Thou hast no voice to tell what thou hast seen,

Save a low moaning in thy troubled leaves;

And canst but point thy scars, and shake thy head,

With solemn warning, in the sunbeam's sheen;

And show how Time the mightiest thing bereaves,

By the sere leaves that rot upon thy bed.

Type of long-suffering power! Even in my gayest hour, Thou 'dst still my tongue, and send my spirit far,

To wander in a labyrinth of thought; For thou hast waged with Time unceasing war,

And out of pain hast strength and beauty brought.

Thou amidst storms and tempests hadst thy birth,

Upon these bleak and scantly-sheltering rocks,

Nor much save storm and wrath hast known on earth;

Yet nobly hast thou bode the fiercest shocks.

That Circumstance

But then came autumn, when Thy dry and tattered leaves fel dead;

And sadly on the gale

Thou drop'dst them one by

one

Drop'dst them, with a low, sad wail,

On the cold, unfeeling s'one. Next Winter seized thee in his iron grasp,

And shook thy bruised and straining form;

Or locked thee in his icicle's cold clasp,

And piled upon thy head the shorn cloud's snowy fleece.

Wert thou not joyful, in this bitter storm,

That the green honors, which erst decked thy head,

Sage Autumn's slow decay, had mildly shed?

Else, with their weight, they'd given thy ills increase,

And dragged thee helpless from thy uptorn bed.

Year after year, in kind or adverse fate,

can pour on

patient Worth.

From thy secure and sheltering

branch

The wild bird pours her glad and fearless lay,

That, with the sunbeams, falls upon the vale,

Adding fresh brightness to the smile of day,

'Neath those broad boughs the youth has told love's tale;

And thou hast seen his hardy features blanch,

Heard his snared heart beat like a prisoned bird,

Fluttering with fear, before the fowler laid;

While his bold figure shook at every word

The strong man trembling at a timid maid!

And thou hast smiled upon their children's play;

Seen them grow old, and gray, and pass away.

And all things seem a show and mockery

Life, and life's actions, noise and

vanity;

I ask my mournful heart if it can tell If all be truth which I protest to thee:

And my heart answers, solemnly, ""Tis well."

I HAVE been mounted on life's topmost wave,

Until my forehead kissed the dazzling cloud;

But, ah! my treacherous heart doth ever fail

To ratify the sentence of my mind; For when conviction strikes me to the core,

I swear I love thee fondlier than before;

And were I now all free and unconfined,

Loose as the action of the shoreless wind,

My slavish heart would sigh for bonds once more.