To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,
And read their history in a nation's eyes,
Their lot forbade: nor circumscribed alone
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined; -
Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind;
The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame;
Or heap the shrine of luxury and pride
With incense kindled at the muse's flame.
Far from the maddening crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learned to stray:
Along the cool, sequestered vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.
Yet even these bones from insult to protect,
Some frail memorial, still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.
Their name, their years, spelled by the unlettered muse,
The place of fame and elegy supply;
And many a holy text around she strews,
That teach the rustic moralist to die.
For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing, anxious being e'er resigned,-
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,-
Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind?
On some fond breast the parting soul relies;
Some pious drops the closing eye requires:
Even from the tomb the voice of nature cries;
Even in our ashes live their wonted fires.
For thee, who, mindful of the unhonored dead,
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate,
If, chance, by lonely contemplation led,
Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,
Haply, some hoary-headed swain may say,
Oft have we seen him, at the peep of dawn.
Brushing, with hasty steps, the dews away,
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.
"There, at the foot of yonder nodding beech,
That wreathes its old, fantastic roots so high,
His listless length at noontide would he stretch,
And pore upon the brook that babbles by.
"Hard by yon wood, now smiling, as in scorn,
Muttering his wayward fancies, he would rove:
Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,
Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love. "One morn I missed him on the accustomed hill, Along the heath, and near his favorite tree: Another came; nor yet beside the rill,
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood, was he:
"The next, with dirges due, in sad array,
Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne. Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay, Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn."
HERE rests his head upon the lap of earth
A youth, to fortune and to fame unknown:
Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy marked him for her own.
Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere:
Heaven did a recompense as largely send:-
gave to misery all he had,- -a tear;
He gained from heaven,―'twas all he wished,-a friend.
No further seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,
(There they, alike, in trembling hope, repose,) The bosom of his Father and his God.
HAST thou a charm to stay the morning star
In his steep course?- -so long he seems to pause
On thy bald, awful front, O sovereign Blanc;
The Arvé and Arveiron at thy base
Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful form,
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines
How silently! Around thee and above,
Deep is the air, and dark; substantial black,
An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it,
As with a wedge! But, when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity.
O dread and silent mount ! I gazed upon thee,
Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,
Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer,
I worshiped the Invisible alone.
Yet, like some sweet, beguiling melody,
So sweet, we know not we are listening to it,
Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought,—
Yea, with my life, and life's own secret joy,—
Till the dilating soul, enrapt, transfused,
Into the mighty vision passing-there,
As in her natural form, swelled vast to heaven!
Awake, my soul! Not only passive praise
Thou owest; not alone these swelling tears,
Mute thanks, and silent ecstasy. Awake,
Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake,
Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my hymn.
Thou, first and chief, sole sovereign of the vale!
O! struggling with the darkness all the night,
And visited all night by troops of stars,
Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink-
Companion of the morning star at dawn,
Thyself earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
Co-herald, wake! O wake! and utter praise!
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?
And you, ye five wild torrents, fiercely glad!
Who called you forth from night and utter death,
From dark and icy caverns called you forth,
Down those precipitous, black, jaggéd rocks,
For ever shattered, and the same for ever?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,
Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,
Unceasing thunder, and eternal foam?
And who commanded,—and the silence came,-
"Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest ?"
Ye ice-falls! ye, that, from the mountain's brow,
Adown enormous ravines slope amain,-
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!-
Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who with living flowers
Of loveliest blue spread garlands at your feet?-
"God!" let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer: and let the ice-plains echo, "God!"
"God!" sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice,
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they, too, have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And, in their perilous fall, shall thunder, "God!"
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain-storm!
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
Ye signs and wonders of the elements!
Utter forth "God!" and fill the hills with praise.
Thou, too, hoar mount, with thy sky-pointing peaks,
Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard,
Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene,
Into the depth of clouds, that vail thy breast-
Thou, too, again, stupendous mountain! thou
That as I raise my head, a while bowed low
In adoration, upward from thy base
Slow traveling with dim eyes suffused with tears-
Solemnly seemest, like a vapory cloud,
To rise before me-rise, O ever rise!
Rise, like a cloud of incense, from the earth!
Thou kingly spirit, throned among the hills,
Thou dread embassador from earth to heaven,
Great hierarch, tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell, you rising sun,
"Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God."
Ex. CXLVI.—THE ADMIRAL GUARINOS.
THE day of Roncesvalles was a dismal day for you, Ye men of France, for there the lance of King Charles was broke in two:
Ye well may curse that rueful field, for many a noble peer In fray or fight the dust did bite beneath Bernardo's spear.
There captured was Guarinos, King Charles's admiral; Seven Moorish kings surrounded him, and seized him for their thrall;
Seven times, when all the chase was o'er, for Guarinos lots they cast,
Seven times Marlotes won the throw, and the knight was his at last.
Much joy had then Marlotes, and his captive much did prize;
Above all the wealth of Araby, he was precious in his eyes.
Within his tent at evening he made the best of cheer,
And thus, the banquet done, he spake unto his prisoner:-
"Now, for the sake of Alla, Lord Admiral Guarinos,
Be thou a Moslem, and much love shall ever rest between us.
Two daughters have I,-all the day thy handmaid one shall be,
The other (and the fairer far) by night shall cherish thee.
"The one shall be thy waiting-maid, thy weary feet to lave, To scatter perfumes on thy head, and fetch thee garments
The other she the pretty-shall deck thy bridal bower,
And my field and my city they both shall be her dower;
"If more thou wishest, more I'll give; speak boldly what thy thought is.”
Thus earnestly and kindly to Guarinos said Marlotes:
But not a moment did he take to ponder or to pause,
Thus clear and quick the answer of the Christian captive
"Now, God forbid! Marlotes, and Mary, his dear mother, That I should leave the faith of Christ, and bind me to another:
For women, I've one wife in France, and I'll wed no more in Spain;
I change not faith, I break not vow, for courtesy or gain.”
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