Thou first and chief, sole Sovereign of the Vale!
O, struggling with the darkness all the night,
And visited all night by troops of stars,
Or when they climb the sky or when they sink:
Companion of the morning-star at dawn,
Thyself earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
Co-herald: wake, O wake, and utter praise!
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?

And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad!
Who called you forth from night and utter death,
From dark and icy caverns called you forth,
Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks,
Forever shattered and the same for ever?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,

Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,
Unceasing thunder and eternal foam?

And who commanded (and the silence came),
Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest?

Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow
Adown enormous ravines slope amain
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!

Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers
Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?-
God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God!

God! sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice!
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they, too, have a voice,' yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!

Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost!
Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest!
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain-storm!

Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
Ye signs and wonders of the elements!
Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise!

Thou, too, hoar Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks,
Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard,
Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene,
Into the depth of clouds that veil thy breast-
Thou, too, again, stupendous Mountain! thou
That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low
In adoration, upward from thy base

Slow traveling with dim eyes suffused with tears,
Solemnly seemest, like a vapory cloud,

To rise before me

-

Rise, O ever rise!

Rise like a cloud of incense, from the earth!
Thou kingly Spirit throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven,
Great Hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.

-Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

THE BURIAL OF MOSES

"And he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Bethpeor: but no man knoweth of his sepulcher unto this day."-Deut. xxxiv, 6.

By Nebo's lonely mountain,

On this side Jordan's wave,
In a vale in the land of Moab,
There lies a lonely grave;
But no man dug that sepulcher,
And no man saw it e'er,

For the angels of God upturned the sod,

And laid the dead man there.

That was the grandest funeral

That ever passed on earth;
But no man heard the tramping,
Or saw the train go forth;

Noiselessly as the daylight

Comes when the night is done,

And the crimson streak on ocean's cheek
Grows into the great sun,-

Noiselessly as the springtime

Her crown of verdure weaves,
And all the trees on all the hills
Open their thousand leaves,-
So, without sound of music,

Or voice of them that wept,
Silently down from the mountain crown
The great procession swept.

Perchance the bald old eagle,

On gray Beth-peor's height, Out of his rocky eyrie,

Looked on the wondrous sight. Perchance the lion, stalking,

Still shuns the hallowed spot;

For beast and bird have seen and heard
That which man knoweth not.

Lo! when the warrior dieth,

His comrades in the war,

With arms reversed, and muffled drum,

Follow the funeral car.

They show the banners taken,

They tell his battles won,

And after him lead his masterless steed,
While peals the minute gun.

Amid the noblest of the land

Men lay the sage to rest,
And give the bard an honored place
With costly marble dressed.

Ja the great minster transept,

Where lights like glories fall,

And the sweet choir sings, and the organ rings, Along the emblazoned wall.

This was the bravest warrior

That ever buckled sword;

This the most gifted poet

That ever breathed a word; And never earth's philosopher Traced, with his golden pen,

On the deathless page, truths half so sage,

As he wrote down for men.

And had he not high honor,

The hillside for his pall;

To lie in state while angels wait
With stars for tapers tall;

And the dark rock pines, like tossing plumes,

Over his bier to wave;

And God's own hand, in that lonely land,
To lay him in the grave? -

In that deep grave, without a name,
Whence his uncoffined clay

Shall break again-most wondrous thought!—

Before the judgment day,

And stand with glory wrapped around

On the hills he never trod,

And speak of the strife that won our life

With the Incarnate Son of God.

O, lonely tomb in Moab's land,
O, dark Beth-peor's hill,

Speak to these curious hearts of ours,
And teach them to be still.

God hath His mysteries of Grace-
Ways that we cannot tell;

He hides them deep, like the secret sleep

Of him he loved so well.

APOSTROPHE TO THE OCEAN

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,

By the deep sea, and music in its roar.
I love not man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal

From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the universe and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

--

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain,
Man marks the earth with ruin his control

Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage save his own,

When for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals;
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war,-

These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee—
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage,- what are they?
Thy waters wasted them while they were free,
And many a tyrant since; their shores obey

The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay
Has dried up realms to deserts:

not so thou, Unchangeable, save to thy wild waves' playTime writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow

Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.