Cling, if thou wilt, but spare thy wearied slave !
Exert thy nobler power, thy greater heart;
Bid the vain world resume whate'er it gave,-
But speak of brighter hopes, of bliss beyond the grave.
London Magazine.
THE birds have sung themselves to rest,
That flitted 'round our bower;
The weight of the night-dew has bowed
The head of every flower;
The ringing of the hunter's horn
Has ceased upon the hill,
The cottage windows gleam with light,
The harvest song is still;
And safe and silent in the bay,
Is moored each fisher's prow;
Each wearied one has sought his home,
But where, my love, art thou ?
I picked a rose, a red blush rose,
Just as the dews begun,
I kissed its leaves, but thought one kiss
Would be a sweeter one.
I kept the rose and kiss, I thought
How dear they both would be !
But now I fear the rose and kiss
Are kept in vain for thee!
Blackwood's Magazine.
How sweet and solemn, all alone,
With reverend step, from stone to stone
In a small village church-yard lying,
O'er intervening flowers to move-
And as we read the names unknown,
Of young and old, to judgment gone,
And hear, in the calm air above,
Time onwards softly flying,
To meditate, in Christian love,
Upon the dead and dying!
Across the silence seem to go
With dream-like motion, wavery, slow,
And shrouded in their folds of snow,
The friends we loved long, long ago !
Gliding across the sad retreat,
How beautiful their phantom feet!
What tenderness is in their eyes,
Turned where the poor survivor-lies,
'Mid monitory sanctities!
What years of vanished joy are fanned
From one uplifting of that hand
In its white stillness! When the shade
Doth glimmeringly in sunshine fade
From our embrace, how dim appears
This world's life through a mist of tears!
Vain hopes! Wild sorrows! Needless fears!
Such is the scene around me now:-
A little church-yard, on the brow
Of a green pastoral hill;
Its sylvan village sleeps below,
And faintly, here, is heard the flow
Of Woodburn's summer rill;
A place where all things mournful meet,
And, yet, the sweetest of the sweet!
The stillest of the still!
With what a pensive beauty fall
Across the mossy mouldering wall
That rose-trees' clustered arches! See
The robin-redbreast, warily,
Bright through the blossoms leaves his nest:
Sweet ingrate! through the winter blest
At the firesides of men-but shy
Through all the sunny-summer hours,-
He hides himself among the flowers
In his own wild festivity.
What lulling sound, and shadow cool,
Hangs half the darkened church-yard o'er,
From thy green depths, so beautiful,
Thou gorgeous sycamore!
Oft hath the lowly wine and bread,
Been blest beneath thy murmuring tent;
Where many a bright and hoary head,
Bowed at that awful sacrament.
Now all beneath the turf are laid,
On which they sat and sang and prayed.
Alone that consecrated tree
Ascends the tapering spire, that seems
To lift the soul up silently
To heaven, with all its dreams!-
While in the belfrey, deep and low,
From his heaved bosoms purple gleams
The dove's continuous murmurs flow,
A dirge-like song, -half bliss, half woe,-
The voice so lonely seems !
Blackwood's Magazine.
It is an isle under Ionian skies,
Beautiful as the wreck of Paradise;
And, for the harbours are not safe and good,
This land would have remained a solitude,
But for some pastoral people, native there,
Who from the Elysian, clear, and sunny air
Draw the last spirit of the age of gold;
Simple and generous, innocent and bold.
The blue Ægean girds this chosen home
With ever changing sound, and light and foam,
Kissing the sifted sands, and caverns hoar;
And all the winds, wandering along the shore,
Undulate with the undulating tide.
There are thick woods where sylvan forms abide;
And many a fountain, rivulet, and pond,
As clear as elemental diamond;
And all the place is peopled with sweet airs;
The light clear element which the Isle wears
Is heavy with the scent of lemon flowers,
Which floats like mist laden with unseen showers,
And falls upon the eye-lids like faint sleep;
And from the moss, violets and jonquils peep,
And dart their arrowy odour through the brain,
Till you might faint with that delicious pain;
And every motion, odour, beam, and tone,
With that deep music is in unison,
Which is a soul within the soul: they seem
Like echoes of an antenatal dream.
It is a favored spot. Famine, or Blight,
Pestilence, War, and Earthquake never light
Upon its mountain-peaks; blind vultures, they
Sail onward far upon their fatal way;
The winged storms chaunting their thunder psalm,
To other lands, leave azure chasms of calm
Over this isle, or weep themselves in dew,
From which its fields and woods ever renew
Their green and golden immortality.
WHOSE imp art thou, with dimpled cheek,
And curly pate, and merry eye,
And arm and shoulders round and sleek,
And soft and fair, thou urchin sly?
What boots it, who, with sweet caresses,
First called thee his, or Squire or hind?
For thou in every wight that passes,
Dost now a friendly playmate find.
Thy downcast glances, grave, but cunning,
As fringed eyelids rise and fall;
Thy shyness swiftly from me running;
'Tis infantine coquetry all!
But far a-field thou hast not flown,
With mocks and threats, half-lisped, half-spoken ;
I feel thee pulling at my gown,
Of right good will thy simple token.
And thou must laugh, and wrestle too,-
A mimic warfare with me waging!
To make, as wily lovers do,
Thy after kindness more engaging!
The wilding rose, sweet as thyself,
And new-cropt daisies are thy treasure ;
I'd gladly part with worldly pelf,
To taste again thy youthful pleasure.
But yet, for all thy merry look,
Thy frisks and wiles, the time is coming,
When thou shall sit in cheerless nook,
The weary spell or horn-book thumbing.
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