To find some secret, meaner home, So closely to this shadowy world, Yet lonely is thy shattered nest, And makes the North's ice-mountains bright So come the eagle-hearted down, So come the high and proud to earth, That bore, unveiled, Fame's noontide sun; So man seeks solitude, to die, His high place left, his triumphs done. So, round the residence of Power, A cold and joyless lustre shines, And on life's pinnacles will lower Clouds, dark as bathe the eagle's pines. But, oh, the mellow light that pours From God's pure throne—the light that saves It warms the spirit as it soars, And sheds deep radiance round our graves. THE TRUE GLORY OF AMERICA. TALIA'S vales and fountains, ITAL Though beautiful ye be, I love my soaring mountains. The jewelled crown and sceptre The victor's footsteps point to doom, Rome! with thy pillared palaces, Rome! with thy giant sons of power, I would not have my land like thee, Be hers a lowlier majesty, In yet a nobler mould. Thy marbles-works of wonder! Before some sainted head! That beams when other lights hamı sse Oh, ours a holier hope shall be Than consecrated bust, Some loftier mean of memory To snatch us from the dust. And ours a sterner art than this, Shall fix our image here,The spirit's mould of loveliness A nobler BELVIDERE! Then let them bind with bloomless flowers The busts and urns of old, A fairer heritage be ours, A sacrifice less cold! Give honour to the great and good, So, when the good and great go down, To crowd those temples of our own, And when the sculptured marble falls, Our forms shall live in holier halls, The Pantheon of the sky! S. Margaret Fuller. GANYMEDE TO HIS EAGLE.* UPON the rocky mountain stood the boy, But a strange pain was written on his brow, "My bird," he cries, "my destined brother-friend, Oh, whither fleets to-day thy wayward flight? *On seeing THORWALDSEN's statue of Ganymede. "Hast thou forgotten that I here attend, Only with thee can know that peaceful pause "Before I saw thee I was like the May, Longing for Summer that must mar its bloom, Or like the Morning Star that calls the Day,, Whose glories to its promise are the tomb; And as the eager fountain rises higher, To throw itself more strongly back to earth, Still, as more sweet and full rose my desire, More fondly it reverted to its birth; For, what the rose-bud seeks tells not the roseThe meaning foretold by the boy the man cannot disclose. "I was all Spring, for in my being dwelt Eternal youth, where flowers are the fruit; Full feeling was the thought of what was feltIts music was the meaning of the lute: But Heaven and Earth such life will still deny, For Earth, divorced from Heaven, still asks the question, 'Why?' |