I will not own a brighter eye
Than mine has caught your truant sigh,— I will not own a fairer brow
Than mine has made you captive now.
I deem my eye is still as bright As when it fixed your charmed sight; I deem my brow is still as fair
As when you gazed and worshipped there.
But well I know that they have been Once, twice, or thrice already seen,- I know the charm of change too well Not to bow down and own the spell.
Love's vows are writ upon the wave, And are unto themselves a grave. They call Love ever young; but he Is as old age in memory.
Farewell then, sometime love of mine, Yet claim I gratitude of thine ; Surely that love is something worth Whose death is laughing as its birth.
BY THE AUTHOR OF "SOLITARY HOURS."
To worship for a season, To flatter, feign, pursue; To love with little reason,- To leave as blindly too :
Or, having won and worn, To fling the rose away,— Or, having crushed, to scorn Its premature decay:
To stab with sharp unkindness, With cold neglect to kill; To' abuse with selfish blindness The love no wrongs can chill:
To fly the hour of danger,
The bed where sickness lies, And leave, perhaps, a stranger To close the dying eyes:
And, ere her last cold pillow
The green grass waves above, To cast away the willow,
And choose another love :
Thus—thus—'tis thus men love!
SWEET paradise beneath the mountains rude, That centinel Glen-Coe's terrific vale,
Smile ever thus in peace and solitude; Smooth be thy lake, and gentle be thy gale! Methinks good angels are abroad, and sing At morn or noon, at eve or moonlight pale, High hallelujahs to the Omnific King, Who bade thee in thine awful beauty show What primal Eden was, ere yet the sting Of sin and death had marred the bliss below. O, were the season ripe to quit the roar Of life, and all its turbulence of woe,
Here would I wait my voyage to that shore
Where sorrow, pain, and guilt, shall be no more.
THE evening winds shrieked wildly;—the dark cloud Rested upon the horizon's verge, and grew Mightier and mightier, flinging its black arch Around the troubled offing, till it grasped
Within its terrible embrace the all
That eye could see of ocean.
Forth from the infinite of waters, sounds
Confused-appalling;-from the dread lee-shore There came a heavier swell, a lengthened roar, Each moment deeper, rolling on the ear
With most portentous voice. Rock howled to rock, Headland to headland, as the Atlantic flung Its billows shoreward, and the feathery foam Of twice ten thousand broken surges sailed High o'er the dim-seen land. The startled gull, With scream prophetic, sought his savage cliff, And even the bird that loves to sail between The ridges of the sea, with hurried wing Flew from the blast's fierce onset.
One hapless ship was seen upon the deep, Breasting the western waters. Nothing lived Around her-all was desert,-for the storms Had made old Ocean's realm a solitude,
Where man might fear to roam. A lonely thing amid the gathering strife, With pinions folded, not for rest, prepared To struggle with the tempest.
As night abruptly closed ;-nor moon nor star Guided her course; but darkness, deep as that Which reigned o'er the primeval chaos, wrapt That fated bark, save when the lightning hissed Along the bursting billow. Ocean howled To the high thunder, and the thunder spoke To the rebellious ocean with a voice
So terrible, that all the rush and roar Of waves were but as the meek voice of rills To that deep, everlasting peal which comes From thee, Niagara, wild flinging o'er Thy steep the rivers of a world! Anon
The lightnings glared more fiercely, burning round The glowing offing with unwonted stay, As if they lingered o'er the black abyss,
And raised its veil of horror but to show
Its wild and tortured face. And then the winds
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