This visible Nature, and this common world,
Is all too narrow; yea, a deeper import
Lurks in the legend told my infant years
Than lies upon that truth, we live to learn.
For fable is Love's world, his home, his birth-place;
Delightedly dwells he 'mong fays and talismans
And spirits; and delightedly believes
Divinities, being himself divine.
Th' intelligible forms of ancient poets,
The fair humanities of old religion,
The Power, the Beauty, and the Majesty,
That had their haunts in dale, or piny mountain,
Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring,
Or chasms and watery depths, all these have vanish'd;
They live no longer in the faith of reason!
But still the heart doth need a language, still
Doth the old instinct bring back the old names;
And to yon starry world they now are gone,
Spirits or gods, that used to share this Earth
With man as with their friend; and to the lover
Yonder they move, from yonder visible sky
Shoot influence down: and even at this day
"Tis Jupiter who brings whate'er is great,
And Venus who brings everything that's fair.
A LOST CHORD.
ADELAIDE ANNE PROCTOR.
SEATED one day at the organ,
I was weary and ill at ease,
And my fingers wander'd idly
Over the noisy keys.
I do not know what I was playing,
Or what I was dreaming then,
But I struck one chord of music,
Like the sound of a great Amen.
It flooded the crimson twilight,
Like the close of an angel's psalm,
And it lay on my fever'd spirit,
With a touch of infinite calm.
It quieted pain and sorrow,
Like love overcoming strife;
It seem'd the harmonious echo
From our discordant life.
It link'd all perplex'd meanings
Into one perfect peace,
And trembled away into silence,
As if it were loth to cease.
I have sought, but I seek it vainly,
That one lost chord divine,
That came from the soul of the organ,
And enter'd into mine.
It may be that Death's bright angel
Will speak in that chord again;
It may be that only in Heaven
I shall hear that grand Amen.
'Tis beauteous night; the stars look brightly down
Upon the Earth, deck'd in her robe of snow.
No light gleams at the windows, save my own,
Which gives its cheer to midnight and to me.
And now, with noiseless step, sweet memory comes
And leads me gently through her twilight realms.
What poet's tuneful lyre has ever sung,
Or delicatest pencil e'er portray'd
Th' enchanted, shadowy land where memory dwells?
It has its valleys, cheerless, lone, and drear,
Dark-shaded by the mournful cypress-tree;
And yet its sunlit mountain-tops are bathed
In heaven's own blue. Upon its craggy cliffs,
Robed in the dreamy light of distant years,
Are cluster'd joys serene of other days.
Upon its gently sloping hillsides bend
The weeping willows o'er the sacred dust
Of dear departed ones; yet in that land,
Where'er our footsteps fall upon the shore,
They that were sleeping rise from out the dust
Of death's long, silent years, and round us stand
As erst they did before the prison-tomb
Received their clay within its voiceless halls.
The heavens that bend above that land are hung
With clouds of various hues. Some dark and chill,
Surcharged with sorrow, cast their somber shade.
Upon the sunny, joyous land below.
Others are floating through the dreamy air,
White as the falling snow, their margins tinged
With gold and crimson'd hues; their shadows fall
Upon the flowery meads and sunny slopes,
Soft as the shadow of an angel's wing.
When the rough battle of the day is done,
And evening's peace falls gently on the heart,
I bound away, across the noisy years,
Unto the utmost verge of memory's land,
Where earth and sky in dreamy distance meet,
And memory dim with dark oblivion joins;
Where woke the first remember'd sounds that fell
Upon the ear in childhood's early morn;
And, wandering thence along the rolling years,
I see the shadow of my former self
Gliding from childhood up to man's estate.
The path of youth winds down through many a vale, And on the brink of many a dread abyss,
From out whose darkness comes no ray of light,
Save that a phantom dances o'er the gulf
And beckons toward the verge. Again the path
Leads o'er the summit where the sunbeams fall;
And thus in light and shade, sunshine and gloom,
Sorrow and joy, this life-path leads along.
TEARS, IDLE TEARS.
ALFRED TENNYSON.
TEARS, idle tears, I know not what they mean Tears from the depth of some divine despair Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy autumn fields, And thinking of the days that are no more.
Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail, That brings our friends up from the under-world Sad as the last which reddens over one That sinks with all we love below the verge, So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.
Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.
Dear as remember'd kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret,
O Death in Life, the days that are no more!
OVER THE RIVER.
NANCY A. W. PRIEST.
OVER the river they beckon to me,
Loved ones who cross'd to the other side;
The gleam of their snowy robes I see,
But their voices are lost in the dashing tide. There's one with ringlets of sunny gold,
And eyes the reflection of heaven's own blue;
He cross'd in the twilight gray and cold,
And the pale mist hid him from mortal view.
We saw not the angels who met him there, —
The gates of the city we could not see;
Over the river, over the river,
My brother stands, waiting to welcome me.
Over the river the boatman pale
Carried another, the household pet;
Her brown curls waved in the gentle gale,
Darling Minnie! I see her yet!
She closed on her bosom her dimpled hands,
And fearlessly enter'd the phantom bark;
We felt it glide from the silver sands,
And all our sunshine grew strangely dark.
We know she is safe on the farther side,
Where all the ransom'd and angels be;
Over the river, the mystic river,
My childhood's idol is waiting for me.
For none return from those quiet shores,
Who cross with the boatman cold and pale;
We hear the dip of the golden oars,
And catch a gleam of the snowy sail;
And, lo! they have pass'd from our yearning hearts, They cross the stream and are gone for aye.
We may not sunder the veil apart
That hides from our vision the gates of day; We only know that their barks no more
Sail with us o'er life's stormy sea;
Yet somewhere, I know, on the unseen shore,
They watch, and beckon, and wait for me.
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