Sleep stays not, though a monarch bids: Yet while 'tis dark, one shuts one's lids, HOME-SICK. WRITTEN IN GERMANY. "TIS sweet to him, who all the week And sweet it is, in summer bower, But what is all, to his delight, Who having long been doomed to roam, Home-sickness is a wasting pang ; This feel I hourly more and more : Thou Breeze that play'st on Albion's shore ! ANSWER TO A CHILD'S QUESTION. Do you ask what the birds say? The sparrow, the dove, But the lark is so brimful of gladness and love, That he sings, and he sings; and forever sings he— "I love my Love, and my Love loves me !" A CHILD'S EVENING PRAYER. ERE on my bed my limbs I lay, God grant me grace my prayers to say: In strength and health for many a year; Amen. THE VISIONARY HOPE. SAD lot, to have no hope! Though lowly kneeling He strove in vain! the dull sighs from his chest Though Nature forced; though like some captive guest, Though obscure pangs made curses of his dreams, That Hope, which was his inward bliss and boast, Which waned and died, yet ever near him stood, Though changed in nature, wander where he wouldFor Love's despair is but Hope's pining ghost! For this one hope he makes his hourly moan, He wishes and can wish for this alone! Pierced, as with light from Heaven, before its gleams (So the love-stricken visionary deems) Disease would vanish, like a summer shower, Whose dews fling sunshine from the noontide bower! THE HAPPY HUSBAND. OFT, oft methinks, the while with Thee A promise and a mystery, A pledge of more than passing life, A pulse of love, that ne'er can sleep! Of transient joys that ask no sting From jealous fears, or coy denying; But born beneath Love's brooding wing, And into tenderness soon dying, Wheel out their giddy moment, then A more precipitated vein, Of notes, that eddy in the flow Of smoothest song, they come, they go, RECOLLECTIONS OF LOVE. I. How warm this woodland wild Recess ! II. Eight springs have flown, since last I lay On seaward Quantock's heathy hills, Where quiet sounds from hidden rills Float here and there, like things astray, And high o'er head the sky-lark shrills. III. No voice as yet had made the air IV. As when a mother doth explore V. You stood before me like a thought, A dream remembered in a dream. But when those meek eyes first did seem To tell me, Love within you wroughtO Greta, dear domestic stream! VI. Has not, since then, Love's prompture deep, Has not Love's whisper evermore Been ceaseless as thy gentle roar? ON REVISITING THE SEA-SHORE, AFTER LONG ABSENCE, UNDER STRONG MEDICAL RECOMMENDATION NOT TO BATHE. GOD be with thee, gladsome ocean! Dissuading spake the mild physician, "Those briny waves for thee are death!" But my soul fulfilled her mission, And lo! I breathe untroubled breath! Fashion's pining sons and daughters, Me a thousand hopes and pleasures, Dreams, (the soul herself forsaking,) A blessed shadow of this Earth! O ye hopes, that stir within me, I can not die, if Life be Love. |