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And o'er Futurity's blank page diffuse
The full reflection of her vivid hues.
'Tis but to die, and then to weep no more,
Then will he wake on Congo's distant shore;
Beneath his plantain's ancient shade, renew
The simple transports that with freedom flew;
Catch the cool breeze that musky evening blows,
And quaff the palm's rich nectar as it glows;
The oral tale of elder time rehearse,
And chant the rude traditionary verse
With those, the loved companions of his youth,
When life was luxury and friendship truth.

Hail, Memory, hail! in thy exhaustless mine
From age to age unnumber'd treasures shine!
Thought and her shadowy brood thy call obey,
And Place and Time are subject to thy sway!
Thy pleasures most we feel when most alone;
The only pleasures we can call our own.
Lighter than air Hope's summer-visions die,
If but a fleeting cloud obscure the sky;
If but a beam of sober Reason play,
Lo, Fancy's fairy frost-work melts away!
But can the wiles of Art, the grasp of Power,
Snatch the rich relics of a well spent hour?
These, when the trembling spirit wings her flight,
Pour round her path a stream of living light;
And gild those pure and perfect realms of rest,
Where Virtue triumphs and her sons are blest!

The same.

HUMAN LIFE.

The lark has sung his carol in the sky,
The bees have hummed their noontide lullaby;
Still in the vale the village bells ring round,

Still in Llewellyn hall the jests resound;

For now the caudle-cup is circling there,

Now, glad at heart, the gossips breathe their prayer,
And, crowding, stop the cradle to admire

The babe, the sleeping image of his sire.

A few short years, and then these sounds shall hail
The day again, and gladness fill the vale;
So soon the child a youth, the youth a man,
Eager to run the race his fathers ran.
Then the huge ox shall yield the broad sirloin;
The ale, now brewed, in floods of amber shine;
And, basking in the chimney's ample blaze,
'Mid many a tale told of his boyish days,
The nurse shall cry, of all her ills beguiled,
"'Twas on her knees he sat so oft and smiled."

And soon again shall music swell the breeze; Soon, issuing forth, shall glitter through the trees Vestures of nuptial white; and hymns be sung, And violets scattered round; and old and young, In every cottage-porch, with garlands green, Stand still to gaze, and, gazing, bless the scene, While, her dark eyes declining, by his side, Moves in her virgin veil the gentle bride.

And once, alas! nor in a distant hour, Another voice shall come from yonder tower; When in dim chambers long black weeds are seen, And weeping heard where only joy has been; When, by his children borne, and from his door, Slowly departing to return no more,

He rests in holy earth with them that went before.

And such is human life; so gliding on,

It glimmers like a meteor, and is gone!
Yet is the tale, brief though it be, as strange,
As full, methinks, of wild and wondrous change,
As any that the wandering tribes require,
Stretched in the desert round their evening fire;
As any sung of old, in hall or bower,

To minstrel-harps at midnight's witching hour!

The day arrives, the moment wished and feared; The child is born, by many a pang endeared, And now the mother's ear has caught his cry; Oh grant the cherub to her asking eye!

He comes-she clasps him. To her bosom press'd, He drinks the balm of life and drops to rest.

Her by her smile how soon the stranger knows!
How soon by his the glad discovery shows!
As to her lips she lifts the lovely boy,

What answering looks of sympathy and joy!
He walks, he speaks. In many a broken word
His wants, his wishes, and his griefs are heard.
And ever, ever to her lap he flies,

When rosy Sleep comes on with sweet surprise.
Locked in her arms, his arms across her flung
(That name most dear forever on his tongue),
As with soft accents round her neck he clings,
And, cheek to cheek, her lulling song she sings,
How blest to feel the beatings of his heart,
Breathe his sweet breath, and kiss for kiss impart;
Watch o'er his slumbers like the brooding dove,
And, if she can, exhaust a mother's love!

But soon a nobler task demands her care.
Apart she joins his little hands in prayer,
Telling of Him who sees in secret there:
And now the volume on her knee has caught

His wandering eye-now many a written thought

Never to die, with many a lisping sweet,

His moving, murmuring lips endeavor to repeat.

Human Life.

PESTUM.

They stand between the mountains and the sea;'
Awful memorials, but of whom we know not.
The seaman passing, gazes from the deck;
The buffalo driver, in his shaggy cloak,
Points to the work of magic and moves on.
Time was they stood along the crowded street,
Temples of gods, and on their ample steps
What various habits, various tongues beset
The brazen gates for prayer and sacrifice!

Time was, perhaps, the third was sought for justice;
And here the accuser stood, and there the accused,
And here the judges sat, and heard, and judged.
All silent now, as in the ages past,

Trodden under foot and mingled dust with dust.

How many centuries did the sun go round
From Mount Alburnus to the Tyrrhene sea,
While, by some spell rendered invisible,
Or, if approached, approached by him alone
Who saw as though he saw not, they remained
As in the darkness of a sepulchre,

Waiting the appointed time! All, all within
Proclaims that nature had resumed her right,
And taken to herself what man renounced;
No cornice, triglyph, or worn abacus,
But with thick ivy hung, or branching fern,
Their iron-brown o'erspread with brightest verdure!

From my youth upward have I longed to tread
This classic ground; and am I here at last?
Wandering at will through the long porticos,
And catching, as through some majestic grove,
Now the blue ocean, and now, chaos-like,
Mountains and mountain-gulfs, and, halfway up,
Towns like the living rock from which they grew?
A cloudy region, black and desolate,

Where once a slave withstood a world in arms.

The air is sweet with violets, running wild

'Mid broken friezes and fallen capitals;

Sweet as when Tully, writing down his thoughts,
Those thoughts so precious and so lately lost,

The temples of Pæstum are three in number, and have survived, nearly nine centuries, the total destruction of the city. Tradition is silent concerning them; but they must have existed now between two and three thousand years.

(Turning to thee, divine philosophy,
Ever at hand to calm his troubled soul,)
Sailed slowly by, two thousand years ago,
For Athens; when a ship, if north-east winds
Blew from the Pæstan gardens, slacked her course.

On as he moved along the level shore,
These temples, in their splendor eminent
'Mid arcs and obelisks, and domes and towers,
Reflecting back the radiance of the west,

Well might he dream of glory! Now, coiled up,
The serpent sleeps within them; the she-wolf
Suckles her young; and as alone I stand
In this, the nobler pile, the elements
Of earth and air its only floor and covering,
How solemn is the stillness! Nothing stirs
Save the shrill-voic'd cicala flitting round
On the rough pediment to sit and sing;
Or the green lizard rustling through the grass,
And up the fluted shaft with short, quick spring,
To vanish in the chinks that time has made.

In such an hour as this, the sun's broad disk
Seen at his setting, and a flood of light
Filling the courts of these old sanctuaries
(Gigantic shadows, broken and confused,
Athwart the innumerable columns flung),
In such an hour he came, who saw and told,
Led by the mighty genius of the place.1

Walls of some capital city first appeared,
Half razed, half sunk, or scattered as in scorn;
And what within them? What but in the midst
These three in more than their original grandeur,
And, round about, no stone upon another?
As if the spoiler had fallen back in fear,
And, turning, left them to the elements.

Italy.

COLUMBUS-LAND DISCOVERED.

Twice in the zenith blazed the orb of light;
No shade, all sun, insufferably bright!
Then the long line found rest-in coral groves
Silent and dark, where the sea-lion roves:-
And all on deck, kindling to life again,

Sent forth their anxious spirits o'er the main.

"Oh whence, as wafted from Elysium, whence These perfumes, strangers to the raptured sense?

They are said to have been discovered by accident about the middle of the last century.

These boughs of gold, and fruits of heavenly hue,
Tinging with vermeil light the billows blue?
And (thrice, thrice blessed is the eye that spied,
The hand that snatch'd it sparkling in the tide)
Whose cunning carved this vegetable bowl,'
Symbol of social rites and intercourse of soul?"
Such to their grateful ear the gush of springs,
Who course the ostrich as away she wings;
Sons of the desert! who delight to dwell
'Mid kneeling camels round the sacred well;
Who, ere the terrors of his pomp be past,
Fall to the demon in the redd'ning blast.2

The sails were furl'd; with many a melting close,
Solemn and slow the evening anthem rose,
Rose to the Virgin. Twas the hour of day
When setting suns o'er summer seas display
A path of glory opening in the west

To golden climes and islands of the blest;
And human voices, on the silent air,
Went o'er the waves in songs of gladness there!

Chosen of men! 'twas thine, at noon of night,
First from the prow to hail the glimmering light;
(Emblem of Truth divine, whose secret ray
Enters the soul and makes the darkness day!)
"Pedro! Rodrigo! there methought it shone!
There-in the west! and now, alas, 'tis gone!-
"Twas all a dream! we gaze and gaze in vain!
But mark, and speak not, there it comes again!
It moves! what form unseen, what being there
With torchlike lustre fires the murky air?
His instincts, passions, say how like our own!
Oh! when will day reveal a world unknown?"

A WISH.

Mine be a cot beside the hill;

A beehive's hum shall soothe my ear;
A willowy brook that turns a mill,
With many a fall, shall linger near.

The swallow oft beneath my thatch
Shall twitter from her clay-built nest;

Oft shall the pilgrim lift the latch,

And share my meal, a welcome guest.

Around my ivied porch shall spring

Each fragrant flower that drinks the dew!

1 Ex ligno lucido confectum, et arte mirâ laboratum. P. Martyr, Dec. i. 5.

The Simoom.

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