An Indian girl was sitting where
  Her lover, slain in battle, slept;
Her maiden veil, her own black hair,
  Came down o'er eyes that wept;
And wildly, in her woodland tongue,
This sad and simple lay she sung:

"I've pulled away the shrubs that grew
  Too close above thy sleeping head,
And broke the forest boughs that threw
  Their shadows o'er thy bed,
That, shining from the sweet south-west,
The sunbeams might rejoice thy rest.

"It was a weary, weary road
  That led thee to the pleasant coast,
Where thou, in his serene abode,
  Hast met thy father's ghost:
Where everlasting autumn lies
On yellow woods and sunny skies.

"Twas I the broidered mocsen made,
  That shod thee for that distant land;
'Twas I thy bow and arrows laid
  Beside thy still cold hand;
Thy bow in many a battle bent,
Thy arrows never vainly sent.

"With wampum belts I crossed thy breast,
  And wrapped thee in the bison's hide,
And laid the food that pleased thee best,
  In plenty, by thy side,
And decked thee bravely, as became
A warrior of illustrious name.

"Thou'rt happy now, for thou hast passed
  The long dark journey of the grave,
And in the land of light, at last,
  Hast joined the good and brave;
Amid the flushed and balmy air,
The bravest and the loveliest there.

"Yet, oft to thine own Indian maid
  Even there thy thoughts will earthward stray,--
To her who sits where thou wert laid,
  And weeps the hours away,
Yet almost can her grief forget,
To think that thou dost love her yet.

"And thou, by one of those still lakes
  That in a shining cluster lie,
On which the south wind scarcely breaks
  The image of the sky,
A bower for thee and me hast made
Beneath the many-coloured shade.

"And thou dost wait and watch to meet
  My spirit sent to join the blessed,
And, wondering what detains my feet
  From the bright land of rest,
Dost seem, in every sound, to hear
The rustling of my footsteps near."

Beneath the waning moon I walk at night,
  And muse on human life--for all around
Are dim uncertain shapes that cheat the sight,
  And pitfalls lurk in shade along the ground,
And broken gleams of brightness, here and there,
Glance through, and leave unwarmed the death-like air.

The trampled earth returns a sound of fear--
  A hollow sound, as if I walked on tombs!
And lights, that tell of cheerful homes, appear
  Far off, and die like hope amid the glooms.
A mournful wind across the landscape flies,
And the wide atmosphere is full of sighs.

And I, with faltering footsteps, journey on,
  Watching the stars that roll the hours away,
Till the faint light that guides me now is gone,
  And, like another life, the glorious day
Shall open o'er me from the empyreal height,
With warmth, and certainty, and boundless light.

This is the church which Pisa, great and free,
Reared to St. Catharine. How the time-stained walls,
That earthquakes shook not from their poise, appear
To shiver in the deep and voluble tones
Rolled from the *****! Underneath my feet
There lies the lid of a sepulchral vault.
The image of an armed knight is graven
Upon it, clad in perfect panoply--
Cuishes, and greaves, and cuirass, with barred helm,
Gauntleted hand, and sword, and blazoned shield.
Around, in Gothic characters, worn dim
By feet of worshippers, are traced his name,
And birth, and death, and words of eulogy.
Why should I pore upon them? This old tomb,
This effigy, the strange disused form
Of this inscription, eloquently show
His history. Let me clothe in fitting words
The thoughts they breathe, and frame his epitaph.

  "He whose forgotten dust for centuries
Has lain beneath this stone, was one in whom
Adventure, and endurance, and emprise
Exalted the mind's faculties and strung
The body's sinews. Brave he was in fight,
Courteous in banquet, scornful of repose,
And bountiful, and cruel, and devout,
And quick to draw the sword in private feud.
He pushed his quarrels to the death, yet prayed
The saints as fervently on bended knees
As ever shaven cenobite. He loved
As fiercely as he fought. He would have borne
The maid that pleased him from her bower by night,
To his hill-castle, as the eagle bears
His victim from the fold, and rolled the rocks
On his pursuers. He aspired to see
His native Pisa queen and arbitress
Of cities: earnestly for her he raised
His voice in council, and affronted death
In battle-field, and climbed the galley's deck,
And brought the captured flag of Genoa back,
Or piled upon the Arno's crowded quay
The glittering spoils of the tamed Saracen.
He was not born to brook the stranger's yoke,
But would have joined the exiles that withdrew
For ever, when the Florentine broke in
The gates of Pisa, and bore off the bolts
For trophies--but he died before that day.

  "He lived, the impersonation of an age
That never shall return. His soul of fire
Was kindled by the breath of the rude time
He lived in. Now a gentler race succeeds,
Shuddering at blood; the effeminate cavalier,
Turning his eyes from the reproachful past,
And from the hopeless future, gives to ease,
And love, and music, his inglorious life."

Lament who will, in fruitless tears,
  The speed with which our moments fly;
I sigh not over vanished years,
  But watch the years that hasten by.

Look, how they come,--a mingled crowd
  Of bright and dark, but rapid days;
Beneath them, like a summer cloud,
  The wide world changes as I gaze.

What! grieve that time has brought so soon
  The sober age of manhood on!
As idly might I weep, at noon,
  To see the blush of morning gone.

Could I give up the hopes that glow
  In prospect like Elysian isles;
And let the cheerful future go,
  With all her promises and smiles?

The future!--cruel were the power
  Whose doom would tear thee from my heart.
Thou sweetener of the present hour!
  We cannot--no--we will not part.

Oh, leave me, still, the rapid flight
  That makes the changing seasons gay,
The grateful speed that brings the night,
  The swift and glad return of day;

The months that touch, with added grace,
  This little prattler at my knee,
In whose arch eye and speaking face
  New meaning every hour I see;

The years, that o'er each sister land
  Shall lift the country of my birth,
And nurse her strength, till she shall stand
  The pride and pattern of the earth:

Till younger commonwealths, for aid,
  Shall cling about her ample robe,
And from her frown shall shrink afraid
  The crowned oppressors of the globe.

True--time will seam and blanch my brow--
  Well--I shall sit with aged men,
And my good glass will tell me how
  A grizzly beard becomes me then.

And then should no dishonour lie
  Upon my head, when I am gray,
Love yet shall watch my fading eye,
  And smooth the path of my decay.

Then haste thee, Time--'tis kindness all
  That speeds thy winged feet so fast:
Thy pleasures stay not till they pall,
  And all thy pains are quickly past.

Thou fliest and bear'st away our woes,
  And as thy shadowy train depart,
The memory of sorrow grows
  A lighter burden on the heart.

Region of life and light!
Land of the good whose earthly toils are o'er!
    Nor frost nor heat may blight
    Thy vernal beauty, fertile shore,
Yielding thy blessed fruits for evermore!

    There without crook or sling,
Walks the good shepherd; blossoms white and red
    Round his meek temples cling;
    And to sweet pastures led,
His own loved flock beneath his eye is fed.

    He guides, and near him they
Follow delighted, for he makes them go
    Where dwells eternal May,
    And heavenly roses blow,
Deathless, and gathered but again to grow.

    He leads them to the height
Named of the infinite and long-sought Good,
    And fountains of delight;
    And where his feet have stood
Springs up, along the way, their tender food.

    And when, in the mid skies,
The climbing sun has reached his highest bound,
    Reposing as he lies,
    With all his flock around,
He witches the still air with numerous sound.

    From his sweet lute flow forth
Immortal harmonies, of power to still
    All passions born of earth,
    And draw the ardent will
Its destiny of goodness to fulfil.

    Might but a little part,
A wandering breath of that high melody,
    Descend into my heart,
    And change it till it be
Transformed and swallowed up, oh love! in thee.

    Ah! then my soul should know,
Beloved! where thou liest at noon of day,
    And from this place of woe
    Released, should take its way
To mingle with thy flock and never stray.

Matron! the children of whose love,
Each to his grave, in youth have passed,
And now the mould is heaped above
The dearest and the last!
Bride! who dost wear the widow's veil
Before the wedding flowers are pale!
Ye deem the human heart endures
No deeper, bitterer grief than yours.

Yet there are pangs of keener wo,
Of which the sufferers never speak,
Nor to the world's cold pity show
The tears that scald the cheek,
Wrung from their eyelids by the shame
And guilt of those they shrink to name,
Whom once they loved, with cheerful will,
And love, though fallen and branded, still.

Weep, ye who sorrow for the dead,
Thus breaking hearts their pain relieve;
And graceful are the tears ye shed,
And honoured ye who grieve.

The praise of those who sleep in earth,
The pleasant memory of their worth,
The hope to meet when life is past,
Shall heal the tortured mind at last.

But ye, who for the living lost
That agony in secret bear,
Who shall with soothing words accost
The strength of your despair?
Grief for your sake is scorn for them
Whom ye lament and all condemn;
And o'er the world of spirits lies
A gloom from which ye turn your eyes.

All things that are on earth shall wholly pass away,
Except the love of God, which shall live and last for aye.
The forms of men shall be as they had never been;
The blasted groves shall lose their fresh and tender green;
The birds of the thicket shall end their pleasant song,
And the nightingale shall cease to chant the evening long.
The kine of the pasture shall feel the dart that kills,
And all the fair white flocks shall perish from the hills.
The goat and antlered stag, the wolf and the fox,
The wild boar of the wood, and the chamois of the rocks,
And the strong and fearless bear, in the trodden dust shall lie,
And the dolphin of the sea, and the mighty whale, shall die.
And realms shall be dissolved, and empires be no more,
And they shall bow to death, who ruled from shore to shore;
And the great globe itself, (so the holy writings tell,)
With the rolling firmament, where the starry armies dwell,
Shall melt with fervent heat--they shall all pass away,
Except the love of God, which shall live and last for aye.

Seven long years has the desert rain
  Dropped on the clods that hide thy face;
Seven long years of sorrow and pain
  I have thought of thy burial-place.

Thought of thy fate in the distant west,
  Dying with none that loved thee near;
They who flung the earth on thy breast
  Turned from the spot williout a tear.

There, I think, on that lonely grave,
  Violets spring in the soft May shower;
There, in the summer breezes, wave
  Crimson phlox and moccasin flower.

There the turtles alight, and there
  Feeds with her fawn the timid doe;
There, when the winter woods are bare,
  Walks the wolf on the crackling snow.

Soon wilt thou wipe my tears away;
  All my task upon earth is done;
My poor father, old and gray,
  Slumbers beneath the churchyard stone.

In the dreams of my lonely bed,
  Ever thy form before me seems;
All night long I talk with the dead,
  All day long I think of my dreams.

This deep wound that bleeds and aches,
  This long pain, a sleepless pain--
When the Father my spirit takes,
  I shall feel it no more again.

Weep not for Scio's children slain;
  Their blood, by Turkish falchions shed,
Sends not its cry to Heaven in vain
  For vengeance on the murderer's head.

Though high the warm red torrent ran
  Between the flames that lit the sky,
Yet, for each drop, an armed man
  Shall rise, to free the land, or die.

And for each corpse, that in the sea
  Was thrown, to feast the scaly herds,
A hundred of the foe shall be
  A banquet for the mountain birds.

Stern rites and sad, shall Greece ordain
  To keep that day, along her shore,
Till the last link of slavery's chain
  Is shivered, to be worn no more.

When spring, to woods and wastes around,
  Brought bloom and joy again,
The murdered traveller's bones were found,
  Far down a narrow glen.

The fragrant birch, above him, hung
  Her tassels in the sky;
And many a vernal blossom sprung,
  And nodded careless by.

The red-bird warbled, as he wrought
  His hanging nest o'erhead,
And fearless, near the fatal spot,
  Her young the partridge led.

But there was weeping far away,
  And gentle eyes, for him,
With watching many an anxious day,
  Were sorrowful and dim.

They little knew, who loved him so,
  The fearful death he met,
When shouting o'er the desert snow,
  Unarmed, and hard beset;--

Nor how, when round the frosty pole
  The northern dawn was red,
The mountain wolf and wild-cat stole
  To banquet on the dead;--

Nor how, when strangers found his bones,
  They dressed the hasty bier,
And marked his grave with nameless stones,
  Unmoistened by a tear.

But long they looked, and feared, and wept,
  Within his distant home;
And dreamed, and started as they slept,
  For joy that he was come.

Long, long they looked--but never spied
  His welcome step again,
Nor knew the fearful death he died
  Far down that narrow glen.

When, as the garish day is done,
Heaven burns with the descended sun,
  'Tis passing sweet to mark,
Amid that flush of crimson light,
The new moon's modest bow grow bright,
  As earth and sky grow dark.

Few are the hearts too cold to feel
A thrill of gladness o'er them steal,
  When first the wandering eye
Sees faintly, in the evening blaze,
That glimmering curve of tender rays
  Just planted in the sky.

The sight of that young crescent brings
Thoughts of all fair and youthful things
  The hopes of early years;
And childhood's purity and grace,
And joys that like a rainbow chase
  The passing shower of tears.

The captive yields him to the dream
Of freedom, when that ****** beam
  Comes out upon the air:
And painfully the sick man tries
To fix his dim and burning eyes
  On the soft promise there.

Most welcome to the lover's sight,
Glitters that pure, emerging light;
  For prattling poets say,
That sweetest is the lovers' walk,
And tenderest is their murmured talk,
  Beneath its gentle ray.

And there do graver men behold
A type of errors, loved of old,
  Forsaken and forgiven;
And thoughts and wishes not of earth,
Just opening in their early birth,
  Like that new light in heaven.

Among our hills and valleys, I have known
Wise and grave men, who, while their diligent hands
Tended or gathered in the fruits of earth,
Were reverent learners in the solemn school
Of nature. Not in vain to them were sent
Seed-time and harvest, or the vernal shower
That darkened the brown tilth, or snow that beat
On the white winter hills. Each brought, in turn,
Some truth, some lesson on the life of man,
Or recognition of the Eternal mind
Who veils his glory with the elements.

  One such I knew long since, a white-haired man,
Pithy of speech, and merry when he would;
A genial optimist, who daily drew
From what he saw his quaint moralities.
Kindly he held communion, though so old,
With me a dreaming boy, and taught me much
That books tell not, and I shall ne'er forget.

  The sun of May was bright in middle heaven,
And steeped the sprouting forests, the green hills
And emerald wheat-fields, in his yellow light.
Upon the apple-tree, where rosy buds
Stood clustered, ready to burst forth in bloom,
The robin warbled forth his full clear note
For hours, and wearied not. Within the woods,
Whose young and half transparent leaves scarce cast
A shade, gay circles of anemones
Danced on their stalks; the shadbush, white with flowers,
Brightened the glens; the new-leaved butternut
And quivering poplar to the roving breeze
Gave a balsamic fragrance. In the fields
I saw the pulses of the gentle wind
On the young grass. My heart was touched with joy
At so much beauty, flushing every hour
Into a fuller beauty; but my friend,
The thoughtful ancient, standing at my side,
Gazed on it mildly sad. I asked him why.

  "Well mayst thou join in gladness," he replied,
"With the glad earth, her springing plants and flowers,
And this soft wind, the herald of the green
Luxuriant summer. Thou art young like them,
And well mayst thou rejoice. But while the flight
Of seasons fills and knits thy spreading frame,
It withers mine, and thins my hair, and dims
These eyes, whose fading light shall soon be quenched
In utter darkness. Hearest thou that bird?"

  I listened, and from midst the depth of woods
Heard the love-signal of the grouse, that wears
A sable ruff around his mottled neck;
Partridge they call him by our northern streams,
And pheasant by the Delaware. He beat
'Gainst his barred sides his speckled wings, and made
A sound like distant thunder; slow the strokes
At first, then fast and faster, till at length
They passed into a murmur and were still.

  "There hast thou," said my friend, "a fitting type
Of human life. 'Tis an old truth, I know,
But images like these revive the power
Of long familiar truths. Slow pass our days
In childhood, and the hours of light are long
Betwixt the morn and eve; with swifter lapse
They glide in manhood, and in age they fly;
Till days and seasons flit before the mind
As flit the snow-flakes in a winter storm,
Seen rather than distinguished. Ah! I seem
As if I sat within a helpless bark
By swiftly running waters hurried on
To shoot some mighty cliff. Along the banks
Grove after grove, rock after frowning rock,
Bare sands and pleasant homes, and flowery nooks,
And isles and whirlpools in the stream, appear
Each after each, but the devoted skiff
Darts by so swiftly that their images
Dwell not upon the mind, or only dwell
In dim confusion; faster yet I sweep
By other banks, and the great gulf is near.

  "Wisely, my son, while yet thy days are long,
And this fair change of seasons passes slow,
Gather and treasure up the good they yield--
All that they teach of virtue, of pure thoughts
And kind affections, reverence for thy God
And for thy brethren; so when thou shalt come
Into these barren years, thou mayst not bring
A mind unfurnished and a withered heart."

  Long since that white-haired ancient slept--but still,
When the red flower-buds crowd the orchard bough,
And the ruffed grouse is drumming far within
The woods, his venerable form again
Is at my side, his voice is in my ear.

I saw an aged man upon his bier,
  His hair was thin and white, and on his brow
A record of the cares of many a year;--
  Cares that were ended and forgotten now.
And there was sadness round, and faces bowed,
And woman's tears fell fast, and children wailed aloud.

Then rose another hoary man and said,
  In faltering accents, to that weeping train,
"Why mourn ye that our aged friend is dead?
  Ye are not sad to see the gathered grain,
Nor when their mellow fruit the orchards cast,
Nor when the yellow woods shake down the ripened mast.

"Ye sigh not when the sun, his course fulfilled,
  His glorious course, rejoicing earth and sky,
In the soft evening, when the winds are stilled,
  Sinks where his islands of refreshment lie,
And leaves the smile of his departure, spread
O'er the warm-coloured heaven and ruddy mountain head.

"Why weep ye then for him, who, having won
  The bound of man's appointed years, at last,
Life's blessings all enjoyed, life's labours done,
  Serenely to his final rest has passed;
While the soft memory of his virtues, yet,
Lingers like twilight hues, when the bright sun is set?

"His youth was innocent; his riper age
  Marked with some act of goodness every day;
And watched by eyes that loved him, calm, and sage,
  Faded his late declining years away.
Cheerful he gave his being up, and went
To share the holy rest that waits a life well spent.

"That life was happy; every day he gave
  Thanks for the fair existence that was his;
For a sick fancy made him not her slave,
  To mock him with her phantom miseries.
No chronic tortures racked his aged limb,
For luxury and sloth had nourished none for him.

"And I am glad that he has lived thus long,
  And glad that he has gone to his reward;
Nor can I deem that nature did him wrong,
  Softly to disengage the vital cord.
For when his hand grew palsied, and his eye
Dark with the mists of age, it was his time to die."

The fresh savannas of the Sangamon
Here rise in gentle swells, and the long grass
Is mixed with rustling hazels. Scarlet tufts
Are glowing in the green, like flakes of fire;
The wanderers of the prairie know them well,
And call that brilliant flower the Painted Cup.

  Now, if thou art a poet, tell me not
That these bright chalices were tinted thus
To hold the dew for fairies, when they meet
On moonlight evenings in the hazel bowers,
And dance till they are thirsty. Call not up,
Amid this fresh and ****** solitude,
The faded fancies of an elder world;
But leave these scarlet cups to spotted moths
Of June, and glistening flies, and humming-birds,
To drink from, when on all these boundless lawns
The morning sun looks hot. Or let the wind
O'erturn in sport their ruddy brims, and pour
A sudden shower upon the strawberry plant,
To swell the reddening fruit that even now
Breathes a slight fragrance from the sunny *****.

  But thou art of a gayer fancy. Well--
Let then the gentle Manitou of flowers,
Lingering amid the bloomy waste he loves,
Though all his swarthy worshippers are gone--
Slender and small, his rounded cheek all brown
And ruddy with the sunshine; let him come
On summer mornings, when the blossoms wake,
And part with little hands the spiky grass;
And touching, with his cherry lips, the edge
Of these bright beakers, drain the gathered dew.

Thou unrelenting Past!
Strong are the barriers round thy dark domain,
  And fetters, sure and fast,
Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign.

  Far in thy realm withdrawn
Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom,
  And glorious ages gone
Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb.

  Childhood, with all its mirth,
Youth, Manhood, Age, that draws us to the ground,
  And last, Man's Life on earth,
Glide to thy dim dominions, and are bound.

  Thou hast my better years,
Thou hast my earlier friends--the good--the kind,
  Yielded to thee with tears--
The venerable form--the exalted mind.

  My spirit yearns to bring
The lost ones back--yearns with desire intense,
  And struggles hard to wring
Thy bolts apart, and pluck thy captives thence.

  In vain--thy gates deny
All passage save to those who hence depart;
  Nor to the streaming eye
Thou giv'st them back--nor to the broken heart.

  In thy abysses hide
Beauty and excellence unknown--to thee
  Earth's wonder and her pride
Are gathered, as the waters to the sea;

  Labours of good to man,
Unpublished charity, unbroken faith,--
  Love, that midst grief began,
And grew with years, and faltered not in death.

  Full many a mighty name
Lurks in thy depths, unuttered, unrevered;
  With thee are silent fame,
Forgotten arts, and wisdom disappeared.

  Thine for a space are they--
Yet shalt thou yield thy treasures up at last;
  Thy gates shall yet give way,
Thy bolts shall fall, inexorable Past!

  All that of good and fair
Has gone into thy womb from earliest time,
  Shall then come forth to wear
The glory and the beauty of its prime.

  They have not perished--no!
Kind words, remembered voices once so sweet,
  Smiles, radiant long ago,
And features, the great soul's apparent seat.

  All shall come back, each tie
Of pure affection shall be knit again;
  Alone shall Evil die,
And Sorrow dwell a prisoner in thy reign.

  And then shall I behold
Him, by whose kind paternal side I sprung,
  And her, who, still and cold,
Fills the next grave--the beautiful and young.

These are the gardens of the Desert, these
The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful,
For which the speech of England has no name--
The Prairies. I behold them for the first,
And my heart swells, while the dilated sight
Takes in the encircling vastness. Lo! they stretch
In airy undulations, far away,
As if the ocean, in his gentlest swell,
Stood still, with all his rounded billows fixed,
And motionless for ever.--Motionless?--
No--they are all unchained again. The clouds
Sweep over with their shadows, and, beneath,
The surface rolls and fluctuates to the eye;
Dark hollows seem to glide along and chase
The sunny ridges. Breezes of the South!
Who toss the golden and the flame-like flowers,
And pass the prairie-hawk that, poised on high,
***** his broad wings, yet moves not--ye have played
Among the palms of Mexico and vines
Of Texas, and have crisped the limpid brooks
That from the fountains of Sonora glide
Into the calm Pacific--have ye fanned
A nobler or a lovelier scene than this?
Man hath no part in all this glorious work:
The hand that built the firmament hath heaved
And smoothed these verdant swells, and sown their slopes
With herbage, planted them with island groves,
And hedged them round with forests. Fitting floor
For this magnificent temple of the sky--
With flowers whose glory and whose multitude
Rival the constellations! The great heavens
Seem to stoop down upon the scene in love,--
A nearer vault, and of a tenderer blue,
Than that which bends above the eastern hills.

  As o'er the verdant waste I guide my steed,
Among the high rank grass that sweeps his sides
The hollow beating of his footstep seems
A sacrilegious sound. I think of those
Upon whose rest he tramples. Are they here--
The dead of other days?--and did the dust
Of these fair solitudes once stir with life
And burn with passion? Let the mighty mounds
That overlook the rivers, or that rise
In the dim forest crowded with old oaks,
Answer. A race, that long has passed away,
Built them;--a disciplined and populous race
Heaped, with long toil, the earth, while yet the Greek
Was hewing the Pentelicus to forms
Of symmetry, and rearing on its rock
The glittering Parthenon. These ample fields
Nourished their harvests, here their herds were fed,
When haply by their stalls the bison lowed,
And bowed his maned shoulder to the yoke.
All day this desert murmured with their toils,
Till twilight blushed, and lovers walked, and wooed
In a forgotten language, and old tunes,
From instruments of unremembered form,
Gave the soft winds a voice. The red man came--
The roaming hunter tribes, warlike and fierce,
And the mound-builders vanished from the earth.
The solitude of centuries untold
Has settled where they dwelt. The prairie-wolf
Hunts in their meadows, and his fresh-dug den
Yawns by my path. The gopher mines the ground
Where stood their swarming cities. All is gone--
All--save the piles of earth that hold their bones--
The platforms where they worshipped unknown gods--
The barriers which they builded from the soil
To keep the foe at bay--till o'er the walls
The wild beleaguerers broke, and, one by one,
The strongholds of the plain were forced, and heaped
With corpses. The brown vultures of the wood
Flocked to those vast uncovered sepulchres,
And sat, unscared and silent, at their feast.
Haply some solitary fugitive,
Lurking in marsh and forest, till the sense
Of desolation and of fear became
Bitterer than death, yielded himself to die.
Man's better nature triumphed then. Kind words
Welcomed and soothed him; the rude conquerors
Seated the captive with their chiefs; he chose
A bride among their maidens, and at length
Seemed to forget,--yet ne'er forgot,--the wife
Of his first love, and her sweet little ones,
Butchered, amid their shrieks, with all his race.

  Thus change the forms of being. Thus arise
Races of living things, glorious in strength,
And perish, as the quickening breath of God
Fills them, or is withdrawn. The red man, too,
Has left the blooming wilds he ranged so long,
And, nearer to the Rocky Mountains, sought
A wilder hunting-ground. The ****** builds
No longer by these streams, but far away,
On waters whose blue surface ne'er gave back
The white man's face--among Missouri's springs,
And pools whose issues swell the Oregan,
He rears his little Venice. In these plains
The bison feeds no more. Twice twenty leagues
Beyond remotest smoke of hunter's camp,
Roams the majestic brute, in herds that shake
The earth with thundering steps--yet here I meet
His ancient footprints stamped beside the pool.

  Still this great solitude is quick with life.
Myriads of insects, gaudy as the flowers
They flutter over, gentle quadrupeds,
And birds, that scarce have learned the fear of man,
Are here, and sliding reptiles of the ground,
Startlingly beautiful. The graceful deer
Bounds to the wood at my approach. The bee,
A more adventurous colonist than man,
With whom he came across the eastern deep,
Fills the savannas with his murmurings,
And hides his sweets, as in the golden age,
Within the hollow oak. I listen long
To his domestic hum, and think I hear
The sound of that advancing multitude
Which soon shall fill these deserts. From the ground
Comes up the laugh of children, the soft voice
Of maidens, and the sweet and solemn hymn
Of Sabbath worshippers. The low of herds
Blends with the rustling of the heavy grain
Over the dark-brown furrows. All at once
A fresher wind sweeps by, and breaks my dream,
And I am in the wilderness alone.

My friend, thou sorrowest for thy golden prime,
  For thy fair youthful years too swift of flight;
Thou musest, with wet eyes, upon the time
  Of cheerful hopes that filled the world with light,--
Years when thy heart was bold, thy hand was strong,
  And quick the thought that moved thy tongue to speak,
And willing faith was thine, and scorn of wrong
  Summoned the sudden crimson to thy cheek.

Thou lookest forward on the coming days,
  Shuddering to feel their shadow o'er thee creep;
A path, thick-set with changes and decays,
  Slopes downward to the place of common sleep;
And they who walked with thee in life's first stage,
  Leave one by one thy side, and, waiting near,
Thou seest the sad companions of thy age--
  Dull love of rest, and weariness and fear.

Yet grieve thou not, nor think thy youth is gone,
  Nor deem that glorious season e'er could die.
Thy pleasant youth, a little while withdrawn,
  Waits on the horizon of a brighter sky;
Waits, like the morn, that folds her wing and hides,
  Till the slow stars bring back her dawning hour;
Waits, like the vanished spring, that slumbering bides
  Her own sweet time to waken bud and flower.

There shall he welcome thee, when thou shalt stand
  On his bright morning hills, with smiles more sweet
Than when at first he took thee by the hand,
  Through the fair earth to lead thy tender feet.
He shall bring back, but brighter, broader still,
  Life's early glory to thine eyes again,
Shall clothe thy spirit with new strength, and fill
  Thy leaping heart with warmer love than then.

Hast thou not glimpses, in the twilight here,
  Of mountains where immortal morn prevails?
Comes there not, through the silence, to thine ear
  A gentle rustling of the morning gales;
A murmur, wafted from that glorious shore,
  Of streams that water banks for ever fair,
And voices of the loved ones gone before,
  More musical in that celestial air?

This little rill, that from the springs
Of yonder grove its current brings,
Plays on the ***** a while, and then
Goes prattling into groves again,
Oft to its warbling waters drew
My little feet, when life was new,
When woods in early green were dressed,
And from the chambers of the west
The warmer breezes, travelling out,
Breathed the new scent of flowers about,
My truant steps from home would stray,
Upon its grassy side to play,
List the brown thrasher's vernal hymn,
And crop the violet on its brim,
With blooming cheek and open brow,
As young and gay, sweet rill, as thou.

  And when the days of boyhood came,
And I had grown in love with fame,
Duly I sought thy banks, and tried
My first rude numbers by thy side.
Words cannot tell how bright and gay
The scenes of life before me lay.
Then glorious hopes, that now to speak
Would bring the blood into my cheek,
Passed o'er me; and I wrote, on high,
A name I deemed should never die.

  Years change thee not. Upon yon hill
The tall old maples, verdant still,
Yet tell, in grandeur of decay,
How swift the years have passed away,
Since first, a child, and half afraid,
I wandered in the forest shade.
Thou ever joyous rivulet,
Dost dimple, leap, and prattle yet;
And sporting with the sands that pave
The windings of thy silver wave,
And dancing to thy own wild chime,
Thou laughest at the lapse of time.
The same sweet sounds are in my ear
My early childhood loved to hear;
As pure thy limpid waters run,
As bright they sparkle to the sun;
As fresh and thick the bending ranks
Of herbs that line thy oozy banks;
The violet there, in soft May dew,
Comes up, as modest and as blue,
As green amid thy current's stress,
Floats the scarce-rooted watercress:
And the brown ground-bird, in thy glen,
Still chirps as merrily as then.

  Thou changest not--but I am changed,
Since first thy pleasant banks I ranged;
And the grave stranger, come to see
The play-place of his infancy,
Has scarce a single trace of him
Who sported once upon thy brim.
The visions of my youth are past--
Too bright, too beautiful to last.
I've tried the world--it wears no more
The colouring of romance it wore.
Yet well has Nature kept the truth
She promised to my earliest youth.
The radiant beauty shed abroad
On all the glorious works of God,
Shows freshly, to my sobered eye,
Each charm it wore in days gone by.

  A few brief years shall pass away,
And I, all trembling, weak, and gray,
Bowed to the earth, which waits to fold
My ashes in the embracing mould,
(If haply the dark will of fate
Indulge my life so long a date)
May come for the last time to look
Upon my childhood's favourite brook.
Then dimly on my eye shall gleam
The sparkle of thy dancing stream;
And faintly on my ear shall fall
Thy prattling current's merry call;
Yet shalt thou flow as glad and bright
As when thou met'st my infant sight.

  And I shall sleep--and on thy side,
As ages after ages glide,
Children their early sports shall try,
And pass to hoary age and die.
But thou, unchanged from year to year,
Gayly shalt play and glitter here;
Amid young flowers and tender grass
Thy endless infancy shalt pass;
And, singing down thy narrow glen,
Shalt mock the fading race of men.

If slumber, sweet Lisena!
  Have stolen o'er thine eyes,
As night steals o'er the glory
  Of spring's transparent skies;

Wake, in thy scorn and beauty,
  And listen to the strain
That murmurs my devotion,
  That mourns for thy disdain.

Here by thy door at midnight,
  I pass the dreary hour,
With plaintive sounds profaning
  The silence of thy bower;

A tale of sorrow cherished
  Too fondly to depart,
Of wrong from love the flatterer,
  And my own wayward heart.

Twice, o'er this vale, the seasons
  Have brought and borne away
The January tempest,
  The genial wind of May;

Yet still my plaint is uttered,
  My tears and sighs are given
To earth's unconscious waters,
  And wandering winds of heaven.

I saw from this fair region,
  The smile of summer pass,
And myriad frost-stars glitter
  Among the russet grass.

While winter seized the streamlets
  That fled along the ground,
And fast in chains of crystal
  The truant murmurers bound.

I saw that to the forest
  The nightingales had flown,
And every sweet-voiced fountain
  Had hushed its silver tone.

The maniac winds, divorcing
  The turtle from his mate,
Raved through the leafy beeches,
  And left them desolate.

Now May, with life and music,
  The blooming valley fills,
And rears her flowery arches
  For all the little rills.

The minstrel bird of evening
  Comes back on joyous wings,
And, like the harp's soft murmur,
  Is heard the gush of springs.

And deep within the forest
  Are wedded turtles seen,
Their nuptial chambers seeking,
  Their chambers close and green.

The rugged trees are mingling
  Their flowery sprays in love;
The ivy climbs the laurel,
  To clasp the boughs above.

They change--but thou, Lisena,
  Art cold while I complain:
Why to thy lover only
  Should spring return in vain?

Vientecico murmurador,
  Que lo gozas y andas todo, &c.;


Airs, that wander and murmur round,
  Bearing delight where'er ye blow!
Make in the elms a lulling sound,
  While my lady sleeps in the shade below.

Lighten and lengthen her noonday rest,
  Till the heat of the noonday sun is o'er.
Sweet be her slumbers! though in my breast
  The pain she has waked may slumber no more.
Breathing soft from the blue profound,
  Bearing delight where'er ye blow,
Make in the elms a lulling sound,
  While my lady sleeps in the shade below.

Airs! that over the bending boughs,
  And under the shade of pendent leaves,
Murmur soft, like my timid vows
  Or the secret sighs my ***** heaves,--
Gently sweeping the grassy ground,
  Bearing delight where'er ye blow,
Make in the elms a lulling sound,
  While my lady sleeps in the shade below.

Ay! gloriously thou standest there,
  Beautiful, boundles firmament!
That, swelling wide o'er earth and air,
  And round the horizon bent,
With thy bright vault, and sapphire wall,
Dost overhang and circle all.

Far, far below thee, tall old trees
  Arise, and piles built up of old,
And hills, whose ancient summits freeze
  In the fierce light and cold.
The eagle soars his utmost height,
Yet far thou stretchest o'er his flight.

Thou hast thy frowns--with thee on high
  The storm has made his airy seat,
Beyond that soft blue curtain lie
  His stores of hail and sleet.
Thence the consuming lightnings break,
There the strong hurricanes awake.

Yet art thou prodigal of smiles--
  Smiles, sweeter than thy frowns are stern:
Earth sends, from all her thousand isles,
  A shout at thy return.
The glory that comes down from thee,
Bathes, in deep joy, the land and sea.

The sun, the gorgeous sun is thine,
  The pomp that brings and shuts the day,
The clouds that round him change and shine,
  The airs that fan his way.
Thence look the thoughtful stars, and there
The meek moon walks the silent air.

The sunny Italy may boast
  The beauteous tints that flush her skies,
And lovely, round the Grecian coast,
  May thy blue pillars rise.
I only know how fair they stand
Around my own beloved land.

And they are fair--a charm is theirs,
  That earth, the proud green earth, has not--
With all the forms, and hues, and airs,
  That haunt her sweetest spot.
We gaze upon thy calm pure sphere,
And read of Heaven's eternal year.

Oh, when, amid the throng of men,
  The heart grows sick of hollow mirth,
How willingly we turn us then
  Away from this cold earth,
And look into thy azure breast,
For seats of innocence and rest!

The summer morn is bright and fresh, the birds are darting by,
As if they loved to breast the breeze that sweeps the cool clear sky;
Young Albert, in the forest's edge, has heard a rustling sound,
An arrow slightly strikes his hand and falls upon the ground.

A dark-haired woman from the wood comes suddenly in sight;
Her merry eye is full and black, her cheek is brown and bright;
Her gown is of the mid-sea blue, her belt with beads is strung,
And yet she speaks in gentle tones, and in the English tongue.

"It was an idle bolt I sent, against the villain crow;
Fair sir, I fear it harmed thy hand; beshrew my erring bow!"
"Ah! would that bolt had not been spent! then, lady, might I wear
A lasting token on my hand of one so passing fair!"

"Thou art a flatterer like the rest, but wouldst thou take with me
A day of hunting in the wilds, beneath the greenwood tree,
I know where most the pheasants feed, and where the red-deer herd,
And thou shouldst chase the nobler game, and I bring down the bird."

Now Albert in her quiver lays the arrow in its place,
And wonders as he gazes on the beauty of her face:
"Those hunting-grounds are far away, and, lady, 'twere not meet
That night, amid the wilderness, should overtake thy feet."

"Heed not the night; a summer lodge amid the wild is mine,--
'Tis shadowed by the tulip-tree, 'tis mantled by the vine;
The wild plum sheds its yellow fruit from fragrant thickets nigh,
And flowery prairies from the door stretch till they meet the sky.

"There in the boughs that hide the roof the mock-bird sits and sings,
And there the hang-bird's brood within its little hammock swings;
A pebbly brook, where rustling winds among the hopples sweep,
Shall lull thee till the morning sun looks in upon thy sleep."

Away, into the forest depths by pleasant paths they go,
He with his rifle on his arm, the lady with her bow,
Where cornels arch their cool dark boughs o'er beds of winter-green,
And never at his father's door again was Albert seen.

That night upon the woods came down a furious hurricane,
With howl of winds and roar of streams, and beating of the rain;
The mighty thunder broke and drowned the noises in its crash;
The old trees seemed to fight like fiends beneath the lightning-flash.

Next day, within a mossy glen, 'mid mouldering trunks were found
The fragments of a human form upon the ****** ground;
White bones from which the flesh was torn, and locks of glossy hair;
They laid them in the place of graves, yet wist not whose they were.

And whether famished evening wolves had mangled Albert so,
Or that strange dame so gay and fair were some mysterious foe,
Or whether to that forest lodge, beyond the mountains blue,
He went to dwell with her, the friends who mourned him never knew.

Oh silvery streamlet of the fields,
  That flowest full and free!
For thee the rains of spring return,
  The summer dews for thee;
And when thy latest blossoms die
  In autumn's chilly showers,
The winter fountains gush for thee,
  Till May brings back the flowers.

Oh Stream of Life! the violet springs
  But once beside thy bed;
But one brief summer, on thy path,
  The dews of heaven are shed.
Thy parent fountains shrink away,
  And close their crystal veins,
And where thy glittering current flowed
  The dust alone remains.

Wild was the day; the wintry sea
  Moaned sadly on New-England's strand,
When first the thoughtful and the free,
  Our fathers, trod the desert land.

They little thought how pure a light,
  With years, should gather round that day;
How love should keep their memories bright,
  How wide a realm their sons should sway.

Green are their bays; but greener still
  Shall round their spreading fame be wreathed,
And regions, now untrod, shall thrill
  With reverence when their names are breathed.

Till where the sun, with softer fires,
  Looks on the vast Pacific's sleep,
The children of the pilgrim sires
  This hallowed day like us shall keep.

'Tis a bleak wild hill,--but green and bright
In the summer warmth and the mid-day light;
There's the hum of the bee and the chirp of the wren,
And the dash of the brook from the alder glen;
There's the sound of a bell from the scattered flock,
And the shade of the beech lies cool on the rock,
And fresh from the west is the free wind's breath,--
There is nothing here that speaks of death.

  Far yonder, where orchards and gardens lie,
And dwellings cluster, 'tis there men die.
They are born, they die, and are buried near,
Where the populous grave-yard lightens the bier;
For strict and close are the ties that bind
In death the children of human-kind;
Yea, stricter and closer than those of life,--
'Tis a neighbourhood that knows no strife.
They are noiselessly gathered--friend and foe--
To the still and dark assemblies below:
Without a frown or a smile they meet,
Each pale and calm in his winding-sheet;
In that sullen home of peace and gloom,
Crowded, like guests in a banquet-room.

  Yet there are graves in this lonely spot,
Two humble graves,--but I meet them not.
I have seen them,--eighteen years are past,
Since I found their place in the brambles last,--
The place where, fifty winters ago,
An aged man in his locks of snow,
And an aged matron, withered with years,
Were solemnly laid!--but not with tears.
For none, who sat by the light of their hearth,
Beheld their coffins covered with earth;
Their kindred were far, and their children dead,
When the funeral prayer was coldly said.

  Two low green hillocks, two small gray stones,
Rose over the place that held their bones;
But the grassy hillocks are levelled again,
And the keenest eye might search in vain,
'**** briers, and ferns, and paths of sheep,
For the spot where the aged couple sleep.

  Yet well might they lay, beneath the soil
Of this lonely spot, that man of toil,
And trench the strong hard mould with the *****,
Where never before a grave was made;
For he hewed the dark old woods away,
And gave the ****** fields to the day;
And the gourd and the bean, beside his door,
Bloomed where their flowers ne'er opened before;
And the maize stood up; and the bearded rye
Bent low in the breath of an unknown sky.

  'Tis said that when life is ended here,
The spirit is borne to a distant sphere;
That it visits its earthly home no more,
Nor looks on the haunts it loved before.
But why should the bodiless soul be sent
Far off, to a long, long banishment?
Talk not of the light and the living green!
It will pine for the dear familiar scene;
It will yearn, in that strange bright world, to behold
The rock and the stream it knew of old.

  'Tis a cruel creed, believe it not!
Death to the good is a milder lot.
They are here,--they are here,--that harmless pair,
In the yellow sunshine and flowing air,
In the light cloud-shadows that slowly pass,
In the sounds that rise from the murmuring grass.
They sit where their humble cottage stood,
They walk by the waving edge of the wood,
And list to the long-accustomed flow
Of the brook that wets the rocks below.
Patient, and peaceful, and passionless,
As seasons on seasons swiftly press,
They watch, and wait, and linger around,
Till the day when their bodies shall leave the ground.

I've watched too late; the morn is near;
  One look at God's broad silent sky!
Oh, hopes and wishes vainly dear,
  How in your very strength ye die!

Even while your glow is on the cheek,
  And scarce the high pursuit begun,
The heart grows faint, the hand grows weak,
  The task of life is left undone.

See where upon the horizon's brim,
  Lies the still cloud in gloomy bars;
The waning moon, all pale and dim,
  Goes up amid the eternal stars.

Late, in a flood of tender light,
  She floated through the ethereal blue,
A softer sun, that shone all night
  Upon the gathering beads of dew.

And still thou wanest, pallid moon!
  The encroaching shadow grows apace;
Heaven's everlasting watchers soon
  Shall see thee blotted from thy place.

Oh, Night's dethroned and crownless queen!
  Well may thy sad, expiring ray
Be shed on those whose eyes have seen
  Hope's glorious visions fade away.

Shine thou for forms that once were bright,
  For sages in the mind's eclipse,
For those whose words were spells of might,
  But falter now on stammering lips!

In thy decaying beam there lies
  Full many a grave on hill and plain,
Of those who closed their dying eyes
  In grief that they had lived in vain.

Another night, and thou among
  The spheres of heaven shalt cease to shine,
All rayless in the glittering throng
  Whose lustre late was quenched in thine.

Yet soon a new and tender light
  From out thy darkened orb shall beam,
And broaden till it shines all night
  On glistening dew and glimmering stream.

Beneath the forest's skirts I rest,
Whose branching pines rise dark and high,
And hear the breezes of the West
Among the threaded foliage sigh.

Sweet Zephyr! why that sound of wo?
Is not thy home among the flowers?
Do not the bright June roses blow,
To meet thy kiss at morning hours?

And lo! thy glorious realm outspread--
Yon stretching valleys, green and gay,
And yon free hilltops, o'er whose head
The loose white clouds are borne away.

And there the full broad river runs,
And many a fount wells fresh and sweet,
To cool thee when the mid-day suns
Have made thee faint beneath their heat.

Thou wind of joy, and youth, and love;
Spirit of the new wakened year!
The sun in his blue realm above
Smooths a bright path when thou art here.

In lawns the murmuring bee is heard,
The wooing ring-dove in the shade;
On thy soft breath, the new-fledged bird
Takes wing, half happy, half afraid.

Ah! thou art like our wayward race;--
When not a shade of pain or ill
Dims the bright smile of Nature's face,
Thou lov'st to sigh and murmur still.

It was a hundred years ago,
  When, by the woodland ways,
The traveller saw the wild deer drink,
  Or crop the birchen sprays.

Beneath a hill, whose rocky side
  O'erbrowed a grassy mead,
And fenced a cottage from the wind,
  A deer was wont to feed.

She only came when on the cliffs
  The evening moonlight lay,
And no man knew the secret haunts
  In which she walked by day.

White were her feet, her forehead showed
  A spot of silvery white,
That seemed to glimmer like a star
  In autumn's hazy night.

And here, when sang the whippoorwill,
  She cropped the sprouting leaves,
And here her rustling steps were heard
  On still October eves.

But when the broad midsummer moon
  Rose o'er that grassy lawn,
Beside the silver-footed deer
  There grazed a spotted fawn.

The cottage dame forbade her son
  To aim the rifle here;
"It were a sin," she said, "to harm
  Or fright that friendly deer.

"This spot has been my pleasant home
  Ten peaceful years and more;
And ever, when the moonlight shines,
  She feeds before our door.

"The red men say that here she walked
  A thousand moons ago;
They never raise the war-whoop here,
  And never twang the bow.

"I love to watch her as she feeds,
  And think that all is well
While such a gentle creature haunts
  The place in which we dwell."

The youth obeyed, and sought for game
  In forests far away,
Where, deep in silence and in moss,
  The ancient woodland lay.

But once, in autumn's golden time,
  He ranged the wild in vain,
Nor roused the pheasant nor the deer,
  And wandered home again.

The crescent moon and crimson eve
  Shone with a mingling light;
The deer, upon the grassy mead,
  Was feeding full in sight.

He raised the rifle to his eye,
  And from the cliffs around
A sudden echo, shrill and sharp,
  Gave back its deadly sound.

Away into the neighbouring wood
  The startled creature flew,
And crimson drops at morning lay
  Amid the glimmering dew.

Next evening shone the waxing moon
  As sweetly as before;
The deer upon the grassy mead
  Was seen again no more.

But ere that crescent moon was old,
  By night the red men came,
And burnt the cottage to the ground,
  And slew the youth and dame.

Now woods have overgrown the mead,
  And hid the cliffs from sight;
There shrieks the hovering hawk at noon,
  And prowls the fox at night.

I.

Ye winds, ye unseen currents of the air,
  Softly ye played a few brief hours ago;
Ye bore the murmuring bee; ye tossed the hair
  O'er maiden cheeks, that took a fresher glow;
Ye rolled the round white cloud through depths of blue;
Ye shook from shaded flowers the lingering dew;
Before you the catalpa's blossoms flew,
  Light blossoms, dropping on the grass like snow.

II.

How are ye changed! Ye take the cataract's sound;
  Ye take the whirlpool's fury and its might;
The mountain shudders as ye sweep the ground;
  The valley woods lie prone beneath your flight.
The clouds before you shoot like eagles past;
The homes of men are rocking in your blast;
Ye lift the roofs like autumn leaves, and cast,
  Skyward, the whirling fragments out of sight.

III.

The weary fowls of heaven make wing in vain,
  To escape your wrath; ye seize and dash them dead.
Against the earth ye drive the roaring rain;
  The harvest-field becomes a river's bed;
And torrents tumble from the hills around,
Plains turn to lakes, and villages are drowned,
And wailing voices, midst the tempest's sound,
  Rise, as the rushing waters swell and spread.

IV.

Ye dart upon the deep, and straight is heard
  A wilder roar, and men grow pale, and pray;
Ye fling its floods around you, as a bird
  Flings o'er his shivering plumes the fountain's spray.
See! to the breaking mast the sailor clings;
Ye scoop the ocean to its briny springs,
And take the mountain billow on your wings,
  And pile the wreck of navies round the bay.

V.

Why rage ye thus?--no strife for liberty
  Has made you mad; no tyrant, strong through fear,
Has chained your pinions till ye wrenched them free,
  And rushed into the unmeasured atmosphere;
For ye were born in freedom where ye blow;
Free o'er the mighty deep to come and go;
Earth's solemn woods were yours, her wastes of snow,
  Her isles where summer blossoms all the year.

VI.

O ye wild winds! a mightier Power than yours
  In chains upon the shore of Europe lies;
The sceptred throng, whose fetters he endures,
  Watch his mute throes with terror in their eyes:
And armed warriors all around him stand,
And, as he struggles, tighten every band,
And lift the heavy spear, with threatening hand,
  To pierce the victim, should he strive to rise.

VII.

Yet oh, when that wronged Spirit of our race
  Shall break, as soon he must, his long-worn chains,
And leap in freedom from his prison-place,
  Lord of his ancient hills and fruitful plains,
Let him not rise, like these mad winds of air,
To waste the loveliness that time could spare,
To fill the earth with wo, and blot her fair
  Unconscious breast with blood from human veins.

VIII.

But may he like the spring-time come abroad,
  Who crumbles winter's gyves with gentle might,
When in the genial breeze, the breath of God,
  Come spouting up the unsealed springs to light;
Flowers start from their dark prisons at his feet,
The woods, long dumb, awake to hymnings sweet,
And morn and eve, whose glimmerings almost meet,
  Crowd back to narrow bounds the ancient night.

When beechen buds begin to swell,
  And woods the blue-bird's warble know,
The yellow violet's modest bell
  Peeps from the last year's leaves below.

Ere russet fields their green resume,
  Sweet flower, I love, in forest bare,
To meet thee, when thy faint perfume
  Alone is in the ****** air.

Of all her train, the hands of Spring
  First plant thee in the watery mould,
And I have seen thee blossoming
  Beside the snow-bank's edges cold.

Thy parent sun, who bade thee view
  Pale skies, and chilling moisture sip,
Has bathed thee in his own bright hue,
  And streaked with jet thy glowing lip.

Yet slight thy form, and low thy seat,
  And earthward bent thy gentle eye,
Unapt the passing view to meet,
  When loftier flowers are flaunting nigh.

Oft, in the sunless April day,
  Thy early smile has stayed my walk;
But midst the gorgeous blooms of May,
  I passed thee on thy humble stalk.

So they, who climb to wealth, forget
  The friends in darker fortunes tried.
I copied them--but I regret
  That I should ape the ways of pride.

And when again the genial hour
  Awakes the painted tribes of light,
I'll not o'erlook the modest flower
  That made the woods of April bright.

Beautiful cloud! with folds so soft and fair,
Swimming in the pure quiet air!
Thy fleeces bathed in sunlight, while below
Thy shadow o'er the vale moves slow;
Where, midst their labour, pause the reaper train
As cool it comes along the grain.
Beautiful cloud! I would I were with thee
In thy calm way o'er land and sea:
To rest on thy unrolling skirts, and look
On Earth as on an open book;
On streams that tie her realms with silver bands,
And the long ways that seam her lands;
And hear her humming cities, and the sound
Of the great ocean breaking round.
Ay--I would sail upon thy air-borne car
To blooming regions distant far,
To where the sun of Andalusia shines
On his own olive-groves and vines,
Or the soft lights of Italy's bright sky
In smiles upon her ruins lie.
But I would woo the winds to let us rest
O'er Greece long fettered and oppressed,

Whose sons at length have heard the call that comes
From the old battle-fields and tombs,
And risen, and drawn the sword, and on the foe
Have dealt the swift and desperate blow,
And the Othman power is cloven, and the stroke
Has touched its chains, and they are broke.
Ay, we would linger till the sunset there
Should come, to purple all the air,
And thou reflect upon the sacred ground
The ruddy radiance streaming round.

Bright meteor! for the summer noontide made!
Thy peerless beauty yet shall fade.
The sun, that fills with light each glistening fold,
Shall set, and leave thee dark and cold:
The blast shall rend thy skirts, or thou may'st frown
In the dark heaven when storms come down,
And weep in rain, till man's inquiring eye
Miss thee, forever from the sky.

Fair insect! that, with threadlike legs spread out,
  And blood-extracting bill and filmy wing,
Does murmur, as thou slowly sail'st about,
  In pitiless ears full many a plaintive thing,
And tell how little our large veins should bleed,
Would we but yield them to thy bitter need.

Unwillingly, I own, and, what is worse,
  Full angrily men hearken to thy plaint;
Thou gettest many a brush, and many a curse,
  For saying thou art gaunt, and starved, and faint:
Even the old beggar, while he asks for food,
Would **** thee, hapless stranger, if he could.

I call thee stranger, for the town, I ween,
  Has not the honour of so proud a birth,--
Thou com'st from Jersey meadows, fresh and green,
  The offspring of the gods, though born on earth;
For Titan was thy sire, and fair was she,
The ocean nymph that nursed thy infancy.

Beneath the rushes was thy cradle swung,
  And when, at length, thy gauzy wings grew strong,
Abroad to gentle airs their folds were flung,
  Rose in the sky and bore thee soft along;
The south wind breathed to waft thee on thy way,
And danced and shone beneath the billowy bay.

Calm rose afar the city spires, and thence
  Came the deep murmur of its throng of men,
And as its grateful odours met thy sense,
  They seemed the perfumes of thy native fen.
Fair lay its crowded streets, and at the sight
Thy tiny song grew shriller with delight.

At length thy pinions fluttered in Broadway--
  Ah, there were fairy steps, and white necks kissed
By wanton airs, and eyes whose killing ray
  Shone through the snowy veils like stars through mist;
And fresh as morn, on many a cheek and chin,
Bloomed the bright blood through the transparent skin.

Sure these were sights to touch an anchorite!
  What! do I hear thy slender voice complain?
Thou wailest, when I talk of beauty's light,
  As if it brought the memory of pain:
Thou art a wayward being--well--come near,
And pour thy tale of sorrow in my ear.

What sayst thou--slanderer!--rouge makes thee sick?
  And China bloom at best is sorry food?
And Rowland's Kalydor, if laid on thick,
  Poisons the thirsty wretch that bores for blood?
Go! 'twas a just reward that met thy crime--
But shun the sacrilege another time.

That bloom was made to look at, not to touch;
  To worship, not approach, that radiant white;
And well might sudden vengeance light on such
  As dared, like thee, most impiously to bite.
Thou shouldst have gazed at distance and admired,
Murmured thy adoration and retired.

Thou'rt welcome to the town--but why come here
  To bleed a brother poet, gaunt like thee?
Alas! the little blood I have is dear,
  And thin will be the banquet drawn from me.
Look round--the pale-eyed sisters in my cell,
Thy old acquaintance, Song and Famine, dwell.

Try some plump alderman, and **** the blood
  Enriched by generous wine and costly meat;
On well-filled skins, sleek as thy native mud,
  Fix thy light pump and press thy freckled feet:
Go to the men for whom, in ocean's hall,
The oyster breeds, and the green turtle sprawls.

There corks are drawn, and the red vintage flows
  To fill the swelling veins for thee, and now
The ruddy cheek and now the ruddier nose
  Shall tempt thee, as thou flittest round the brow;
And when the hour of sleep its quiet brings,
No angry hand shall rise to brush thy wings.

Whither, midst falling dew,
While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue
    Thy solitary way?

    Vainly the fowler's eye
Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,
As, darkly seen against the crimson sky,
    Thy figure floats along.

    Seek'st thou the plashy brink
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
    On the chafed ocean-side?

    There is a Power whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast--
The desert and illimitable air--
    Lone wandering, but not lost.

    All day thy wings have fanned,
At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere,
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
    Though the dark night is near.

    And soon that toil shall end;
Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest,
And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend,
    Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest.

    Thou 'rt gone, the abyss of heaven
Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,
    And shall not soon depart.

    He who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
    Will lead my steps aright.

Thine eyes shall see the light of distant skies:
    Yet, COLE! thy heart shall bear to Europe's strand
    A living image of thy native land,
Such as on thine own glorious canvas lies;
Lone lakes--savannas where the bison roves--
    Rocks rich with summer garlands--solemn streams--
    Skies, where the desert eagle wheels and screams--
Spring bloom and autumn blaze of boundless groves.
Fair scenes shall greet thee where thou goest--fair,
    But different--everywhere the trace of men,
    Paths, homes, graves, ruins, from the lowest glen
To where life shrinks from the fierce Alpine air,
    Gaze on them, till the tears shall dim thy sight,
    But keep that earlier, wilder image bright.

Your peaks are beautiful, ye Apennines!
  In the soft light of these serenest skies;
From the broad highland region, black with pines,
  Fair as the hills of Paradise they rise,
Bathed in the tint Peruvian slaves behold
In rosy flushes on the ****** gold.

There, rooted to the aerial shelves that wear
  The glory of a brighter world, might spring
Sweet flowers of heaven to scent the unbreathed air,
  And heaven's fleet messengers might rest the wing,
To view the fair earth in its summer sleep,
Silent, and cradled by the glimmering deep.

Below you lie men's sepulchres, the old
  Etrurian tombs, the graves of yesterday;
The herd's white bones lie mixed with human mould--
  Yet up the radiant steeps that I survey
Death never climbed, nor life's soft breath, with pain,
Was yielded to the elements again.

Ages of war have filled these plains with fear;
  How oft the hind has started at the clash
Of spears, and yell of meeting, armies here,
  Or seen the lightning of the battle flash
From clouds, that rising with the thunder's sound,
Hung like an earth-born tempest o'er the ground!

Ah me! what armed nations--Asian horde,
  And Libyan host--the Scythian and the Gaul,
Have swept your base and through your passes poured,
  Like ocean-tides uprising at the call
Of tyrant winds--against your rocky side
The ****** billows dashed, and howled, and died.

How crashed the towers before beleaguering foes,
  Sacked cities smoked and realms were rent in twain;
And commonwealths against their rivals rose,
  Trode out their lives and earned the curse of Cain!
While in the noiseless air and light that flowed
Round your far brows, eternal Peace abode.

Here pealed the impious hymn, and altar flames
  Rose to false gods, a dream-begotten throng,
Jove, Bacchus, Pan, and earlier, fouler names;
  While, as the unheeding ages passed along,
Ye, from your station in the middle skies,
Proclaimed the essential Goodness, strong and wise.

In you the heart that sighs for freedom seeks
  Her image; there the winds no barrier know,
Clouds come and rest and leave your fairy peaks;
  While even the immaterial Mind, below,
And thought, her winged offspring, chained by power,
Pine silently for the redeeming hour.

Thou blossom bright with autumn dew,
And colored with the heaven's own blue,
That openest when the quiet light
Succeeds the keen and frosty night.

Thou comest not when violets lean
O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen,
Or columbines, in purple dressed,
Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest.

Thou waitest late and com'st alone,
When woods are bare and birds are flown,
And frosts and shortening days portend
The aged year is near his end.

Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye
Look through its fringes to the sky,
Blue--blue--as if that sky let fall
A flower from its cerulean wall.

I would that thus, when I shall see
The hour of death draw near to me,
Hope, blossoming within my heart,
May look to heaven as I depart.

Not from the sands or cloven rocks,
  Thou rapid Arve! thy waters flow;
Nor earth, within her *****, locks
  Thy dark unfathomed wells below.
Thy springs are in the cloud, thy stream
  Begins to move and murmur first
Where ice-peaks feel the noonday beam,
  Or rain-storms on the glacier burst.

Born where the thunder and the blast,
  And morning's earliest light are born,
Thou rushest swoln, and loud, and fast,
  By these low homes, as if in scorn:
Yet humbler springs yield purer waves;
  And brighter, glassier streams than thine,
Sent up from earth's unlighted caves,
  With heaven's own beam and image shine.

Yet stay; for here are flowers and trees;
  Warm rays on cottage roofs are here,
And laugh of girls, and hum of bees--
  Here linger till thy waves are clear.
Thou heedest not--thou hastest on;
  From steep to steep thy torrent falls,
Till, mingling with the mighty Rhone,
  It rests beneath Geneva's walls.

Rush on--but were there one with me
  That loved me, I would light my hearth
Here, where with God's own majesty
  Are touched the features of the earth.
By these old peaks, white, high, and vast,
  Still rising as the tempests beat,
Here would I dwell, and sleep, at last,
  Among the blossoms at their feet.

Upon the mountain's distant head,
  With trackless snows for ever white,
Where all is still, and cold, and dead,
  Late shines the day's departing light.

But far below those icy rocks,
  The vales, in summer bloom arrayed,
Woods full of birds, and fields of flocks,
  Are dim with mist and dark with shade.

'Tis thus, from warm and kindly hearts,
  And eyes where generous meanings burn,
Earliest the light of life departs,
  But lingers with the cold and stern.

The night winds howled--the billows dashed
  Against the tossing chest;
And Danae to her broken heart
  Her slumbering infant pressed.

"My little child"--in tears she said--
  "To wake and weep is mine,
But thou canst sleep--thou dost not know
  Thy mother's lot, and thine.

"The moon is up, the moonbeams smile--
  They tremble on the main;
But dark, within my floating cell,
  To me they smile in vain.

"Thy folded mantle wraps thee warm,
  Thy clustering locks are dry,
Thou dost not hear the shrieking gust,
  Nor breakers booming high.

"As o'er thy sweet unconscious face
  A mournful watch I keep,
I think, didst thou but know thy fate,
  How thou wouldst also weep.

"Yet, dear one, sleep, and sleep, ye winds
  That vex the restless brine--
When shall these eyes, my babe, be sealed
  As peacefully as thine!"

When the firmament quivers with daylight's young beam,
  And the woodlands awaking burst into a hymn,
And the glow of the sky blazes back from the stream,
  How the bright ones of heaven in the brightness grow dim.

Oh! 'tis sad, in that moment of glory and song,
  To see, while the hill-tops are waiting the sun,
The glittering band that kept watch all night long
  O'er Love and o'er Slumber, go out one by one:

Till the circle of ether, deep, ruddy, and vast,
  Scarce glimmers with one of the train that were there;
And their leader the day-star, the brightest and last,
  Twinkles faintly and fades in that desert of air.

Thus, Oblivion, from midst of whose shadow we came,
  Steals o'er us again when life's twilight is gone;
And the crowd of bright names, in the heaven of fame,
  Grow pale and are quenched as the years hasten on.

Let them fade--but we'll pray that the age, in whose flight,
  Of ourselves and our friends the remembrance shall die
May rise o'er the world, with the gladness and light
  Of the morning that withers the stars from the sky.

Chains may subdue the feeble spirit, but thee,
  Tell, of the iron heart! they could not tame!
  For thou wert of the mountains; they proclaim
The everlasting creed of liberty.
That creed is written on the untrampled snow,
  Thundered by torrents which no power can hold,
  Save that of God, when he sends forth his cold,
And breathed by winds that through the free heaven blow.
Thou, while thy prison walls were dark around,
  Didst meditate the lesson Nature taught,
  And to thy brief captivity was brought
A vision of thy Switzerland unbound.
  The bitter cup they mingled, strengthened thee
  For the great work to set thy country free.