For thine her evening prayer is said
At palace couch and cottage bed;
Her soldier, closing with the foe,
Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow;
His plighted maiden, when she fears
For him, the joy of her young years,
Thinks of thy fate and checks her tears;
And she, the mother of thy boys,
Though in her eye and faded cheek
Is read the grief she will not speak,
The memory of her buried joys,
And even she who gave thee birth,
Will, by their pilgrim-circled hearth,
Talk of thy doom without a sigh,
For thou art Freedom's now and Fame's,
One of the few, the immortal names,
That were not born to die.
I fill this cup to one made up of loveliness alone,
A woman, of her gentle sex the seeming paragon;
To whom the better elements and kindly stars have given
A form so fair, that, like the air, 't is less of earth than heaven.
Her every tone is music's own, like those of morning birds,
And something more than melody dwells ever in her words:
The coinage of her heart are they, and from her lips each flows
As one may see the burthened bee forth issue from the rose.
Affections are as thoughts to her, the measures of her hours;
Her feelings have the fragrancy, the freshness, of young flowers; 10
And lovely passions, changing oft, so fill her she appears
The image of themselves by turns, the idol of past years!
Of her bright face one glance will trace a picture on the brain,
And of her voice in echoing hearts a sound must long remain;
But memory such as mine of her so very much endears,
When death is nigh my latest sigh will not be life's but hers.
I filled this cup to one made up of loveliness alone,
A woman, of her gentle sex, the seeming paragon.
Her health! and would on earth there stood, some more of
That life might be all poetry, and weariness a name.
NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS
ROARING BROOK
It was a mountain stream that with the leap
Of its impatient waters had worn out
A channel in the rock, and wash'd away
The earth that had upheld the tall old trees
Till it was darken'd with the shadowy arch
Of the o'er-leaning branches. Here and there
It loiter'd in a broad and limpid pool
That circled round demurely; and anon
Sprung violently over where the rock
Fell suddenly, and bore its bubbles on
Till they were broken by the hanging moss,
As anger with a gentle word grows calm.
In spring-time, when the snows were coming down,
Pleasant have been such hours; and tho' the wise
Have said that I was indolent, and they
Who taught me have reprov'd me that I play'd
The pansies love to dally
Where maidens sleep;
May their bloom, in beauty vying,
Never wane
Where thine earthly part is lying,
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
[The selections from Bryant, except the first, are reprinted from the copyrighted 1876 edition of his poems, with the permission of D. Appleton & Co.]
Look where we will, and in whatever land,
Europe's rich soil or Afric's barren sand,
Where the wild savage hunts his wilder prey,
Or art and science pour their brightest day,
The monster Vice appears before our eyes
In naked impudence or gay disguise.
But quit the meaner game, indignant muse,
And to thy country turn thy nobler views.
Ill-fated clime! condemn'd to feel th' extremes
Of a weak ruler's philosophic dreams;
Driven headlong on to ruin's fateful brink,
When will thy country feel, when will she think!
Satiric muse, shall injured Commerce weep
Her ravish'd rights, and will thy thunders sleep?
Dart thy keen glances, knit thy threat'ning brows,
Call fire from heaven to blast thy country's foes.
Oh let a youth thine inspiration learn—
Oh give him "words that breathe and thoughts that burn"!
Curse of our nation, source of countless woes,
From whose dark womb unreckon'd misery flows,
Th' Embargo rages like a sweeping wind;
Fear lowers before and famine stalks behind.
What words, oh Muse, can paint the mournful scene-
The saddening street, the desolated green,
How hungry labourers leave their toil and sigh,
And sorrow droops in each desponding eye?
|