On fragrant branches of perpetual green;

The crystal streams that velvet meadows lave,

To the green ocean roll with chiding

wave.

The glassy ocean, hushed, forgets to roar;

But trembling, murmurs on the sandy shore;

And, lo! his surface lovely to behold, Glows in the west, a sea of living gold!

While all above a thousand liveries gay

The skies with pomp ineffable array.

Arabian sweets perfume the happy plains;

Above, beneath, around, enchant ment reigns

While glowing Vesper leads the starry train,

And Night slow draws her veil o'er land and main,

Emerging clouds the azure east invade,

And wrap the lucid spheres in gradual shade;

While yet the songsters of the vocal grove

With dying numbers tune the soul to love.

IDEALS.

To ears that await its token
Indeterminate, fitful, broken,
Perpetually it strays,
By the discords of our days.
It pierces the grim disasters

Of clamorous human Hate,
And its influence overmasters
All the ironies of Fate.

The icy laugh of the scorner

Cannot strike its echoes mute;
It cleaves the moan of the mourner
Like a clear æolian lute;

At its tone less clear and savage
Grows the anguish of farewell tears,
And its melody haunts the ravage
Of the desecrating years.

Philosophy builds, and spares not
Her firm, laborious power,
But her lordly edifice wears not

Its last aerial tower.

For the quarries of Reason fail her

Ere the structure's perfect scope, And the stone that would now avail her [hope. Must be hewn from heights of

But Art, at her noblest glory,

Can seem, to her lovers fond, As divinely admonitory

Of infinitudes beyond.

WOUNDS.

THE night-wind sweeps its viewless lyre,

And o'er dim lands, at pastoral rest,
A single star's white heart of fire
Is throbbing in the amber west.

I track a rivulet, while I roam,
By banks that copious leafage cools,
And watch it roughening into foam,
Or deepening into glassy pools.

And where the shy stream gains a glade

That willowy thickets overwhelm, I find a cottage in the shade

Of one high patriarchal elm.

Unseen, I mark, well bowered from reach,

A group the sloping lawn displays, And more by gestures than by speech I learn their converse while I gaze.

In curious band, youth, maid, and dame,

About his chair they throng to greet

A gaunt old man of crippled frame, Whose crutch leans idle at his feet.

Girt with meek twilight's peaceful breath, [fray, They hear of loud, tempestuous Of troops mown down like wheat by death,

Of red Antietam's ghastly day. He tells of hurts that will not heal;

Where sting of shot and bite of steel Of aches that nerve and sinew fret, Have left their dull mementos yet;

And touched by pathos, filled with praise,

His gathered hearers closer press, To pay alike in glance or phrase, Response of pitying tenderness.

But I, who note their kindly will, Look onward, past the box-edged walk, [still, Where stands a woman, grave and Oblivious of their fleeting talk.