It is but a word, and the chain is unbound, Yet the hawk with the wildness untamed in his eye, If you free him, stares round ere he springs to the sky; The slave whom no longer his fetters restrain Our parting is not as the friendship of years, tears; We have walked in a garden, and, looking around, Have plucked a few leaves from the myrtles we found. But now at the gate of the garden we stand, And the moment has come for unclasping the hand; Will you drop it like lead, and in silence retreat Like the twenty crushed forms from an omnibus seat? Nay! hold it one moment, the last we may I stretch it in kindness, and not for my fare; For the sweetest of smiles is the smile as we part, When the light round the lips is a ray from the heart; And lest a stray tear from its fountain might swell, We will seal the bright spring with a quiet farewell. THE HUDSON. AFTER A LECTURE AT ALBANY. WAS a vision of childhood that came with its dawn, Ere the curtain that covered life's day star was drawn ; The nurse told the tale when the shadows grew long, And the mother's soft lullaby breathed it in song. "There flows a fair stream by the hills of the west," She sang to her boy as he lay on her breast; 66 Along its smooth margin thy fathers have played; Beside its deep waters their ashes are laid." I wandered afar from the land of my birth, I saw the green banks of the castle-crowned Rhine, Where the grapes drink the moonlight and change it to wine; I stood by the Avon, whose waves as they glide Still whisper his glory who sleeps at their side. But my heart would still yearn for the sound of the waves That sing as they flow by my forefathers' graves; Farewell to the deep-bosomed stream of the West! DECEMBER, 1854. A POEM FOR THE MEETING OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION AT NEW YORK, MAY 5, 1853. HOLD a letter in my hand, A flattering letter-more's the pity,— It touches every tenderest spot, My well known - - something don't ask what, My poor old songs, my kind affections. They make a feast on Thursday next, And hope to make the feasters merry; They own they're something more perplexed For poets than for port and sherry; They want the men of (word torn out); Our friends will come with anxious faces (To see our blankets off, no doubt, And trot us out and show our paces). They hint that papers by the score But only trying to the patience; That such as you know who I mean -The same old story; that's the chaff To catch the birds that sing the ditties; Upon my soul, it makes me laugh To read these letters from Committees ! They're all so loving and so fair, All for your sake such kind compunction, 'T would save your carriage half its wear To touch its wheels with such an unction! Why, who am I, to lift me here And beg such learned folk to listen, Beneath these stoic lids to glisten? As well some hair-like nerve might strain The springing haunches gathered shorter, Was stretching through the last hot quarter! Ah me! you take the bud that came That florists breed for, all she orders; (A pale affair, not worth the keeping,)· Good morning; - and your bud is sent To join the tea-leaves used for sweeping. Not always so, kind hearts and true, — Fresh gathered for the hour of meeting, Where the warm life we cannot see - We meet from regions far away, Like rills from distant mountains streaming; The sun is on Francisco's bay, O'er Chesapeake the lighthouse gleaming; While summer girds the still bayou In chains of bloom, her bridal token,. Yet Nature bears the self-same heart She breathes, and white magnolias blossom; The self-same founts her chalice fill With showery sunlight running over, On fiery plain and frozen hill, On myrtle-beds and fields of clover. |