Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines, How silently! Around thee and above Hence, viper thoughts, that coil Deep is the air and dark, substantial, around my mind, Reality's dark dream! I turn from you, and listen to the wind, Thou actor, perfect in all tragic sounds! Thou mighty poet, e'en to frenzy bold! black, An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it, As with a wedge! But when I look again, It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine, Thy habitation from eternity! O dread and silent mount! I gazed upon thee, Till thou, still present to the bodily Voice of sweet song. Awake, my heart, awake! Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my hymn. Thou first and chief, sole sovran of the vale! Oh, struggling with the darkness all the night, And visited all night by troops of stars, Or when they climb the sky or when they sink: Companion of the morning-star at dawn, Thyself earth's rosy star, and of the dawn Co-herald: wake, oh, wake, and utter praise! Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth? Who filled thy countenance with rosy light? Who made thee parent of perpetual streams? Who made you glorious as the gates of Heaven Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet? God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations, Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God! God! sing ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice! Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds! And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow, And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God! Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost! Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest! Ye eagles, play-mates of the mountain storm! Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds! Ye signs and wonders of the elements! Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise! Thou too, hoar mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks, Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard, Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene Into the depth of clouds, that veil thy breast Thou too again, stupendous mountain! thou That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low In adoration, upward from thy base Slow travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears, Solemnly seemest, like a vapory cloud, To rise before me-Rise, O ever rise, Rise like a cloud of incense, from the earth! O part them never! If hope pros- Flowers are lovely; Love is flower trate lie, Love too will sink and die. But Love is subtle, and doth proof derive From her own life that Hope is yet alive; And bending o'er with soul-transfusing eyes, And the soft murmurs of the mother dove, Woos back the fleeting spirit and half-supplies; Thus Love repays to Hope what When overtasked at length Both Love and Hope beneath the load give way. Then with a statue's smile, a statue's strength, Stands the mute sister, Patience, like; Friendship is a sheltering tree; Of Friendship, Love, and Liberty, Ere I was old? Ah, woful ere, Which tells me, Youth's no longer here! O Youth! for years so many and sweet, 'Tis known, that thou and I were one, I'll think it but a fond conceit - on, To make believe, that thou art gone? Few sorrows hath she of her own. The songs that make her grieve. I played a soft and doleful air, She listened with a flitting blush, I told her of the knight that wore Upon his shield a burning brand; And that for ten long years he wooed The lady of the land. I told her how he pined: and ah! The deep, the low, the pleading tone With which I sang another's love, Interpreted my own. She listened with a flitting blush, With downcast eyes, and modest grace; And she forgave me, that I gazed She half enclosed me with her arms, And how she wept, and clasped his She pressed me with a meek embrace; knees; And how she tended him in vain The scorn that crazed his brain;— And that she nursed him in a cave; And how his madness went away, When on the yellow forest-leaves A dying man he lay;— His dying words-but when I reached That tenderest strain of all the ditty My faltering voice and pausing harp Disturbed her soul with pity! And bending back her head, looked up, And gazed upon my face. 'Twas partly love, and partly fear, I calmed her fears, and she was calm, And told her love with virgin pride; And so I won my Genevieve, My bright and beauteous bride. THOMAS STEPHENS COLLIER. OFF LABRADOR. THE storm-wind moans through branches bare; The snow flies wildly through the air; The mad waves roar, as fierce and high [sky. They toss their crests against the All dark and desolate lies the sand Along the wastes of a barren land; And rushing on, with sheets flung free, A ship sails down from the north ern sea. |