The spoils of the summer's day;
And the nightingale, lost to the midnight, sings
The sunshiny hours away:
The dragonet flutters from flower to flower,
And sips the drops of the new-fallen shower.
And once an infant, sweet and fair,
The fairies kept a prisoner there :
The mother had journeyed afar all day,
And, wearied and spent with the length of the way,
At eve she laid down and slept:
But when she awoke, at the break of dawn,
And found that her infant was lost and gone;
To see how she beat her poor bosom forlorn,
With her eyes all tears, and her hair all torn,
The coldest of hearts had wept.
he searched the copse and thickets wild,
But she saw no trace of her darling child:
She wandered and wandered full many a day,
But she saw no mark to point out the way,
Till broken of heart, could no more abide,
But laid her down on the turf and died.
The villagers knew the fairy spot,
And they gazed afar on a moonlight night;
And oft, in the midst of the flowery grot,
A figure stood dress'd in white;
But never a villager dared go nigh,
For they knew whom the fairies caught must die.
Many a summer rolled away,
And the figure by night was no longer seen;
But a hillock of leaves, and flowerets gay,
Sprang suddenly o'er the green;
And yet by the fine scathed oak it stands :
They say it was reared by fairy hands.
Funereal sweets of saddest bloom,
Enwreathe the melancholy tomb;
And the pale moonlight, in its way,
Turns to a paler, fainter tone;
A gentler, a more mournful ray,
Ere o'er the flowery spot it shone,
In undulating play;
And when the moon withdraws her light,
A thousand glow-worms glimmer bright,
A little narrow day;
And Philomel, the whole night long,
Pours forth her saddest, wildest song,
A sweet, a requiem lay;
(By James Edmeston.)
WE, the myriad, born of Sound,
Where the sweetest spots are found,
Over sea, over land,
An invisible band,
Sport all creation round and round;
We love not the plain,
Nor the sky-bounded main ;
Nor delight in the region of ether to reign;
But enraptured we dwell
In the wood or the dell;
And an age-hollowed oak is a favourite cell,
A hilly clump, or a rocky shore,
We foot full merrily o'er and o'er.
Gay on Andalusian fields,
Purple, with autumnal sun,
When the grape its harvest yields,
When the summer toil is done;
Linked in rustic dance appear,
Spanish maid and cavalier;
Light they lead the dance along,
Heart to heart, and hand in hand:
Mirth, and merriment, and song,
Castanet and saraband:
Then upon a neighbouring hill,
Bands of Echos, lurking still,
Spring from ambush, dance, and play,
Lightly, merrily as they.
When the evening's magic power
Tips with gold the heather flower,
And all the plain delights the eye,
With setting sunbeams' warmest dye;
When along the silent grove
Meditation loves to rove,
All is sleeping, all is mute,
Save the warbling, dying strain,
Seeming sweetly to complain,
Breathing from the shepherd's flute;
Then, if chance the cadence fall
On some tower or abbey wall,
Oh, how lightly Echos bear
A fainter strain
Away again,
And melt it gently into air!
Seated by a dripping well,
When a cavern spans it round,
Many an Echo loves to dwell,
Listening to the liquid sound.
Since the driplets first begun,
She hath told them one by one;
Day and night her station kept,
Never slumbered, never slept;
But as drop by drop they die,
Each she pays a single sigh,
A momentary elegy.
In a rock upon the shore,
Oft we mock the ocean's roar;
Or on green hill side at dawn,
Carol to the huntsman's horn;
Or at evening in the dale,
On feet of air we steal along,
Listening to the shepherd's tale,
Or warbling to the shepherd's song. When in the vast cathedral nave,
The magic tones of music dwell; In some deep nook, or hero's grave,
We lurk, and answer swell for swell : Half the charms that music knows,
To the Echo's power she owes; But for us the sounds would fly Harshly, unmodulated by,
And reft of cadent melody.
FROM THE VESPERS OF PALERMO.
(By Mrs. Hemans.)
THE festal eve o'er earth and sky
In her sunset robe looks bright;
And the purple hills of Sicily
With their vineyards laugh in light;
From the marble cities of her plains,
Glad voices mingling swell;---
But with yet more loud and lofty strains
They shall hail the vesper-bell!
Oh! sweet its tones when the summer breeze
Its cadence wafts afar,
To float o'er the blue Sicilian seas,
As they gleam to the first pale star!
The shepherd greets them on his height,
The hermit in his cell ;---
But a deeper power shall breathe to-night
In the sound of the vesper-bell!
Suggested by a Portrait of the unfortunate Queen of France, taken on the last Examination previous to her Execution.
AND this was she! the peerless and the bright,
The false world's darling! she who did possess
(And held awhile in Europe's dazzled sight)
Glorious in majesty and loveliness,
The Heaven-lent power to ruin or to bless!
Yes, this was she!---But mark ye, I beseech,
Who love the world,-mark this mute wretchedness,
And grave it on your hearts, for it doth reach
To regions unexplored by eloquence of speech!
Nature gave loveliness, and fate gave power,
And millions lavish'd incense,---poets hung
Their amaranth over the royal bower;
For Gallia's lily every lyre was strung,
Pride of all eyes, and theme of every tongue :-
Love, Awe, and Wonder, were her ministers;
Life, and its hours, upon her fiat hung;
She held in poise a nation's hopes and fears-
Dominion, beauty, pomp, and the world's shout, were hers!
Gracious and mighty! Yet there came an hour
Of desolation; and away it swept,
In one rude whirlwind, empire, pomp, and power!
On the fair brow the hoary winter crept
Of Sorrow, not of Time.---Those eyes have wept,
Till Grief had done with tears, and calm and cold,
Tired with its own excess, in stupor slept,
Or gazed in frozen wonder to behold
The black and hideous page of destiny unroll'd.
Yet trace these faded lines! For they impart
A tale may do your careless bosoms good!
Muse o'er the fragments of a mighty heart,
Broken by sorrow :---ye, whose jocund mood
Insatiate feeds on Pleasure's tempting food,
Look here !---It will not harm ye, though your thought
Leave its gay flight to melt in Pity's flood!
To each light heart, home be the lesson brought,
With what enduring bliss the world's fair smile is fraught!
And is this all? No ;---ye may learn beside
That all which fate can threaten may be borne;
To see life's blessings, one by one, subside,
Its wild extremes from tenderness to scorn,
But as the changes of an April morn!
For still she was a queen !---and majesty
Survived, though she, deserted and forlorn,
Save Heaven, had ne'er a friend to lift her eye;
But Heaven return'd the glance, and taught her how to die!
(By Charles Johnson, Esq. of Dunson.)
WHETHER thy locks in natural beauty stray
Clust'ring like woodbine wild, or haply bound,
Like ivy wreathe thy polish'd brows around;
Whether within thine eyes' blue mirrors play
Mirth's arrowy beams or love's more soften'd ray;
Whether to the gay viol's pleasant sound
Thou minglest in the dance's airy round,
Thy light feet twinkling like the darts of day;
Or whether o'er the graceful harp thy frame,
More graceful yet, with eyes upraised, thou bendest,
And with its tones thy own, far sweeter, blendest;
Still thou art loveliest, varying, yet the same,
Still o'er my soul thine absolute sway extendest,
And from all other loves my heart defendest.
|