YE glorious pageants! hung in air
To greet our raptur'd view;
What in creation can compare,
For loveliness, with you?
This earth is beautiful, indeed,
And in itself appeals
To eyes that have been taught to read
The beauties it reveals.
Its giant mountains, which ascend
To your exalted sphere,
And seem, at times, with you to blend
In majesty austere ;
Its lovely valleys, forests vast ;
Its rivers, lakes, and seas;
With every glance upon them cast,
The sight, the sense must please.
A purer, more abstracted joy
It gives to gaze on you;
And feel what gladden'd once the boy,
Is sweet to manhood's view.
What can there be on sea, or earth,
Though charms in each abound,
Which you can fail to shadow forth,
With added beauties crown'd?
When through the eastern gates of heaven The sun's first glories shine;
Or when his softest beams are given
To gild the day's decline!
All glorious as that orb appears,
His radiance still would lose
Each gentle charm, that most endears,
Without your soft'ning hues.
When these with his refulgent rays
Harmoniously unite,
Who on your splendid pomp can gaze,
Nor feel a hush'd delight?
On all that for a season lifts
From "Earth's contracted span"
Our eyes, and thoughts-and offers gifts
Of noblest powers to man.
The thousand cares that cumber life
Write wrinkles on the brow;
Yet these, with all their noise and strife,
Are things to which we bow.
We call them useful-so they are,
If man their use would learn ;
And then from you, more glorious far,
As idle shadows turn.
But if ye lead our thoughts to Him
Whose spirit space pervades,
Then are ye, whether bright or dim,
More than aerial shades.
I would not under-rate the boon
The Gospel has proclaim'd;
Nor give to clouds, winds, sun, or moon,
His right who all has fram'd.
But viewing these as meant to feed
Devotion's heaven-ward flame,
His power and love, for whom they plead,
I dare not but proclaim.
Better, far better, not to be,
Than-being-to resign
The faith that all we feel and see
Betokens Power Divine.
And rather than forego the thought,
The feeling, ye supply,
As silently ye sail athwart
The blue, o'er-arching sky
Be mine the faith the INDIAN finds,
Whom nature's night enshrouds,
Who yet can hear a GOD in winds,
And see HIM in THE CLOUDS!
LIGHT rued false Ferdinand, to leave a lovely maid forlorn,
Who broke her heart and died to hide her blushing cheek from scorn.
One night he dreamt he woo'd her in their wonted bower of love,
Where the flowers sprang thick around them, and the birds sang sweet
above.
But the scene was swiftly changed into a church-yard's dismal view,
And her lips grew black beneath his kiss from love's delicious hue.
What more he dreamt, he told to none; but, shuddering, pale, and dumb,
Look'd out upon the waves, like one that knew his hour was come.
'Twas now the dead watch of the night-the helm was lash'd a-lee,
And the ship rode where Mount Etna lights the deep Levantine sea;
When beneath its glare a boat came, row'd by a woman in her shroud,
Who, with eyes that made our blood run cold, stood up and spoke
aloud.
Come, Traitor, down, for whom my ghost still wanders unforgiven!
Come down, false Ferdinand, for whom I broke my peace with
Heaven!-
It was vain to hold the victim, for he plung'd to meet her call
Like the bird that shrieks and flutters in the gazing serpent's thrall.
You may guess, the boldest mariner shrunk daunted from the sight,
For the spectre and her winding-sheet shone blue with hideous light;
Like a fiery wheel the boat spun with the waving of her hand,
And round they went, and down they went, as the cock crew from the
land.
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