Through the dark aisles of a thousand years
Thy lonely wing hath passed;

Thou hast caught the anthem's billowy swell,
The stately dirge's tone,

For a chief with sword, and shield, and helm,
To his place of slumber gone.

Thou art come from long-forsaken homes,
Wherein our young days flew;

Thou hast found sweet voices lingering there,
The loved, the kind, the true:
Thou callest back those melodies,
Though now all changed and fled—
Be still, be still, and haunt us not
With music from the dead!

Are all these notes in thee, wild Wind?
These many notes in thee?
For in our own unfathomed souls
Their fount must surely be:
Yes! buried, but unsleeping there,

Thought watches, Memory lies,

From whose deep urn the tones are poured

Through all earth's harmonies!

MRS. HEMANS.

THE WINDS.

viewless minstrels of the sky!
I marvel not in times gone by
That ye were deified;

For, even in this latter day,

To me oft has your power, or play,
Unearthly thoughts supplied.

Awful your power! when, by your might,
You heave the wild waves, crested white,
Like mountains in your wrath;

Ploughing between them valleys deep,
Which to the seaman roused from sleep,
Yawn like death's opening path!

Graceful your play! when round the bower
Where beauty culls Spring's loveliest flower,
To wreathe her dark locks there,
Your gentlest whispers lightly breathe
The leaves between, flit round that wreath,
And stir her silken hair.

Still thoughts like these are but of earth,
And you can give far loftier birth :-
Ye come!-we know not whence!
Ye go!-can mortals trace your flight?
All imperceptible to sight,

Though audible to sense.

The Sun-his rise and set we know ;
The Sea-we mark its ebb and flow;
The Moon-her wax and wane ;
The Stars-man knows their courses well,
The comet's vagrant paths can tell ;-
But you his search disdain.

Ye restless, homeless, shapeless things!
Who mock all our imaginings,

Like spirits in a dream;

What epithet can words supply

Unto the bard who takes such high
Unmanageable theme?

But one-to me, when fancy stirs

My thoughts, ye seem heaven's messengers, Who leave no path untrod;

And when as now, at midnight's hour,

I hear your voice in all its power,

It seems the voice of God.

BARTON.

A STOR M.

AZZLING may seem the noontide sky,
Its arch of azure showing;

And lovely to the gazer's eye

The west at sunset glowing.

Splendid the east, at morning bright,
Fair-moonlight on the ocean;
But glorious is the hushed delight
Born in the Storm's commotion.

To see the dark and lowering cloud
By vivid lightning riven;

To hear the answer, stern and proud,
By echoing thunders given;

To feel in such a scene and hour,
'Mid all that each discloses,
The presence of that viewless Power
On whom the world reposes:

This to the heart is more than all
Mere beauty can bring o'er it;

Thought, feeling, fancy-own its thrall,
And joy is hushed before it.

BARTON.

A STORM.

S he spake, I saw

The clouds hang thick and heavy o'er the
deep;

And heavily upon the long, slow swell,
The vessel laboured on the labouring sea.
The reef-points rattled on the shivering sail;
At fits, the sudden gust howled ominous :

Anon, with unremitting fury raged.

High rolled the mighty billows, and the blast
Swept from the sheeted sides the showery foam.
Vain, now, were all the seamen's homeward hopes,
Vain all their skill!-we drove before the storm.-
'Tis pleasant, by the cheerful hearth, to hear
Of tempests, and the dangers of the deep,
And pause at times, and feel that we are safe;
Then listen to the perilous tale again,
And, with an eager and suspended soul,
Woo terror to delight us.—But to hear
The roaring of the raging elements,

To know all human strength, all human skill,
Avail not; to look round and only see
The mountain-wave incumbent with its weight
Of bursting waters o'er the reeling bark,——
This is, indeed, a dread and awful thing!
And he who hath endured the horror once
Of such an hour, doth never hear the storm
Howl round his home, but he remembers it,
And thinks upon the suffering mariner.

SOUTHEY.

A STOR M.

T first, heard solemn o'er the verge of heaven,
The tempest growls; but, as it nearer comes,
And rolls its awful burden on the wind,
The lightnings flash a larger curve, and more
The noise astounds; till overhead a sheet
Of livid flame discloses wide; then shuts,
And opens wider; shuts and opens still
Expansive, wrapping ether in a blaze.
Follows the loosened aggravated roar,

Enlarging, deepening, mingling: peal on peal
Crushed horrible, convulsing heaven and earth.

THOMSON.

A STORM.

NCE, at high noon, amidst a sultry calm,
Looking around for comfort, I descried,
Far on the green horizon's utmost verge,
A wreath of cloud; to me a glad discovery,
For each new image sprang a new idea,
The germ of thoughts to come, that could not die.
The little vapour rapidly expanded,

Lowering and thickening till it hid the sun,
And threw a starless night upon the sea.
Eagerly, tremblingly, I watched the end:
Faint gleamed the lightning, followed by no peal;
Dreary and hollow moans foretold a gale;
Nor long the issue tarried: then the wind,
Unprisoned, blew its trumpet loud and shrill;
Out flashed the lightnings gloriously; the rain
Came down like music, and the full-toned thunder
Rolled in grand harmony throughout high heaven,
Till ocean, breaking from its black supineness,
Drowned in its own stupendous uproar all
The voices of the Storm beside: meanwhile,
A war of mountains raged upon his surface;
Mountains each other swallowing, and again
New Alps and Andes, from unfathomed valleys
Upstarting, joined the battle: like those sons
Of earth,-giants, rebounding as new-born
From every fall on their unwearied mother,
I glowed with all the rapture of the strife;
Beneath, was one wild whirl of foaming surges;
Above, the array of lightnings, like the swords
Of cherubim, wide brandished to repel

Aggression from heaven's gates, their flaming strokes
Quenched momentarily in the vast abyss.

MONTGOMERY.