirred himself and called, ere well awake, 
 
 Unto his fellows, that, with clamorous cry, 
 
 Rose, and their train winged lengthening to the wood.
 
 IDLINGS WITH NATURE. I2/ 
 
 Thus sped my voyage of small adventure, till, 
 
 Borne quietly along, far up the stream, 
 
 I cast a few links of a rusty chain 
 
 Over my paddle, thrust into the bank, 
 
 And upward strolled to where dismantled stood 
 
 An ancient domicile, beneath the frown 
 
 Of a tall wood of aged walnut-trees : 
 
 As if some ghost, that haunted their dim shade, 
 
 Had ventured forth, to breathe the purer air 
 
 And feel the blessed sun. A relic lorn 
 
 Of simpler, if not better, days it seemed, 
 
 Not unfrequented by its ancient guest, 
 
 The swallow, but forsaken by the rat, 
 
 Like a poor client by his counsellor, 
 
 And wearing, in its riven front, the marks 
 
 Of other thievish hand than that of time. 
 
 Strange faces, if old legends rightly tell, 
 
 Stared at the paneless windows, voices strange, 
 
 At twilight, by the forester, as lone 
 
 He homeward hied, were heard, till all aghast 
 
 He stood the wondering family before, 
 
 Speechless and telling, in his looks, his tale. 
 
 Like other infidels, we laughed and still 
 
 Believed, and gathered in an idle group 
 
 Of vagrant urchins, where the bough of yon 
 
 Old oak the summer fount-well shaded, listened 
 
 To one, more grave and knowing than the rest, 
 
 Who, heard with gaping wonder, much discoursed 
 
 Of things of high inquiry in old days,
 
 128 IDLINGS WITH NATURE. 
 
 Witches, and ghosts, and armies in the sky, 
 
 And pots of buried gold that sank when struck, 
 
 Watched by the grisly phantom of old Kidd, 1 
 
 With rusty pistol stuck beneath his belt, 
 
 And blood-stained hanger, through which, as it waved, 
 
 Glimmered the moon, as it had been of air ! 
 
 The tree remains : that philosophic lout 
 
 And his co-truant sect, Peripatetics 
 
 Of Nature's good old school, the fields and woods, 
 
 Shy of her teachings if set forth in Greek, 
 
 But deeply versed in her unlettered lore, 
 
 In tongues of insects, rivulets and birds, 
 
 Where are they now ? The flowers of other lands, 
 
 Unconscious mourners, dew the graves of some, 
 
 And some, perchance the happier few, have found 
 
 A simple, but not nameless, stone, beside 
 
 The turf that heaves o'er their ancestral dust : 
 
 Others, like me, still wander on, to find 
 
 Not vainly did the ancients picture Hope 
 
 With hand that held a half-blown flower, with wing 
 
 Lifted, as she would ever fly, and foot 
 
 But touching earth, as it were not her home. 
 
 Among them there was one, beside the door 
 
 Of the old mansion of whose boyhood grew 
 
 Two willows, in whose still shade he was wont 
 
 1 Within a few miles of the scene of this poem, is a beautiful group of 
 islets called " The Thimbles," which this reputed outlaw is said to have 
 frequented, and where formerly it was customary to dig for his supposed 
 buried, treasures, amid, report says, showers of stones from the witches who 
 guarded them. They are a fit domain for Oberon and his Queen.
 
 IDLINGS WITH NATURE. 129 
 
 Outstretched to lie, through the long summer days, 
 
 And dream of much 'twas then and since has been 
 
 His aim, but not his lot, to realize. 
 
 Years came, at length, of less impassioned hope, 
 
 And he had wandered long, and Nature wooed 
 
 In all, but, chiefly, her sequestered haunts 
 
 With an unweaned fondness; shunned his kind, 
 
 And, smitten with her unveiled loveliness, 
 
 Sought her by stream, in wood, by ocean-wave, 
 
 Where'er he traced few steps of man, but she 
 
 In God's undesecrated presence dwelt, 
 
 And of his wisdom, power, and goodness spake. 
 
 He had stored his mind, too, with ideal shapes 
 
 The grand and beautiful, the dark and bright 
 
 Of Fancy's realm. The ruins of old days 
 
 The skeletons of empire's sepulchre 
 
 Had glared upon him, with their thunder-scarred 
 
 And spectral aspects, fittest to inspire 
 
 Thoughts deep and unforgotten. And yet ne'er 
 
 Saw he, in all his wanderings, or felt 
 
 Aught to forbid sad longings for the hours 
 
 He spent, a boy, recumbent in the shade 
 
 Of those two willows ; sad he sees them still, 
 
 Imaged as tangible, to his mind's eye, 
 
 As when, in spring, they put forth their green leaves, 
 
 Scenting, at morn, the dewy air with balm, 
 
 Or echoing to the hum of noontide bee.
 
 IJO IDLINGS WITH NATURE. 
 
 Reaching the skirts of the old wood, I paused, 
 Suffering the quiet beauty of the hour, 
 With all its soft, but bright serenity, 
 The place, with all its gorgeous scenery 
 Of fading forest hues rich light and shade, 
 To fit me, passive, for that idle mood 
 Of dreaming wakefulness, in which I've spent 
 Much of what haply the great world might call, 
 And perchance rightly, a most worthless life. 
 
 All was so still that I could almost count 
 The tinklings of the falling leaves, the low, 
 Faint sounds, that knell them, by their fellow-dead 
 Of last year's growth borne, dew-wept, to their graves. 
 At times, indeed, detached by its own weight, 
 A nut would drop, and then, as if it had 
 His grasp eluded as he struck the meat, 
 Was heard a squirrel's short and fretful bark. 
 Anon, a troop of noisy, roving jays, 
 Whisking their gaudy topknots, would surprise 
 And seize, with sudden swoop, on some tall tree, 
 Shrieking, as if on purpose to enjoy 
 The consternation of the lone, still noon. 
 Roused by the din, with solemn hoot, the owl, 
 Like some grave justice bent to keep the peace, 
 Indignant stared, much wondering what it meant. 
 And on a stone there, near me, basked a fly 
 In the warm sunshine, vain of his green coat 
 Of variable velvet, laced with gold,
 
 IDLINGS WITH NATURE. 131 
 
 That, ever and anon, would whisk about, 
 
 Vexing the stillness with his buzzing din, 
 
 As human fopling will do with his talk ; 
 
 And o'er the mossy post of an old fence, 
 
 Lured from its crannies by the warmth, was spied 
 
 A swarm of gay motes, waltzing to a tune 
 
 Of their own humming ; or some cricket, which 
 
 The last night's frost had spared, crept feebly forth, 
 
 And, sadly merry, piped one carol more. 
 
 Round the old tenement, toward which I drew 
 With a strange thrill, that made me gladly feel 
 And closely strain the oakling in my grasp, 
 And swing it with an air of courage, all 
 At noonday, as at midnight, lone, was still ; 
 Save that, at intervals, a door, which seemed 
 By hand invisible disturbed, would creak, 
 Or window-frame, mysteriously jar. 
 A toad sat musing on the mouldering sill, 
 And, planted on a post, was seen to bleach 
 What seemed the skull of some departed steed ; 
 A withered weed, to me of name unknown, 
 Shot from each eyeless socket, and, where once 
 Had been an ear, her web the spider spun. 
 
 A few old, straggling posts, half sunk in earth, 
 And alleys, edged with stinted boxwood, told 
 Where once had been a garden. The rank sward, 
 Brambles and weeds, the savage hordes that press
 
 132 IDLINGS WITH NATURE. 
 
 Defenceless culture from her flowery walks, 
 Had o'errun bed and bower, trampling each plant 
 Of delicate and artificial growth, 
 
 Save where, perchance, with look half wild, half tame, 
 Some fruit-tree sapling battled for the soil 
 Of his more civilized progenitors ; 
 Or straggling honeysuckle, or rose-bush 
 The fragrance of whose sere leaf, like a sigh, 
 Stole on the sense and else unscented air- 
 Seemed gently to implore the passer-by 
 And crave a rescue from intruding thorns : 
 All but the sunflower; she, in gorgeous trim, 
 With queen-like air, rose stately and apart, 
 And proudly wore her diadem of gold, 
 And bent not but in worship to her love. 
 
 In front, an aged oak his knotted, gnarled 
 And mossy branches threw forth with an air 
 Of battle and defiance to the winds, 
 That, for a century, had swept his leaves, 
 But not his strength, to oblivion and decay : 
 A type of Virtue warring against Fortune, 
 Shorn of the honors that the world confers, 
 Thence unimpaired, and bending to the stroke 
 Alone of Heaven. Like a sepulchral shaft, 
 With names misspelt, or indecipherable, 
 (Emblem of much ambition leaves to time,) 
 His trunk was scored, and, midway planted, wore
 
 IDLINGS WITH NATURE. 133 
 
 A rusty horseshoe, antidote, whilom, 
 
 To stroke of star malign and wizard spell. 
 
 Without, at either end, a chimney heaved 
 Its shapeless stack of no less shapeless stones, 
 Rent as by lightning, with dry knots of grass 
 And sticks of wrens' nests thrust in every chink. 
 Long ! since the chattering tenant of the eaves 
 Had, at the lattice, as the day-star bade 
 His dewy farewell to the morning, peeped, 
 To greet the simple inmates ; long ! since curled 
 The quiet smoke from the old chimney-top, 
 Fragments of which lay mouldering on the roof, 
 With fern, or plant of like dull leaf, o'ergrown, 
 And moss, spungy and green, and, here and there, 
 A weed or toadstool sprouting from its tufts. 
 
 Nor had the nibbling, cankering tooth of time 
 Less busy been within. A door aslant, 
 Held by a single rusty hinge, revealed 
 A passage, trailing at whose entrance waved 
 A cobweb, hung with carcasses of flies. 
 The scantlings of the floor were loose and warped, 
 And, here and there, a head of rusty nail 
 Had started from them. Wasp-combs on the wall 
 Warned the bee * elsewhere, if she would her sweets 
 See safely stored, to excavate her cell ; 
 
 1 The boring humblebee.
 
 134 IDLINGS WITH NATURE. 
 
 And, in a corner, was a squirrel's hole, 
 Through which long nettles shot toward the light, 
 And, peeping forth, the husk of an old ear 
 Of corn betrayed the pilferer, and shells 
 Of mouldy nuts were strewn about its edge ; 
 And, on the sunken hearth-stone, beneath whose 
 Gray slab he burrowed, lay a half-burnt brand, 
 And fragments of a chimney-swallow's nest. 
 
 The field-mouse, from his summer home dislodged, 
 With wary-forecast had been busy where 
 Dank, mouldering masses of coarse meadow-grass 
 Stood, smoking in the sun ; at one of which 
 A half-grown, unshorn outlaw of a steer 
 Was planted, goring, with his short, sharp horns, 
 The mouldy fodder, which he tossed and snuffed 
 Indignant, heedless that his wrath unhoused 
 A luckless weasel and her helpless brood. 
 At sight of me he paused, and, pricking forth 
 His shaggy ears, advanced with look, as 'twere, 
 Of battle and defiance, but, in sooth, 
 Of perturbation and mute wonder. Man 
 To him seemed doubtless but a creature strange, 
 In whom he traced small semblance to his kind, 
 Nor aught to make him wish the distance less 
 That intervened betwixt him and my staff. 
 So there he stood, as spectre-stricken, till 
 My dog came loitering up from some dull scent 
 Of game he haply sought not, and, anon,
 
 IDLINGS WITH NATURE. 135 
 
 Dismissed him headlong to where wondering gazed 
 His fellow outlaws from the forest-shade. 
 
 The lonely hours thus idly busy flew, 
 In that half-listless, half-observant mood, 
 When thoughts of serious or of sportive aim 
 Alike impress us, till the gorgeous west 
 Sunset lit up, with all the drapery 
 Wherewith she loves to deck her couch of clouds, 
 The last I've seen, and, haply, e'er shall see, 
 Sink o'er those hills and linger o'er those woods.
 
 BATTLE OF SAN JACINTO IN TEXAS. 
 
 >'"T > IS done, the sword is once more sheathed, 
 
 So nobly drawn in valor's cause, 
 And Texas sees her soil bequeathed 
 
 To freeborn men and equal laws ; 
 Bequeathed by those who, whether they 
 
 As victors or as vanquished fell, 
 Have left a deathless memory, 
 
 A spirit that no might may quell. 
 
 The monuments of Freedom are 
 
 The names of such; the scroll decays, 
 Nor less will time the marble spare 
 
 Where Fame records their deeds and praise ; 
 The names of those, whose swords have won, 
 
 Redeemed the green sod where they lie, 
 Transmitted still from sire to son, 
 
 From heart to heart, can never die.
 
 MISCELLANEOUS. 137 
 
 And by their graves, in years to come, 
 
 Where firm they stood, or rushed to greet 
 With shouts the foeman's trump and drum, 
 
 He never more shall wind or beat, 
 Shall dwell a race, untaught to bow 
 
 To tyrant power a race, whose hands 
 Shall bear the flag whose free folds now 
 
 In triumph float to other lands. 
 
 And there the sire, as the plough turns 
 
 Some warlike relic from the sod, 
 Whose mould the battle-ranks inurns 
 
 That few, but fearless, "blood-shod strode," 
 Shall from it shake the dust, and turn 
 
 And to the stripling proudly say, 
 Here firm we stood, there fell the foe 
 
 On Texas' independence-day.
 
 POETRY OF THE WOODS. 
 
 HT^HE face of Nature, where it once has been 
 
 Deeply impressed, remains indelible, 
 As does a mother's in the memory 
 Of an affectionate though weaned child ; 
 Earth, sea, and sky, have each their votaries, 
 Their worshipped forms, but ever forest depths 
 That house the eagle, and their giant trunks 
 See, unmolested by the woodman's stroke, 
 Ascend, or perish but by that of time. 
 And surely he that, with rude foot, disturbs 
 The echoes, couched, like Dryads, in their shade, 
 And hears the wind prolong, through the deep gloom 
 Of their o'er-arching and wide-spreading boughs, 
 Its solemn music, and the low, strange sounds, 
 Uttered, as 'twere, from an unearthly shrine, 
 By powers invisible, and does not feel 
 The thrill of an imaginative awe, 
 A visionary consciousness of more 
 Than meets the sense may well conclude, whate'er
 
 MISCELLANEOUS. 139 
 
 The star that blessed his birth, 'twas none whose power 
 The Muse e'er felt or blessed. " Forbear ! " had said 
 The nymphs, whose whispers heard the Delphic shades, 
 " Nor dare profane the Genius of the spot ! "
 
 THE FALL OF THE OAK AN 
 AUTUMN SCENE. 
 
 A GLORIOUS tree is the oak ! 
 
 He has stood for a thousand years, 
 Has stood and frowned 
 On the woods around, 
 Like a king among his peers. 
 As around their king they stand, so now, 
 As the flowers their pale leaves fold, 
 The tall trees around him stand, arrayed 
 In their robes of purple and gold. 
 
 The autumn sun looks kindly down; 
 But the frost is on the lea, 
 
 And sprinkles the horn 
 
 Of the owl, at morn, 
 As she hies to the old oak-tree. 
 
 Not a leaf is stirred, 
 
 Not a sound is heard,
 
 MISCELLANEOUS. 141 
 
 Save the thump of the thresher's flail, 
 
 The low wind's sigh, 
 
 Or the distant cry 
 Of the hound on the fox's trail. 
 
 By wild thorn-brake, and brook-marge green, 
 Winding his way, the woodman's seen, 
 Till lost in the dewy gloom 
 That shrouds the hill, 
 Where, few and chill, 
 The sunbeams struggling come ; 
 Where the last flower scents the frosty air ; 
 
 And, hark ! o'er height and hollow, 
 As the partridge whirs from her leafy lair, 
 His strokes the echoes follow. 
 
 Like a ship at sea, 
 
 Rocks the old oak-tree ; 
 Through the folds of his gorgeous vest, 
 
 You may see him shake, 
 
 And the night-owl break, 
 With a hoot, from his golden crest. 
 She will come but to find him gone from where 
 
 He stood at the glimpse of day ; 
 Like a cloud that peals, as it melts in air, 
 He has passed, with a crash, away.
 
 142 MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Though the spring in green, and the frost in gold, 
 No more his limbs attire, 
 The wild sea-wave 
 He shall mount, and brave 
 The blast and the battle-fire ; 
 Shall spread his white wings to the wind, 
 And thunder on the deep, 
 As he thundered, ere 
 His bough was bare, 
 On the high and stormy steep.
 
 RUINS OF THE TEMPLE OF JUPITER 
 PANHELLENIUS, 1 
 
 IN THE ISLAND OF JEGINA. 
 
 T ONE, from the summit of a lofty isle, 
 *-* The columns of a ruined temple lift 
 Their shattered fronts, each with its diadem 
 Of crumbling architrave and withered weeds. 
 A gray fraternity ! rough with the dints 
 That speak of battle with the elements 
 So old, indeed, and weather-stained, they seem 
 More ancient than the pinnacle they crown. 
 
 A proud and lofty structure in its day ! 
 Peopled, perchance, with shapes of breathing stone, 
 And rich in sculpture of historic feats ; 
 But, now, consisting of a few gray shafts, 
 That, by the winds, as sea-rocks by the waves, 
 Wasted, do yet, in their old aspects, wear 
 A look of majesty and stern command : 
 
 > "Of all the Greeks."
 
 144 MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 As if some Titan, battling with the gods, 
 Had perished, blasted in the very act 
 To dare their thunder, and there left his bones, 
 Upright, and bleaching in the mountain air. 
 
 Silent we stood in their lone noontide shade, 
 And only heard the bee's low hum, or chirp ' 
 Of the small martlet, that delights to build 
 And sport, as 'twere in mockery of man, 
 Where desolation has usurped his seat. 
 
 But in these old and time-worn relics, whose 
 Majestic columns now the broken chords 
 Whose minstrel is the element erewhile 
 Responded, with a loud, a lofty voice, 
 To festive or heroic argument, 
 And, hung with garlands, like a vernal grove, 
 Inhaled the incense, heard the vows, and were 
 The council-hall of universal Greece, 
 There dwells the spirit of a mightier spell, 
 Whose ministers are proud remembrances, 
 Linked by indissoluble sympathy 
 To human hearts phantoms of haughty sway, 
 Warlike achievement, hazardous emprise, 
 Indomitable freedom, and the mind, 
 Whose light, though set, forever past, has left 
 A vivifying and creative power, 
 Felt and confessed throughout the universe.
 
 LIFE. 
 
 A Parody on the " Battle of Hohenlinden." 
 
 T T THEN life's young blood is felt to glow, 
 
 Bounding from finger-tip to toe, 
 As it were Bourbon or Bourdeaux, 
 E'en but to be is jollity. 
 
 In our hope's sky then ever gay 
 Kaleidoscopic phantoms play ; 
 Life is to be one summer day, 
 
 The world, the land hight " Faery." 
 
 But manhood comes, a stern, staid sprite ; 
 O then to bright boy-dream good-night ! 
 When things begin to black from white 
 
 To change their May-morn livery. 
 
 If bachelors, we're lass-lorn, lone, 
 If husbands, bantlings, one by one, 
 With bakers, butchers, bills up-run, 
 
 And wives with shops for finery. 
 
 7
 
 146 MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Tax-gatherers, duns, a houndlike pack, 
 Law, quacks, our pockets, peace, still rack. 
 Each thinks himself, at last, a jack, * 
 
 And with much reason generally. 
 
 Our better angel cries, " Repent ! " 
 Our evil, " No ! " till, earthward bent, 
 Haply misused each talent lent, 
 
 We close life's tragi-comedy. 
 
 1 An ass.
 
 PIECES OF A RELIGIOUS 
 CHARACTER. 
 
 THE TWO WORLDS. 
 
 WHEN from the flower of life has fled 
 The sweetness of its early bloom, 
 And, o'er its fading tints, are shed 
 
 The dark, cold shadows of the tomb, 
 
 Oh ! then for hopes we cease to care, 
 
 That light us not to worlds on high, 
 
 But forms of seeming brightness wear, 
 
 And, as we think to grasp them, fly. 
 
 When Pleasure o'er the cheerless cup, 
 Whose dregs are tears, repentant sighs, 
 
 Its garlands dead, its wine drank up, 
 And Love puts out his torch and dies,
 
 148 RELIGIOUS. 
 
 Friendless and lone, by sorrow tried, 
 Oh ! then we turn, from earthly bliss, 
 
 To worlds where purer spirits bide, 
 Beyond the false, cold smiles of this. 
 
 II. 
 
 THE PAST AND THE PRESENT. 
 TO C . 
 
 T T 7E met in other, brighter hours, 
 * When life seemed like the fabled isle, * 
 Whose spring ne'er cast her wreath of flowers, 
 
 And sky was one, unclouded smile : 
 And we have found it like the strand, 2 
 
 Whose fruits are seen to tempt the eye, 
 But turn to ashes in the hand, 
 
 Whose roses, ere they bloom, still die. 
 
 But, as the bow her sign sends up 
 
 O'er troubled waves, from suffering spring 
 The calmer peace, the brighter hope, 
 
 Whose home is where the angels sing. 
 Is there a pleasure we for pain 
 
 Would not exchange, if so forgiven? 
 And who their earthly wishes gain, 
 
 Without, perchance, the loss of heaven ? 
 
 1 Atlantis. 2 Shores of the Dead Sea.
 
 RELIGIOUS. 149 
 
 III. 
 
 THE NUNS' EVENING-HYMN TO THE 
 BLESSED VIRGIN. 
 
 " Henceforth all generations shall call me blessed." 
 
 Luke i. 48. 
 
 TV /T OTHER of peace ! 1 whene'er the calm, 
 
 The twilight hour we see 
 With dewy blush retire, we raise 
 Our thoughts and eyes to thee. 
 
 1 " Mother of peace," " mercy," etc., in the sense of her being able to 
 obtain them for us by her prayers. 
 
 As possibly, to some readers, this and the next two pieces may seem to 
 savor of superstition at least, the author, especially as the subject is one of 
 much interest, will venture here briefly to remark that they greatly err 
 who suppose that the practice of invoking the intercessory aid of the saints 
 is confined solely to the Catholic, and Greek and other Oriental Churches. 
 Even Luther himself says (Prep, ad Mort.), " Let no one omit to call 
 upon the Blessed Virgin and the angels and saints, that they may intercede 
 with God for them at the instant " (of dying) ; and Bishop Montague, con 
 sidered one of the brightest lights of the Established Church of England, ob 
 serves (Treat. Invoc. of Saints), " It is no impiety to say, Holy Mary, pray 
 for me; Holy Peter, pray for me." It would seem probable that the 
 Lutheran Churches, at least the stricter of them, still recommend what their 
 founder so earnestly enjoins, and that, in his, the bishop, in regard to his be 
 lief on this point, was not likely to have stood alone. That both the doc 
 trine and practice of invoking the prayers of the saints are agreeable to near 
 ly all, if not indeed all, the ancient fathers and doctors of the Church, is ad 
 mitted (if their remarks on this topic be collectively taken) by the Protestant 
 writers, Fulk (Rejoinder to Bristow, and upon 2 Pet. i. ), Thomdike (in 
 Epig. 3), Brightman (in Apoc. 14), and the Centuriators of Magdeburg (cent. 
 4), all of whom had doubtless consulted their works in the original Greek 
 and Latin. Indeed, this at least poetically beautiful and consolatory devo 
 tion is, even now, practiced by at least four-fifths of the portion, that calls it 
 self Christian, of the human race. The advocates for it, if weight of author 
 ity and numbers are to be regarded, appear to have much the best of the 
 argument
 
 150 RELIGIOUS. 
 
 Mother of mercy ! scat of all 
 Sweet, kind affections, hear ! 
 As now, with humble plea, we kneel, 
 And penitential tear. 
 
 Mother of hope ! o'er life's dark sea 
 Bright and unsetting sign ; 
 Mother of God ! to whose prayer will 
 He list, if not to thine? 
 
 Mother of joy ! before whose smile 
 Our troubles flee, as, where 
 Beams on the night thy emblem bright, 1 
 The clouds dissolve to air. 
 
 Sad, sinful souls, we hardly dare 
 To raise our eyes to heaven : 
 Pray thou for us ! oh, pray ! and we 
 May hope to be forgiven. 
 
 IV. 
 
 ,EGEAN VESPERS. 
 
 RA pro nobis / a With the dying moan 
 
 Of wind and wave, the vesper-hymn we hear, 
 O'er the calm deep more faintly breathed, and lone, 
 And tremulous, as uttered with a tear : 
 
 1 Crescent moon. 
 
 8 See note to the piece next preceding this.
 
 RELIGIOUS. 151 
 
 For now, with oar suspended, glide we near 
 The convent, fading, mid the twilight pale ; 
 
 And pausing, lo ! the wayworn mountaineer, 
 And passing voyager, with slackened sail, 
 Thee, Mary, ever blest, sweet Virgin-Mother, hail. 
 
 Oh ! never may this weary heart forget 
 
 The hour which bids us raise our thoughts to thee ! 
 Those gracious eyes, meek mercy's own, oh ! let 
 
 Them ever plead for sad humanity ! 
 
 Whether, as now, far o'er the lonely sea 
 The daylight fades, or gilds the forest wild, 
 
 The city dome, where'er our path may be, 
 Oh ! ever still affectionate and mild, 
 In pity for us plead, like mother for her child ! 
 
 v. 
 THE DEATH OF ST. CLARA. 
 
 O HE slept not, and yet seemed to sleep, 
 v -' While rose the evening prayer, 1 
 And tones more sadly soft and sweet 
 Were heard in air. 
 
 The angels knew she was to die, 
 And soon to be with them, 
 And so they left their choirs, to sing 
 Her requiem. 
 
 1 Sung at vespers.
 
 152 RELIGIOUS. 
 
 But once she raised her eye ; it met 
 The holy sign 1 that lay, 
 Beside the lily, on her breast, 
 Then closed for aye. 
 
 Softly, like vesper incense, passed 
 Her soul, at dewy eve, 
 To where the bright, the chosen few, 
 Their crowns receive. 
 
 Oh, happy spirit ! now like them 
 From sin and suffering free, 
 Pray thou for us ! we have no cause 
 To pray for thee. 
 
 VI. 
 
 TO THE INFANT SAVIOUR. 
 
 A Christmas Hymn 
 
 W 1 
 
 'E know why Thou wert born, 
 
 At midnight, cold, forlorn, 
 Each brighter star, perchance, obscured or set ; 
 A little straw Thy bed, 
 No pillow for Thy head, 
 Thy swaddling-clothes Thy only coverlet : 
 It was that we might love Thee. 
 
 1 Crucifix.
 
 RELIGIOUS. 153 
 
 Hadst with the glorious band, 
 
 That in Thy presence stand 
 Waiting Thy will Thou come, O dearest Lord ! 
 
 In gold and purple drest, 
 
 A King, nay God, confest, 
 Oh ! then we had with awe-struck gaze adored, 
 But, ah ! might not have loved Thee. 
 
 I see the shepherds spread, 
 
 To shield Thy houseless head 
 From the cold wind, their fleecy cloaks ; I hear 
 
 The whispered prayers they make, 
 
 I see them kneeling take 
 Thy little hand, and from it kiss the tear 
 
 Thou vveep'st, that they may love Thee. 
 
 I see Thy Mother's smile, 
 
 Yet hear her sigh, the while 
 She muses what Thy suffering lot may be ; 
 
 I see her o'er Thee bend 
 
 With Joseph, as they tend 
 Thy wants with pitying care, and silent plea, 
 That all the world may love Thee. 
 
 Thy cradle is the hard, 
 
 Cold manger, but Thy guard 
 Adoring seraphs, who, with folded wing 
 
 Veiling Thy closed eyes, keep 
 
 A still watch o'er Thy sleep : 
 
 Oh, would, sweet Babe, my God, my heavenly King ! 
 That \vc, like them, could love Thee !
 
 154 RELIGIOUS. 
 
 VII. 
 
 THE PENANCE OF ST. MARY OF EGYPT. 
 
 She is said, after having led an abandoned life in Egypt, to have retired 
 to a solitude beyond the Jordan, and there lived and died a great penitent. 
 
 HE wanders where by Jordan sleep 
 
 The moonbeam pale and willow sere : 
 There sighs the reed, the lily weeps, 
 Bedewed with her repentant tear ; 
 Reminding her of days, when she 
 Was spotless as the vestal flower 
 Blest days ! alas, how much unlike 
 Her dark and penitential hour ! 
 
 Unbound her locks, the braids they wore 
 Of gems and gold unheeded lie ; 
 For, lo ! the cross, where imaged still 
 Her Lord and Saviour seems to die. 
 Oh ! how can she there fix her eye, 
 Nor weep for sins, which, though forgiven, 
 Seem as their memory must remain 
 And need repentance e'en in heaven ! 
 
 Where now the brow the myrtle wreathed ? 
 The Lydian air, the Teian lute, 
 The flattering lips, that still, where breathed 
 The music of her own, were mute?
 
 RELIGIOUS. 155 
 
 The airy step that led the dance? 
 The cheek the rose-bloom fades beside ? 
 The jewels that, beneath her glance, 
 Their dazzling lustre seemed to hide? 
 
 Like one she seems whose thoughts from earth 
 No comfort seek, no trouble fear, 
 But live for God alone, nor ask 
 From human eye a smile or tear; 
 Like one who feels, to heaven's gate, 
 Though still she soars with patient wing, 
 Some sin she yet must expiate, 
 Ere fold it where the angels sing. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 PENITENCE. 
 
 A Hymn for Lent. 
 
 T SEE Thee, Jesus ! on the cross, 
 
 And feel Thy every wound ; 
 I see Thy hand the iron pierce, 
 And hear the hammer sound : 
 I see the thorns, the blood, the tears 
 That, with it mingling, fall ; 
 Thy bleeding limbs ; and hear the strokes 
 They bore in Pilate's hall.
 
 156 RELIGIOUS. 
 
 Oh ! let me ne'er forget what all 
 These sufferings mean that they 
 The ransom for my guilty soul 
 Alone can ever pay. 
 'Twas I, dear Saviour ! helped to cause 
 Those cruel wounds : ah ! why 
 Should I not love for Him -to weep 
 Who loved for me to die ? 
 
 IX. 
 
 MATINS. 
 
 T T ER starry watch withdraws the night, 
 
 Her woodland hymn the morning hears, 
 And earth with heaven seems, dewy, bright, 
 To meet with smiles, and yet with tears. 
 
 So should thy earlier offering be : 
 Let thanks, with joyful praise, precede ; 
 
 Then bow thy heart as well as knee, 
 And, weeping, for forgiveness plead. 
 
 Thanks to the Power whose pencil stains 
 
 Yon rosy cloud, yon azure skies, 
 Some, glory yet to earth remains, 
 
 Some relic of her paradise !
 
 RELIGIOUS. 
 
 Rise ! with the birds thy song begin, 
 Ere yet the day's bright orb be seen, 
 
 Thy song of praise ; and mourn for sin, 
 As mourned the dying Magdalene. 
 
 157 
 
 x. 
 
 LIFE BEYOND THE GRAVE. 
 
 AY not the soul must perish here, 
 
 For endless being though she sigh : 
 Were this her home, her only sphere, 
 Oh ! who is there would fear to die ? 
 Then look above, nor vainly try 
 To make of earth a paradise ; 
 But trust to Faith's unerring eye, 
 Whose home is Immortality's.
 
 CIRCE AND TELEMACHUS. 
 
 Telemachus, while searching for Ulysses, is supposed to have been 
 wrecked on the island of Circe, who, enamoured of him, would persuade 
 him to resolve not to leave it. 
 
 CIRCE. 
 
 OH ! where be happy if not here ? 
 Here are but summer hours ; 
 The rainbow, ever in the sky, 
 See imaged in the flowers ; 
 Cool fountains, groves whose every leaf 
 Perfumes the breeze they shade ; 
 And birds whose music shames the pipe 
 Hermes to Argus played. 
 
 TELEMACHUS. 
 
 Goddess, no home are these gay bowers, 
 
 These idle halls, for me ; 
 
 A hero's son, I would my deeds, 
 
 My fame, like his, should be.
 
 MISCELLANEOUS. 159 
 
 No ! would yon bark were mine, and I 
 Once more upon the wave ! 
 Toil is but pastime to the free, 
 And peril scorn the brave. 
 
 CIRCE. 
 
 Ah ! what's the fame, what but a name, 
 
 You, though it ever flies, 
 
 Still hope to win by deeds of bold, 
 
 Yet haply vain, emprise ? - 
 
 What but the star that seems to crown 
 
 The hill-top it shines o'er, 
 
 Yet, as we climb, is found to be 
 
 As distant as before ? 
 
 TELEMACHUS. 
 
 Oh ! what for me a life like this 
 Howe'er we it may name, 
 Thy immortality though I, 
 Power, isle, should share but shame ? 
 Mine be the meed of glorious deed, 
 The goal by hardship won 
 And peril, as the eagle soars 
 Through tempest to the sun ! 
 
 CIRCE. 
 
 Oh, foolish boy ! son of a sire 
 Wrongly reputed wise,
 
 l6o MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Go ! seek him, wretch, if still alive, 
 
 The scorn of earth and skies. 
 
 The bower, I vainly decked for him, 
 
 Again I deck for thee : 
 
 No farther roam be this thy home, 
 
 Thy Ithaca, with me. 
 
 TELEMACHUS. 
 
 Deck uot the bower, tune not the lute ! 
 
 The garland-rose you twine 
 
 The stone my pillow, turf my bed 
 
 Befits no brow like mine. 
 
 Crown not the cup, scent not the couch, 
 
 The wreath ! The soul that still 
 
 And such is mine the tempter would 
 
 Disarm, has but to will.
 
 THE ARTIST'S GRAVE. 
 
 A S here, beside thy humble grave, 
 
 I stand and mark the spot, 
 Where wild weeds unmolested wave, 
 And genius sleeps forgot, 
 I feel thy low, unhonored place 
 Of rest thus lone to see 
 One eye, at least, a tear, one heart 
 A sigh has left for thee. 
 
 I met thee in thy noon of life 
 
 And enviable state 
 
 Of fame, a height which few aspired 
 
 To reach, or emulate. 
 
 Thy pencil bid the ivory seem 
 
 To live, and it obeyed, 
 
 Appeared to breathe, nay think, impart 
 
 A soul to light and shade. 
 
 Those days are gone, forever gone, 
 And here alone I stand,
 
 162 MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 No more to greet thy friendly smile, 
 
 And grasp thy friendly hand ; 
 
 To feel I ne'er shall meet thy like, 
 
 Nor pause to mark the stone 
 
 That crowns some haply worthless dust, 
 
 Where should have slept thy own. 
 
 The pencil from whose touch to life 
 The tablet seems to spring ; 
 The sympathies that, like the air, 
 Embrace each living thing ; 
 Soul, music, wit, converse that bids 
 The hours as moments flee; 
 These seem as with thee gone, as they 
 Were never more to be. 
 
 DEFINITIONS. 
 
 THE TIME-SERVER. 
 
 W 
 
 ITH him the first in right is first in sway, 
 And conscience only but the hope of pay. 
 
 THE PULPIT QUACK. 
 
 To zeal inspired, not Greek, he makes pretence, 
 And never wants he words, if always sense ; 
 The reason is, the first are stolen pelf, 
 But for the last still trusts he to himself.
 
 THE REVEL. 
 
 ! Time with flying footstep press, 
 Let music breathe and wine-cup flow, 
 As hours were years, and happiness 
 
 A dweller, not a guest, below ; 
 As revel's night were ne'er to close, 
 
 And sorrow had for cheeks that bloom, 
 And beaming eyes, that mock repose, 
 No tear in store, and earth no tomb. 
 
 As yet the dewy day-star sleeps ; 
 
 No rest ! till woke, as moonlight flies, 
 On faded cheeks he coldly peeps, 
 
 On weary feet, and watching eyes : 
 No rest ! Enough that day-beams bright 
 
 To hours of care and toil belong ; 
 On ! cease not till they wake ! the night 
 
 Was made for mirth, for love and song. 
 
 So says the wish that rules the hour ; 
 Till seems as sound the dance, the lute,
 
 1 64 MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 The laugh, in this Circean bower 
 Each better angel gone, or mute : 
 
 For hearts that now his whispers shun, 
 Perchance await atoning years ; 
 
 And few the nights, as here begun, 
 That end with smiles, if not with tears. 
 
 SONG. 
 
 T DREAMED I heard, where wild-flowers grew, 
 
 The morning song of bird and bee : 
 The rose was there " But where," I said, 
 " The rose's lover, 1 where is he ? " 
 
 So, words from many lips I hear 
 That music seem to all but me ; 
 To other ears they may be sweet, 
 But not to mine till spoke by thee. 
 
 1 The nightingale.
 
 VISION OF JUNE. 
 
 T SEE thee, June ! Thy bright, blue eye 
 
 And rosy cheek, foretell the hours 
 Of cloudless skies and leafy shades, 
 Of singing birds and blowing flowers. 
 She comes ! the summer's bridemaid : air 
 Seems but one odor, song, to cheer 
 This first-born heiress of the Spring, 
 And loveliest handmaid of the year. 
 
 Now here she plucks a leafy twine, 
 Wherewith her brow to shade ; now there, 
 Some half-blown rose, or lily-bud 
 A jewel for her lustrous hair ; 
 Nor them alone, but every flower 
 To which the bee is singing, till 
 She pauses where, at noon, the flock 
 Reposes on the breezy hill. 
 
 At length the wood-bird to his mate 
 His evening song has trilled ; then, lone,
 
 1 66 MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 She sits, where drowsy brooklets chide 
 Their banks, with dark-eyed violets sown : 
 Where wild-vine bower and unpruned brake 
 In dewy, odorous silence sleep, 
 Till morn, to music as they wake, 
 Salutes them from the eastern steep. 
 
 I hail thee, June ! but, as I trace 
 Thy sylvan haunts, no longer see 
 The mate who sought thy streams and shades, 
 The maid who pulled thy rose, with me. 
 They sleep where thy own garlands strew 
 Their graves ; and, though thy balmy sky, 
 Thy odorous bloom, and woodland choir 
 I greet 'tis not without a sigh. 
 
 TO A NUN HEARD SINGING. 
 
 T ~\ J HEN to my closing eye this world 
 
 And all its bright illusions fade, 
 And on my heart the dull, cold hand 
 Of death, to still its throb, is laid, 
 Oh, lady ! let some voice like thine 
 Breathe, as from heaven's own blissful sphere, 
 One cheering tone, and I shall deem 
 My spirit is already there.
 
 TO A PICTURE. 
 
 T T OW to the living features true, 
 The lip, the eye, the cheek ! 
 And yet why bid the ivory seem, 
 As here, to all but speak? 
 We need no picture to recall 
 Whate'er the limner's art 
 The lineaments of one who still 
 Is imaged to the heart. 
 
 LEADERS OF THE AMERICAN 
 REVOLUTION. 
 
 '"T^HEY waited not for trump or drum, 
 
 To bid them to the conflict press, 
 But stepped forth from their forest-home, 
 
 Like lions from the wilderness ; 
 Their rights to claim in words that woke 
 
 The coward to a sense of wrong ; 
 If words should fail, to wield the stroke 
 
 Of Freedom's sword, and shout her song.
 
 RELICS OF NOBILITY. 
 
 O ! then, to heroes, sages if allied, 
 
 Go ! trace the scroll, but not with eye of pride, 
 Where truth depicts their glories as they shone, 
 And leaves a blank where should have been your own. 
 
 Mark the pure beam on yon dark wave imprest ! 
 So shines the star on that degenerate breast ; 
 Each twinkling orb that burns with borrowed fires ! 
 So ye reflect the glory of your sires. 
 
 TO A WHITE LILY. 
 
 /COMPANION of my solitary hours, 
 ^-" Vestal of Nature's temple, nun of flowers, 
 Bending thy graceful form, as if in prayer, 
 Incensing with thy breath the morning air, 
 Thou seem'st to bid us kneeling give to Heaven 
 Our earliest thoughts. Ah ! that, to be forgiven, 
 We had no cause to kneel ! then had not I 
 Beheld thy stainless beauty with a sigh.
 
 WRITTEN IN AN ALBUM. 
 
 TIT" HEN the morning flower sends up 
 Incense from her dewy cup, 
 Maiden, pray for me ! 
 When the noontide shadows sleep, 
 When the stars their vigils keep, 
 Maiden, pray for me ! 
 
 When the vernal rills are gushing, 
 When the summer rose is blushing, 
 
 Maiden, pray for me I 
 When the autumn leaves are dying, 
 When the wintry winds are sighing, 
 
 Maiden, pray for me !
 
 MITYLENE. 1 
 
 T T ERE Sappho loved, and sang as ne'er 
 Sang woman since, and still I seem, 
 In this Circean air, to hear 
 The sigh of her impassioned dream. 
 Oh ! when in aught of lyric strain 
 Shall breathe a soul like hers again ! 
 
 VERSION OF A GREEK RELIC. 9 
 
 / "T V HOU'RT like the apple maiden, young and fair ! 
 
 That sees its fellows gathered, one by one, 
 While, where the topmost leaflet scents the air, 
 It unmolested sits and blooms alone : 
 Forgotten ? no ! a mark for every eye, 
 But for the gazer's longing hand too high. 
 
 ' Still a considerable city, and the capital of the island of its name, the 
 ancient Lesbos. Its present most interesting feature, however, we found 
 to be ''The Port of Olives," expanding from a narrow entrance into a soli 
 tary basin several miles in diameter, surrounded by high hills thickly clad 
 to their very summits with olive-trees. The most beautiful of the Greek isl 
 ands are perhaps this and its neighbor, Scio. The combined influences of 
 their climate, situation, and scenery, would almost seem to necessitate the 
 poetry and music for which they were formerly so remarkable. 
 
 8 In a note to Hist. Lit., Ancient Greece, it is supposed that the author 
 of this beautiful relic may have been Sappho.
 
 EPISTLE TO A BELLE. 
 
 In the manner of Swift. 
 
 /""^ELIA, your virtues I commend, 
 ^-^ But with the caution of a friend ; 
 For compliment to creature human 
 Is but especially to woman, 
 As to the weak are wine and victual, 
 A drop, a crumb are scarce too little. 
 But here you'll mind me of my duty, 
 And bid me not forget your beauty. 
 Now for a simile : let's see 
 I think I have one " to a tee." 
 Beauty is like a glass before 
 A picture set, that, if its pore 
 The features, without speck or fracture, 
 Transmit of Healy's l manufacture, 
 For tint and outline much commended, 
 Does all for what it was intended. 
 Now what the picture to the glass is, 
 The soul of woman to her face is ; 
 
 1 The eminent artist
 
 1 72 MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Through which, if we the traits but spy 
 Of heart and head for which we sigh, 
 No matter though, at first sight, it 
 Should put us in a fright or fit, 
 At length, improving by degrees, 
 Like wine by age, 'tis sure to please : 
 A truth that, pondered well, I wot 
 Has cost full many a Jack a thought, 
 And made, though neither plump nor fair, 
 His Gill at last seem debonair. 
 
 Launched on the world with sense to guide, 
 
 But in its ways as yet untried, 
 
 You mind me of a bark that, though 
 
 The pilot how to shun may know 
 
 Bare rock, or whirlpool, yet, if crossed 
 
 By hidden shelf or quicksand, 's lost : 
 
 For still the Tempter 'd make us ween 
 
 No mischiefs there where none is seen. 
 
 Fops will about you buzz and flit, 
 
 The bugs, transfix them with your wit ! 
 
 Wasps, that would rob you of your honey, 
 
 I. e., your morals and your money ; 
 
 At ball and levee you'll be noted, 
 
 Your dullest things as bonmots quoted ; 
 
 And that, for which you will eclat 
 
 Rightly deserve, as a. faux pas. 
 
 So, be not anxious there to shine, 
 
 (You know the proverb, " Husks for swine,")
 
 MISCELLANEOUS. 173 
 
 But keep your pearls for those who'll prize, 
 More than your acres and your eyes, 
 The rarer gifts, which are to them 
 As to its setting is the gem. 
 E'en knave or fool, howe'er he may 
 Complexion and far centum weigh, 
 Would rather not, I trow, dispense, 
 In maid or wife, with worth and sense. 
 
 But here methinks I hear you say, 
 
 " Man ! where's your breeding, sure, I pray? 
 
 You'll scarce expect one at eighteen 
 
 To die of Paley * and the spleen. 
 
 Each night I'm on my knees by two, 
 
 If not too sleepy, or at loo ; 
 
 My prayers, each morn, at ten I read, 
 
 And seldom (if they're short) in bed ; 
 
 And Doctor D to hear I hope 
 
 When next he'll preach against the pope. 
 Sir ! you forget ; I'd be your debtor 
 Not for a sermon, but a letter." 
 
 1 Author of "Palcy's Moral Philosophy."
 
 SCOTCH EPISTLE TO A FRIEND ON 
 HIS MARRIAGE. 
 
 ESPECIT SIR : 
 
 Though yc're my debtor, 
 It may be for a friendly letter, 
 Th' occasion's sic, perchance ye may 
 Expect frae me a line or sae. 1 
 
 Nae doubt ye'll think it straunge indeed 
 I write as if ayont the Tweed ; 
 But 'tis a truth, ye'll shortly con, 
 That as the wife is, sae the mon. s 
 
 I kenn'd 'twas for some weighty reason 
 We miss'd ye here sae late 'n the season, 
 Somcthin ye didna care for spreadin, 
 Either a funeral, or a weddin ; 
 But now a' * apprehension's past, 
 Nor muckle grieve I 'twas the last. 
 It also gies me na sma' pleasure 
 To learn, in this same nuptial measure, 
 
 1 So. * The bride of the writer was of Scotland. 3 All.
 
 MISCELLANEOUS. 175 
 
 That leads sae mony, when too late, 
 To curse, if not themsel, their fate, 
 Ye'll never hae excuse to rue 
 What half monkind sae sadly do, 
 When Love awa' his bow maun fling 
 And mak a halter of the string : 
 In ither words, possest of ane 
 Sae fairly spotless of a' stain, 
 (If that be true o' which I'm hearin,) 
 'Tis your ain faut if things gae jarrin. 
 
 That ilka comin joy be thine 
 Is not your ain wish mair than mine 
 Or hers, who soon, it is my prayer, 
 May hae your likeness in an heir ; 
 For, faith ! the warld is bad indeed, 
 And needs some ane to mend the breed. 
 
 I am still, as becomes me duly, 
 Respecit sir, yours vera truly.
 
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