Go, call the priest ! no vain delay Shall dim the sacred ring! He stood before the stately dame; He spoke; she calmly heard, Who knows what change the passing day, But not to pity, nor to blame; The fleeting hour, may bring? Before the holy altar bent, There kneels a goodly pair; A stately man, of high descent, A woman, passing fair. No jewels lend the blinding sheen Matted and dense the tangled turf upheaves, The box, when round the terraced square Mellow and dark the ridgy cornfield Its glossy wall was drawn ; cleaves; The climbing vines, the snow-balls fair, Up the steep hillside, where the labor. ing train The roses on the lawn. Slants the long track that scores the | Waves the green plumage of thy tasselled level plain; corn; Through the moist valley, clogged with Our maddening conflicts scar thy fairest oozing clay, plain, The patient convoy breaks its destined Still thy soft answer is the growing grain. Yet, O our Mother, while uncounted way; At every turn the loosening chains resound, The swinging ploughshare circles glistening round, charms Steal round our hearts in thine embracing arms, Let not our virtues in thy love decay, Till the wide field one billowy waste ap- And thy fond sweetness waste our pears, And wearied hands unbind the panting steers. strength away. No! by these hills, whose banners now displayed These are the hands whose sturdy labor In blazing cohorts Autumn has arrayed ; brings The peasant's food, the golden pomp of kings; This is the page, whose letters shall be seen Changed by the sun to words of living This is the scholar, whose immortal pen men; By yon twin summits, on whose splintery crests The tossing hemlocks hold the eagles' nests; By these fair plains the mountain circle screens, And feeds with streamlets from its dark ravines, True to their home, these faithful arms shall toil These are the lines which heaven-com-To crown with peace their own untainted Shows on his deed, — the charter of the And, true to God, to freedom, to man Mock with their smile the wrinkled front Shall rise erect, the guardians of the We stain thy flowers, they blossom The same stern iron in the same right We rend thy bosom, and it gives us Till o'er their hills the shouts of triumph O'er the red field that trampling strife The sword has rescued what the ploughshare won! has torn, PICTURES FROM OCCASIONAL POEMS. 1850-56. SPRING. Drugged with the opiate that November gave, WINTER is past; the heart of Nature Beats with faint wing against the sunny Naked and shivering with his cup of gold. Swelled with new life, the darkening elm on high The floating rails that face the softening noons still shy turtles range their dark platoons, Or, toiling aimless o'er the mellowing fields, Trail through the grass their tessellated shields. At last young April, ever frail and fair, Wooed by her playmate with the golden hair, Chased to the margin of receding floods O'er the soft meadows starred with opening buds, Prints her thick buds against the spotted In tears and blushes sighs herself away, The house-fly, stealing from his narrow Her clustering curls the hyacinth dis |