WINGS.

OH! for the wings we used to wear,

When the heart was like a bird,

And floated, still, through summer air, And painted all it looked on fair,

And sung to all it heard!

When fancy put the seal of truth

On all the promises of youth!

Oh! for the wings with which the dove
Flies to the valley of her rest,10

To take us to some pleasant grove,
Where hearts are not afraid to love,
And truth is, sometimes, blest;

To make the spirit mount again

That time has bowed, and grief, and pain!

It may not oh, it may not be !

I cannot soar on fancy's wing,

And hope has been,-like thee, like thee!

These many weary years, to me,

A lost and perished thing!

Are there no pinions left, to bear
Me where the good and gentle are!

Yes!-rise upon the morning's wing,"
And, far beyond the farthest sea,
Where autumn is the mate of spring,
And winter comes not withering,

There is a home for thee !

Away-away!-and lay thy head

In the low valley of the dead!

Is it some vision of the elder day,

Won from the dead-sea waters, by a spell
Like her's who waked the prophet?—or a dream
Of burning Egypt,-ere the Lybian sand

Had flung its pall above a perished world,

Dreamt on its dreary grave, that has no flowers?

-It is the eastern orphan's ocean-home !

The southern queen!-the city of the sea,

Ere Venice was a name !—the lofty heart

That battled for the empire of the world,

And all but won,-yet perished in the strife!
Now, in her young, proud beauty ;-the blue waves,
Like vassals, bending low, to kiss her feet,
Or dancing to their own sweet minstrelsy!—
The olives hanging round her crested front,
Like laurel-crowns upon a victor's brow!—
Beneath her palms, and 'mid her climbing bowers,

Darts, like a sunny flash, the antelope!

And bound the wild deer, where the severing boughs
Wave forth a goddess!-in her hunter-guise,

She wakes the perfumes of the Tyrian's groves,
To welcome from the waves her pilgrim boy,
And point his tangled pathway, to the towers
That to his homeless spirit speak of home!

Alas! the stately city!-is it here,

Here, 'mid this palace pomp and leafy store,

(Bright as some landscape which the poet sees

Painted, by sunset, on a summer sky,

In hues the dolphin borrows, when he dies!)

'Mid all this clustering loveliness and life,

Where treads the Trojan,-that, in after-years,

A lonelier exile and a loftier chief

Sat amid ruins!