On which her pale face leant; the Bible lay'
Open beside, but blister'd were the leaves
With two or three large tears, which had dried
in.
Oh, happy she had not surviv'd her child!
And many pitied her, for she had spent
Her little savings, and she had no friends;
But strangers made her grave in that church-yard,
And where her sailor slept, there slept his mother!
LOUD as that trumpet doom'd to raise the dead,
God's voice doth sometimes fall on us in fear:
More often with a music low yet clear,
Soft whispering "It is I: be not afraid.
And sometimes, mingling strangely joy with dread,
It thrills the spirit's cavern'd sepulchre
Deep as that voice which on the awe-struck ear Of him, the three-days-buried, murmuring, said "Come forth"-and he arose. Oh! Christians,
As brethren all on whom our glorious Sun,
No matter how, or when, or where, hath shone
With vital warmth; and neither mourn nor rail
Because one light, itself unchanging, showers
A thousand colours or a thousand flowers.
BEAUTIFUL are you in your lowliness;
Bright in your hues, delicious in your scent, Lively your modest blossoms, downward bent, As shrinking from our gaze, yet prompt to bless The passer-by with fragrance, and express
How gracefully, though mutely, eloquent Are unobtrusive worth, and meek content, Rejoicing in their own obscure recess. Delightful flowerets! at the voice of spring
Your buds unfolded to its sunbeams bright,
And though your blossoms soon shall fade from
sight,
Above your lonely birth-place birds shall sing,
And from your clust'ring leaves the glow-worm
The emerald glory of its earth-born light.
THE Palm! the princess of the sylvan rare;
When islanded amid the level green,
Or charming the wild desert with her grace,
The only verdure of the sultry scene:
Ever with simple majesty of mien
No other growth of nature can assume,
She reigns-and most when, in the ev'ning sheen,
The stable column and the waving plume
Shade the delicious lights that all around illume.
THE REPLY OF THE SHUNAMITE WOMAN.1
-"I DWELL among mine own” Oh! happy
Not for the sunny clusters of the vine,
Nor for the olives on the mountain's brow;
Nor the flocks wandering by the flow'ry line
Of streams, that make the green land where they
shine
Laugh to the light of waters
not for these, Nor the soft shadow of ancestral trees,
Whose kindly whisper floats o'er thee and thine
Oh! not for these I call thee richly blest,
But for the meekness of thy woman's breast,
Where that sweet depth of still contentment lies;
And for thy holy household love, which clings
Unto all ancient and familiar things,
Weaving from each some link for home's dear charities.
NAY, William, nay, not so! the changeful year
In all its due successions to my sight
Presents but varied beauties, transient all,
All in their season good. These fading leaves,
That with their rich variety of hues
Make yonder forest in the slanting sun
So beautiful, in you awake the thought
Of winter, cold, drear winter, when the trees,
Each like a fleshless skeleton shall stretch
Its bare brown boughs; where not a flower shall spread
Its colours to the day, and not a bird
Carol its joyance, but all nature wear
One sullen aspect, bleak and desolate,
To eye, ear, feeling, comfortless alike.
To me their many-colour'd beauties speak
Of times of merriment and festival,
The year's best holiday: I call to mind
The school-boy days, when in the falling leaves
I saw with eager hope the pleasant sign
Of coming Christmas; when at morn I took
My wooden kalendar, and counting up
Once more its often-told account, smooth'd off
Each day with more delight the daily notch.
To you the beauties of the autumnal year
Make mournful emblems, and you think of man
Doom'd to the grave's long winter, spirit-broken,
Bending beneath the burthen of his
years,
Sense-dull'd and fretful, "full of aches and pains,"
Yet clinging still to life. To me they show
The calm decay of nature when the mind
Retains its strength, and in the languid eye
Religion's holy hopes kindle a joy
That makes old age look lovely. All to you
Is dark and cheerless; you in this fair world
See some destroying principle abroad,
Air, earth, and water full of living things,
Each on the other preying; and the ways
Of man, a strange perplexing labyrinth,
Where crimes and miseries, each producing each,
Render life loathsome, and destroy the hope
That should in death bring comfort. Oh! my
That thy faith were as mine! that could'st see
Death still producing life, and evil still
Working its own destruction; could'st behold
The strifes and troubles of this troubled world
With the strong eye that sees the promis'd day
Dawn through this night of tempest! All things
Would minister to joy; there should thine heart
Be heal'd and harmonis'd, and thou would'st feel
God, always, everywhere, and all in all.
Ir may be that our homeward longings made
That other lands were judg'd with partial eyes;
But fairer in my sight the mottled skies,
With pleasant interchange of sun and shade,
And more desir'd the meadow and deep glade
Of sylvan England, green with frequent showers,
Than all the beauty which the vaunted bow'rs
Of the parch'd South have in mine eyes display'd;
Fairer and more desir'd!-this well might be,
For let the South have beauty's utmost dower,
And yet my heart might well have turn'd to thee,
My home, my country, when a delicate flower
Within thy pleasant borders was for me
Tended, and growing up thro' sun and shower.
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