While the language free and bold
Which the Bard of Avon sung,
In which our Milton told
How the vault of heaven rung
When Satan, blasted, fell with his host;-
While this, with reverence meet,
Ten thousand echoes greet,
From rock to rock repeat
Round our coast;
While the manners, while the arts,
That mould a nation's soul,
Still cling around our hearts,-
Between let Ocean roll,
Our joint communion breaking with the Sun:
Yet still from either beach
The voice of blood shall reach,
More audible than speech,
"We are One."
"O POUR upon my soul again
That sad, unearthly strain,
That seems from other worlds to plain;
Thus falling, falling from afar,
As if some melancholy star
Had mingled with her light her sighs,
And dropped them from the skies!
"No,-never came from aught below
This melody of woe,
That makes my heart to overflow,
As from a thousand gushing springs,
Unknown before; that with it brings
This nameless light,-if light it be,-
That veils the world I see.
"For all I see around me wears
The hue of other spheres;
And something blent of smiles and tears
Comes from the very air I breathe.
O, nothing, sure, the stars beneath
Can mould a sadness like to this,-
So like angelic bliss."
So, at that dreamy hour of day
When the last lingering ray
Stops on the highest cloud to play,-
So thought the gentle Rosalie,
As on her maiden reverie
First fell the strain of him who stole
In music to her soul.
WISE is the face of Nature unto him
Whose heart, amid the business and the cares,
The cunning and bad passions, of the world,
Still keeps its freshness, and can look upon her
As when she breathed upon his schoolboy face
Her morning breath, from o'er the dewy beds.
Of infant violets waking to the sun;-
When the young spirit, only recipient,
So drank in her beauties, that his heart
Would reel within him, joining jubilant
The dance of brooks and waving woods and flowers.
HUSBAND and wife! No converse now ye hold,
As once ye did in your young days of love,
THE HUSBAND'S AND WIFE'S GRAVE.
On its alarms, its anxious hours, delays,
Its silent meditations, its glad hopes,
Its fears, impatience, quiet sympathies ;
Nor do ye speak of joy assured, and bliss
Full, certain, and possess'd.
Call you not now together.
Domestic cares
Earnest talk
On what your children may be, moves you not.
Ye lie in silence, and an awful silence;
"Tis not like that in which ye rested once
Most happy-silence eloquent, when heart
With heart held speech, and your mysterious frames,
Harmonious, sensitive, at every beat
Touch'd the soft notes of love.
Insensible, unheeding, folds you round;
And darkness, as a stone, has seal'd you in.
Away from all the living, here ye rest:
In all the nearness of the narrow tomb,
Yet feel ye not each other's presence now.
Dread fellowship! together, yet alone.
Is this thy prison-house, thy grave, then, Love?
And doth death cancel the great bond that holds
Commingling spirits? Are thoughts that know no bounds.
But, self-inspired, rise upward, searching out
The eternal Mind-the Father of all thought-
Are they become mere tenants of a tomb?
Dwellers in darkness, who th' illuminate realms
Of uncreated light have visited and lived?
Lived in the dreadful splendour of that throne,
Which One, with gentle hand the veil of flesh
Lifting, that hung 'twixt man and it, reveal'd
In glory? throne, before which even now
Our souls, moved by prophetic power, bow down
Rejoicing, yet at their own natures awed?
Souls that Thee know by a mysterious sense,
Thou awful, unseen presence-are they quenched,
Or burn they on, hid from our mortal eyes
By that bright day which ends not, as the sun
His robe of light flings round the glittering stars?
And with our frames do perish all our loves?
Do those that took their root and put forth buds,
And their soft leaves unfolded in the warmth
Of mutual hearts, grow up and live in beauty,
Then fade and fall, like fair unconscious flowers?
Are thoughts and passions that to the tongue give speech,
And make it send forth winning harmonies,
That to the cheek do give its living glow,
And vision in the eye the soul intense
With that for which there is no utterance-
Are these the body's accidents? no more?
To live in it, and when that dies, go out
Like the burnt taper's flame?
A voice within us speaks that startling word,
"Man, thou shalt never die!" Celestial voices
Hymn it unto our souls: according harps,
By angel fingers touch'd when the mild stars
Of morning sang together, sound forth still
The song of our great immortality:
Thick clustering orbs, and this our fair domain,
The tall, dark mountains, and the deep-toned seas
Join in this solemn, universal song.
Oh, listen, ye, our spirits; drink it in
From all the air! 'Tis in the gentle moonlight; 'Tis floating midst day's setting glories; Night,
Wrapped in her sable robe, with silent step
Comes to our bed and breathes it in our ears:
Night, and the dawn, bright day, and thoughtful eve,
All time, all bounds, the limitless expanse,
As one vast mystic instrument, are touch'd
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