Which evermore must be

The doom of ignorance and penury! But you, free Nature's uncorrupted child, You hailed the chapel and the platform wild, Where once the Austrian fell

Beneath the shaft of Tell!

O Lady, nursed in pomp and pleasure!
Whence learn'd you that heroic measure?

You were a mother! That most holy name,
Which Heaven and Nature bless,
I may not vilely prostitute to those
Whose infants owe them less
Than the poor caterpillar owes

Its gaudy parent fly.

You were a mother! at your bosom fed

The babes that loved you. You, with laugh

ing eye,

Each twilight-thought, each nascent feeling read,
Which you yourself created. O! delight!
A second time to be a mother,

Without the mother's bitter groans:

Another thought, and yet another,

By touch, or taste, by looks or tones

O'er growing sense to roll,

The mother of your infant's soul!

The Angel of the Earth, who, while he guides
His chariot-planet round the goal of day,

All trembling gazes on the eye of God,
A moment turned his awful face away;
2

VOL. II.

And as he viewed you, from his aspect sweet New influences in your being rose,

Blest intuitions and communions fleet

With living Nature, in her joys and woes!
Thenceforth your soul rejoiced to see
The shrine of social Liberty!

O beautiful! O Nature's child!
'Twas thence you hailed the platform wild,
Where once the Austrian fell

Beneath the shaft of Tell!

O Lady, nursed in pomp and pleasure!
Thence learn'd you that heroic measure.

ON AN INFANT

WHICH DIED BEFORE BAPTISM.

“BE, rather than be called, a child of God,” Death whispered!-with assenting nod, Its head upon its mother's breast,

The Baby bowed, without demur—

Of the kingdom of the Blest
Possessor, not inheritor.

EPITAPH ON AN INFANT.

ITs balmy lips the infant blest
Relaxing from its mother's breast,
How sweet it heaves the happy sigh
Of innocent satiety !

And such my infant's latest sigh!
O tell, rude stone! the passer by,
That here the pretty babe doth lie,
Death sang to sleep with Lullaby.

HYMN TO THE EARTH.

HEXAMETERS

EARTH thou mother of numberless children, the nurse and the mother,

Hail! O Goddess, thrice hail! Blest be thou! and, blessing, I hymn thee!

Forth, ye sweet sounds! from my harp, and my voice shall float on your surges―

Soar thou aloft, O my soul! and bear up my song on thy pinions.

Travelling the vale with mine eyes-green meadows and lake with green island,

Dark in its basin of rock, and the bare stream flowing in brightness,

Thrilled with thy beauty and love in the wooded slope of the mountain,

Here, great mother, I lie, thy child, with his head on thy bosom!

Playful the spirits of noon, that rushing soft through thy tresses.

Green-haired goddess! refresh me; and hark! as they hurry or linger,

Fill the pause of my harp, or sustain it with musical murmurs.

Into my being thou murmurest joy, and tenderest

sadness

Shedd'st thou, like dew, on my heart, till the joy and the heavenly sadness

Pour themselves forth from my heart in tears, and the hymn of thanksgiving.

Earth! thou mother of numberless children, the nurse and the mother,

Sister thou of the stars, and beloved by the sun, the rejoicer!

Guardian and friend of the moon, O Earth, whom the comets forget not,

Yea, in the measureless distance wheel round and again they behold thee!

Fadeless and young (and what if the latest birth of creation ?)

Bride and consort of Heaven, that looks down upon thee enamoured !

Say, mysterious Earth! O say, great mother and

goddess,

Was it not well with thee then, when first thy lap was ungirdled,

Thy lap to the genial Heaven, the day that he wooed thee and won thee!

Fair was thy blush, the fairest and first of the blushes of morning!

Deep was the shudder, O Earth! the throe of thy self-retention :

Inly thou strovest to flee, and didst seek thyself at thy centre!