'Twere Heaven indeed Through fields of trackless light to soar, On Nature's charms to feed, And Nature's own great God adore. THE FAMILY MEETING. Sister, brother, All who hold each other dear. We are all here! You that I love with love so dear. Each chair is filled- we're all at May each repeat, in words of bliss, home; To-night let no cold stranger come; It is not often thus around Our old familiar hearth we're found. We're not all here! Some are away- -the dead ones dear, And gave the hour to guiltless mirth. And cruel Ocean has his share- We are all here! lie Even they the dead-though dead, so dear. Fond Memory, to her duty true, We're all all here! TO MY CIGAR. YES, social friend, I love thee well, By thee, they cry, with phizzes long, And oft, mild friend, to me thou art. Thou'rt like the man of worth, who gives To goodness every day, The odor of whose virtue lives When, in the lonely evening hour, Brings back their faded forms to O'er history's varied page view. pore, Man's fate in thine I see. Oft as thy snowy column grows, A while like thee the hero burns, And time's the wasting breath, That late or early, we behold, Gives all to dusty death. From beggar's frieze to monarch's robe, One common doom is passed; Sweet Nature's works, the swelling globe, Must all burn out at last. And what is he who smokes thee now? - A little moving heap, But though thy ashes downward go, FROM THE "ODE ON SHAKESPEARE." WHO now shall grace the glowing throne, Where, all unrivalled, all alone, Bold Shakespeare sat, and looked creation through, The minstrel monarch of the worlds he drew? That throne is cold-that lyre in death unstrung On whose proud note delighted Wonder hung. Yet old Oblivion, as in wrath he sweeps, One spot shall spare-the grave where Shakespeare sleeps. Rulers and ruled in common gloom may lie, But Nature's laureate bards shall never die. Art's chiselled boast and Glory's tro phied shore Must live in numbers, or can live no more. While sculptured Jove some nameless waste may claim, [fame: Still rolls the Olympic car in Pindar's Troy's doubtful walls in ashes passed away, Yet frown on Greece in Homer's deathless lay; Rome, slowly sinking in her crumbling fanes, Stands all immortal in her Maro's strains; So, too, yon giant empress of the isles, On whose broad sway the sun forever smiles, To Time's unsparing rage one day must bend, And all her triumphs in her Shakespeare end! O thou! to whose creative power We dedicate the festal hour, While Grace and Goodness round the altar stand, Learning's anointed train, and Beauty's rose-lipped band Realms yet unborn, in accents now unknown, - Thy song shall learn, and bless it for their own. [roves, Deep in the West as Independence His banners planting round the land he loves, Where Nature sleeps in Eden's infant grace, In Time's full hour shall spring a glorious race, Thy name, the verse, thy language, shall they bear, And deck for thee the vaulted temple there. Our Roman-hearted fathers broke Thy parent empire's galling yoke; But thou, harmonious master of the mind, Around their sons a gentler chain shalt bind; more in thee shall Albion's sceptre wave, Once And what her monarch lost, her monarch-bard shall save. And in the Silent Land his shade confest Reached the calm dust, and there, That she, of all the seven, loved him composed and queenly, Gazed, but the missal trembled in her hand: "That's with the past," she said, "nor may I meanly Give way to tears!" and passed into the land. The third hung feebly on the por tals moaning, With whitened lips, and feet that stood in sand, So weak they seemed, passion owning. The fourth, a ripe, maiden, came, best. LAURA, MY DARLING. LAURA, my darling, the roses have blushed At the kiss of the dew, and our chamber is hushed; Our murmuring babe to your bosom has clung, And hears in his slumber the song that you sung; and all her I watch you asleep with your arms round him thrown, luxurious Your links of dark tresses wound in with his own, Half for such homage to the dead And the wife is as dear as the gentle atoning By smiles on one who fanned a later flame In her slight soul, her fickle steps attended. The fifth and sixth were sisters; at the same young bride Of the hour when you first, darling, came to my side. Years have but rounded your womanly grace, And added their spell to the light of your face; Your soul is the same as though part were not given forth from the To the two, like yourself, sent to bless me from heaven, Dear lives, springing life of my life, To make you more near, darling, mother, and wife! Laura, my darling, there's hazel-eyed Fred, Asleep in his own tiny cot by the bed, And little King Arthur, whose curls have the art Of winding their tendrils so close round my heart; Yet fairer than either, and dearer than both, Is the true one who gave me in girlhood her troth: when we mated for evil and good, What were we, darling, but babes in the wood? One radiant vista of the realm before us, With one rapt moment given to see and hear, Ah, who would fear? Were we quite sure To find the peerless friend who left us lonely, Or there, by some celestial stream as pure, To gaze in eyes that here were lovelit only This weary mortal coil, were we quite sure, Who would endure? THE TRYST. SLEEPING, I dreamed that thou wast mine, In some ambrosial lover's shrine. |