Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee;-
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?
Thy waters wasted them while they were free,
And many a tyrant since; their shores obey
The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay
Has dried up realms to deserts: not so thou-
Unchangeable-save to thy wild waves' play-
Time writes no wrinkles on thine azure brow-
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.
Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,
Calm or convulsed-in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
Dark-heaving-boundless, endless, and sublime;
The image of Eternity-the throne
Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime
The monsters of the deep are made; each zone
Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.
THE CLOSING YEAR.-PRENTICE.
'TIS midnight's holy hour,-and silence now
Is brooding like a gentle spirit o'er
The still and pulseless world. Hark! on the winds
The bell's deep tones are swelling,-'tis the knell
Of the departed year. No funeral train
Is sweeping past; yet, on the stream and wood,
With melancholy light, the moon-beams rest
Like a pale, spotless shroud; the air is stirred.
As by a mourner's sigh; and on yon cloud
That floats so still and placidly through heaven,
The spirits of the seasons seem to stand,—
Young Spring, bright Summer, Autumn's solemn form,
And Winter with its aged locks,—and breathe,
In mournful cadences that come abroad
Like the far wind-harp's wild and touching wail,
A melancholy dirge o'er the dead year,
Gone from the Earth for ever.
For memory and for tears.
Still chambers of the heart, a spectre dim,
Whose tones are like the wizard voice of Time
Heard from the tomb of ages, points its cold
And solemn finger to the beautiful
And holy visions that have passed away,
And left no shadow of their loveliness
On the dead waste of life. That spectre lifts
The coffin-lid of Hope, and Joy, and Love,
And, bending mournfully above the pale,
Sweet forms, that slumber there, scatters dead flowers O'er what has passed to nothingness.
Has gone, and, with it, many a glorious throng
Of happy dreams. Its mark is on each brow,
Its shadow in each heart. In its swift course,
It waved its sceptre o'er the beautiful,—
And they are not. It laid its pallid hand
Upon the strong man,-and the haughty form
Is fallen, and the flashing eye is dim.
It trod the hall of revelry, where thronged
The bright and joyous,—and the tearful wail
Of stricken ones, is heard where erst the song
And reckless shout resounded.
The battle-plain, where sword, and spear, and shield,
Flashed in the light of mid-day,-and the strength
Of serried hosts is shivered, and the grass,
Green from the soil of carnage, waves above
The crushed and moldering skeleton. It came,
And faded like a wreath of mist at eve;
Yet, ere it melted in the viewless air,
It heralded its millions to their home
In the dim land of dreams.
Fierce spirit of the glass and scythe!-what power
Can stay him in his silent course, or melt
His iron heart to pity?
He presses, and for ever.
The condor of the Andes, that can soar
Through heaven's unfathomable depths, or brave
The fury of the northern hurricane,
And bathe his plumage in the thunder's home,
Furls his broad wings at nightfall, and sinks down
To rest upon his mountain crag,—but Time
Knows not the weight of sleep or weariness,
And night's deep darkness has no chain to bind
His rushing pinions.
O'er earth, like troubled visions o'er the breast
Of dreaming sorrow,-cities rise and sink
Like bubbles on the water,-fiery isles
Spring blazing from the ocean, and go back
To their mysterious caverns,-mountains rear
To heaven their bald and blackened cliffs, and bow
Their tall heads to the plain,-new empires rise,
Gathering the strength of hoary centuries,
And rush down like the Alpine avalanche,
Startling the nations, and the very stars,
Yon bright and burning blazonry of God,
Glitter a while in their eternal depths,
And, like the Pleiad, loveliest of their train,
Shoot from their glorious spheres, and pass away
To darkle in the trackless void,-Yet, Time,
Time, the tomb-builder, holds his fierce career,
Dark, stern, all pitiless, and pauses not
Amid the mighty wrecks that strew his path
To sit and muse, like other conquerors,
Upon the fearful ruin he has wrought.
THE FOUNTAIN.-Lowell.
INTO the sunshine,
Full of the light,
Leaping and flashing
From morn to night;
Into the moonlight,
Whiter than snow,
Waving so flower-like,
When the winds blow!
Into the starlight
Rushing in spray,
Happy at midnight,
Happy by day!
Ever in motion,
Blithesome and cheery,"
Still climbing heavenward,
Never aweary;—
Glad of all weathers,
Still seeming best,
Upward or downward,
Motion thy rest;-
Full of a nature
Nothing can tame,
Changed every moment,
Ever the same;
Ceaseless aspiring,
Ceaseless content,
Darkness or sunshine
Thy element;-
Glorious Fountain
Let my heart be
Fresh, changeful, constant,
Upward, like thee!
MONTEREY.-HOFFMAN.
WE were not many-we who stood
Before the iron sleet that day;
Yet many a gallant spirit would
Give half his years if he but could
Have been with us at Monterey.
Now here, now there, the shot it hailed
In deadly drifts of fiery spray,
Yet not a single soldier quailed
When wounded comrades round them wailed
Their dying shout at Monterey.
And on-still on our column kept
Through walls of flame its withering way; Where fell the dead, the living stepped, Still charging on the guns that swept The slippery streets of Monterey.
The foe himself recoiled aghast,
When, striking where the strongest lay, We swooped his flanking batteries past, And braving full their murderous blast, Stormed home the towers of Monterey.
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