That bright lake is still as a liquid sky:

And when o'er its bosom the swift clouds fly, They pass like thoughts o'er a clear, blue eye. The fringe of thin foam that their sepulcher binds Is as light as the clouds that are borne by the winds. Soft over its bosom the dim vapors hover

In morning's first light: and the snowy winged plover, That skims o'er the deep

Where my loved ones sleep,

No note of joy on this solitude flings,

Nor shakes the mist from his drooping wings.

No chariots of fire on the clouds careered;
No warrior's arm on the hills was reared;
No death-angel's trump o'er the ocean was blown;
No mantle of wrath over heaven was thrown;
No armies of light, with their banners of flame,
On neighing steeds, through the sunset came,
Or leaping from space appeared:

No earthquake reeled: no Thunderer stormed:
No fetterless dead o'er the bright sky swarmed:
No voices in heaven were heard;

But, the hour when the sun in his pride went down,
While his parting hung rich o'er the world,
While abroad o'er the sky his flush mantle was blown,
And his streamers of gold were unfurled;

An everlasting hill was torn

From its primeval base, and borne,
In gold and crimson vapors drest,
To where a people are at rest.
Slowly it came in its mountain wrath;

And the forest vanished before its path;

And the rude cliffs bowed; and the waters fled;
And the living were buried, while over their head
They heard the full march of their foe as he sped;—
And the valley of life was the tomb of the dead,
The mountain-sepulcher of all I loved!
The village sank; and the giant trees
Leaned back from the encountering breeze,
As this tremendous pageant moved.

The mountain forsook his perpetual throne,
And came down in his pomp: and his path is shown

In barrenness and ruin :-there
His ancient mysteries lie bare;
His rocks in nakedness arise;
His desolations mock the skies
Sweet vale, Goldau, farewell!

An Alpine monument may dwell
Upon thy bosom, O my home!

The mountain-thy pall and thy prison-may keep thee-
I shall see thee no more; but till death I will weep thee;
Of thy blue dwelling dream wherever I roam,
And wish myself wrapped in its peaceful foam.

CXVII.-POETRY.

THE world is full of poetry-the air
Is living with its spirit; and the waves
Dance to the music of its melodies,

And sparkle in its brightness. Earth is vailed
And mantled with its beauty; and the walls,
That close the universe with crystal in,
Are eloquent with voices, that proclaim
The unseen glories of immensity,
In harmonies too perfect and too high
For aught but beings of celestial mold,
And speak to man in one eternal hymn,
Unfading beauty, and unyielding power.

PERCIVAL.

The year leads round the seasons, in a choir
For ever charming, and for ever new,
Blending the grand, the beautiful, the gay,
The mournful, and the tender, in one strain,
Which steals into the heart, like sounds that rise
Far off, in moonlight evenings, on the shore
Of the wide ocean, resting after storms;
Or tones that wind around the vaulted roof,
And pointed arches, and retiring aisles
Of some old, lonely minster, where the hand,
Skillful, and moved with passionate love of art,
Plays o'er the higher keys, and bears aloft
The peal of bursting thunder, and then calls,
By mellow touches, from the softer tubes,
Voices of melting tenderness, that blend

With pure and gentle musings, till the soul,
Commingling with the melody, is borne,
Rapt, and dissolved in ecstasy, to heaven.
'Tis not the chime and flow of words, that move
In measured file, and metrical array;
'Tis not the union of returning sounds,
Nor all the pleasing artifice of rhyme,
And quantity, and accent, that can give
This all-pervading spirit to the ear,
Or blend it with the movings of the soul.
'Tis not the noisy babbler, who displays,
In studied phrase, and ornate epithet,
And rounded period, poor and vapid thoughts,
Which peep from out the cumbrous ornaments
That overload their littleness. Its words
Are few, but deep and solemn; and they break
Fresh from the fount of feeling, and are full
Of all that passion, which, on Carmel, fired
The holy prophet, when his lips were coals,
His language winged with terror, as when bolts
Leap from the brooding tempest, armed with wrath,
Commissioned to affright us, and destroy.

Passion, when deep, is still; the glaring eye,
That reads its enemy with glance of fire;
The lip, that curls and writhes in bitterness,
The brow contracted, till its wrinkles hide

The keen, fixed orbs that burn and flash below;
The hand firm clinched, and quivering, and the foot
Planted in attitude to spring, and dart

In vengeance, are the language it employs.
So the poetic feeling needs no words

To give it utterance; but it swells, and glows,
And revels in the ecstasies of soul,

And sits at banquet with celestial forms,
The beings of its own creation, fair
And lovely as e'er haunted wood and wave,
When earth was peopled, in its solitudes,
With nymph and naiad.

* * *

Its spirit is the breath of Nature, blown
Over the sleeping forms of clay, who else
Doze on through life in blank stupidity,
Till by its blast, as by a touch of fire,
They rouse to lofty purpose, and send out,
In deeds of energy, the rage within.

Its seat is deeper in the savage breast
Than in the man of cities; in the child
Than in maturer bosoms. Art may prune
Its rank and wild luxuriance, and may train

Its strong out-breakings, and its vehement gusts,
To soft refinement and amenity;

But all its energy has vanished, all

Its maddening and commanding spirit gone,
And all its tender touches, and its tones
Of soul-dissolving pathos, lost and hid

Among the measured notes, that move as dead
And heartless as the puppets in a show.
Well I remember, in my boyish days,

How deep the feeling, when my eye looked forth
On Nature, in her loveliness and storms;

How my heart gladdened, as the light of spring
Came from the sun, with zephyrs, and with showers,
Waking the earth to beauty, and the woods
To music, and the atmosphere to blow
Sweetly and calmly, with its breath of balm.
O, how I gazed upon the dazzling blue
Of summer's heaven of glory, and the waves,
That rolled, in bending gold, o'er hill and plain;
And on the tempest when it issued forth,
In folds of blackness, from the northern sky,
And stood above the mountains, silent, dark,
Frowning, and terrible; then sent abroad
The lightning, as its herald, and the peal,
That rolled in deep, deep volleys, round the hills,
The warning of its coming, and the sound

That ushered in its elemental war!

And, O, I stood, in breathless longing fixed,
Trembling, and yet not fearful, as the clouds
Heaved their dark billows on the roaring winds
That sent, from mountain top, and bending wood,
A long, hoarse murmur, like the rush of waves
That burst, in foam and fury, on the shore.
Nor less the swelling of my heart, when high
Rose the blue arch of autumn, cloudless, pure
As Nature, at her dawning, when she sprang

Fresh from the hand that wrought her; where the eye
Caught not a speck upon the soft serene,
To stain its deep cerulean, but the cloud,
That floated, like a lonely spirit, there,

White as the snow of Zemla, or the foam
That on the mid-sea tosses, cinctured round,
In easy undulations, with a belt

Woven of bright Apollo's golden hair.

These I have seen,

And felt to madness; but my full heart gave
No utterance to the ineffable within.

Words were too weak; they were unknown; but still
The feeling was most poignant: it has gone;
And all the deepest flow of sounds, that e'er
Poured, in a torrent fullness, from the tongue
Rich with the wealth of ancient bards, and stored
With all the patriarchs of British song
Hallowed and rendered glorious, can not tell
Those feelings which have died to live no more.

Ex. CXVIII.-THE MYSTERIOUS VISITOR.

THERE WAS a sound of hurrying feet,
A tramp on echoing stairs,
There was a rush along the aisles,-
It was the hour of prayers.

And on, like ocean's midnight wave,
The current rolled along,
When, suddenly, a stranger form
Was seen amidst the throng.

He was a dark and swarthy man,
That uninvited guest;

A faded coat of bottle-green

Was buttoned round his breast.

There was not one among them all
Could say from whence he came;
Nor beardless boy, nor ancient man,
Could tell the stranger's name.

All silent as the sheeted dead,
In spite of sneer and frown,
Fast by a gray-haired senior's side.
He sat him boldly down.

0. W. HOLMES