And see, where the brighter day-beams pour,
How the rainbows hang in the sunny shower;
And the morn and the eve, with their pomp of hues,
Shift o'er the bright planets and shed their dews;
And 'twixt them both, o'er the teeming ground,
With her shadowy cone, the night goes round.
Away, away!-in our blossoming bowers,
In the soft air wrapping these spheres of ours,
In the seas and fountains that shine with morn,
See, love is brooding, and life is born,
And breathing myriads are breaking from night,
To rejoice, like us, in motion and light.
Glide on in your beauty, ye youthful spheres!
To weave the dance that measures the years.
Glide on in the glory and gladness sent
To the farthest wall of the firmament,
The boundless visible smile of him
To the veil of whose brow our lamps are dim.
"The memory of joys that are past."
Where are now the flowers that once detained me Like a loiterer on my early way?
Where the fragrant wreaths that softly chained me, When young life was like an infant's play?
Were they but the fancied dreams, that hover
Round the couch where tender hearts repose?
Only pictured veils that brightly cover
With their skyey tints a world of woes?
They are gone-but Memory loves to cherish
All their sweetness in her deepest core.
Ah! the recollection cannot perish,
Though the eye may never meet them more.
There are hopes, that like enchantment brighten
Gaily in the van of coming years;
They are never met—and yet they lighten,
When we walk in sorrow and in tears.
When the present only tells of anguish,
Then we know their worth, and only then:
O! the wasted heart will cease to languish,
When it thinks of joys that might have been.
Age, and suffering, and want, may sever
Every link, that bound to life, in twain:
Hope-even Hope may vanish, but forever
Memory with her visions will remain.
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.
See 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 should I weep at noon,
To see the blush of morning gone.
Could I forego the hopes that glow
In prospect, like Elysian isles?
And let the charming 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 lovelier 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 grisly beard becomes me then.
And should no foul dishonour lie
Upon my head, when I am gray,
Love yet may search 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.
Stranger, if thou hast ever blest the shade,
That lent thee shelter from the sun or rain,
Thou wilt not rest thee underneath this elm
Without a sense of gratitude. The boughs,
That overshadow thee, have borne the brunt
Of centuries, and have records of the past
In all their whispering leaves. We cannot hear them
Telling their tales, through the long summer day,
To the cool west-wind, and have other thoughts,
Than of the generations, who have sat,
In long succession, on the mossy turf
That beds these twisted roots. Sunshine and calm,
Darkness and storm, have been around these boughs,
And they have smiled to the unclouded sky,
And rocked in the rude tempest, but have stood
Unbroken, while the stream of human life
Has ebbed and flowed, like the perpetual tide,
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