While Valor's haughty champions wait Till all their scars are shown, No wailing bulbul's throat, No melting dulcimer's melodious note Love walks unchallenged through the When o'er the midnight wave its mur Sought in those bowers of green Where loop the clustered vines And the close-clinging dulcamara1 twines, Pure pearls of Maydew where the moonlight shines, And Summer's fruited gems, Hot from the heart of youth plunged in And coral pendants shorn from Autumn's his icy streams? berried stems. Leave me not fading in these weeds of Sit by me drifting on the sleepy waves, care, Or stretched by grass-grown graves, Whose gray, high-shouldered stones, Carved with old names Life's time-worn roll disowns, Lean, lichen-spotted, o'er the crumbled bones Still slumbering where they lay While the sad Pilgrim watched to scare the wolf away. Spread o'er my couch thy visionary wing! Still let me dream and sing, Dream of that winding shore Where scarlet cardinals bloom - for me no more, The stream with heaven beneath its liquid floor, And clustering nenuphars Sprinkling its mirrored blue like goldenchaliced stars! 1 The "bitter-sweet" of New England is the Celastrus scandens, -"Bourreau des arbres " of the Canadian French. Come while their balms the linden-blos- | What pictures yet slumber unborn in soms shed! Come while the rose is red, On the green ripples round yon sunken piles his loom, Till their warriors shall breathe and their beauties shall bloom, While the tapestry lengthens the lifeglowing dyes Washed by the moon-wave warm from That caught from our sunsets the stain Indian isles, And on the sultry air of their skies! The chestnuts spread their palms like In the alcoves of death, in the charnels of time, Where flit the gaunt spectres of passion and crime, There are triumphs untold, there are martyrs unsung, Like shrivelled leaves, youth's passion- There are heroes yet silent to speak with his tongue! |