With the tempests as they toss,
Like-almost anything—
Or a yellow albatross.
They use that moon no more
For the same end as before,-
Videlicet, a tent,
Which I think extravagant:
Its atomies, however,
Into a shower dissever,
Of which those butterflies
Of Earth who seek the skies,
And so come down again
(Never-contented things!)
Have brought a specimen
Upon their quivering wings.
Of all who hail thy presence as the morning,-
Of all to whom thine absence is the night,-
The blotting utterly from out high heaven
The sacred sun,—of all who, weeping, bless thee
Hourly for hope-for life-ah! above all,
For the resurrection of deep-buried faith
In Truth-in Virtue-in Humanity,—
Of all who, on Despair's unhallow'd bed
Lying down to die, have suddenly arisen
At thy soft-murmured words, "Let there be
At the soft-murmured words that were fulfilled In the seraphic glancing of thine eyes,
Of all who owe thee most, whose gratitude
Nearest resembles worship,-oh, remember
The truest--the most fervently devoted,
And think that these weak lines are written by him,
By him who, as he pens them, thrills to think His spirit is communing with an angel's.
ROMANCE, who loves to nod and sing,
With drowsy head and folded wing,
Among the green leaves as they shake
Far down within some shadowy lake,
To me a painted paroquet
Hath been a most familiar bird,–
Taught me my alphabet to say
To lisp my very earliest word
While in the wild wood I did lie,
A child--with a most knowing eye.
Of late, eternal Condor years
So shake the very Heaven on high
With tumult as they thunder by,
I have no time for idle cares
Through gazing on the unquiet sky.
And when an hour with calmer wings
Its down upon my spirit flings—
That little time with lyre and rhyme
To while away-forbidden things!
My heart would feel to be a crime,
Unless it trembled with the strings.
HOW IT HANGS UPON THE TREES, A MYSTERY OF MYSTERIES.
THY Soul shall find itself alone
'Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone Not one, of all the crowd, to pry Into thine hour of secrecy.
Be silent in that solitude
Which is not loneliness, -for then
The spirits of the dead who stood
In life before thee are again
In death around thee,-and their will
Shall overshadow thee: be still.
The night, though clear, shall frown,-
And the stars shall not look down
From their high thrones in Heaven,
With light like Hope to mortals given:
But their red orbs, without beam,
To thy weariness shall seem
As a burning and a fever
Which would cling to thee forever.
Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish, — Now are visions ne'er to vanish:
From thy spirit shall they pass
No more-like dewdrops from the grass.
The breeze-the breath of God--is still;
And the mist upon the hill
Shadowy-shadowy-yet unbroken,
Is a symbol and a token,—
How it hangs upon the trees,
A mystery of mysteries!
THE bowers whereat, in dreams, I see
The wantonest singing birds,
Are lips and all thy melody
Of lip-begotten words.
Thine eyes, in Heaven of heart enshrin'd,
Then desolately fall,
Oh, God! on my funereal mind
Like starlight on a pall.
Thy heart-thy heart-I wake and sigh,
And sleep to dream till day
Of the truth that gold can never buy--
Of the baubles that it may.
IN visions of the dark night
I have dream'd of joy departed;
But a waking dreain of life and light
Hath left me broken-hearted.
Ah, what is not a dream by day
To him whose eyes are cast
On things around him with a ray
Turned back upon the past?
That holy dream-that holy dream,
While all the world were chiding,
Hath cheered me as a lovely beam
A lonely spirit guiding.
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