Imágenes de página
PDF
ePub
[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

Thou'rt free! thou'rt free. Ah, surely a bird can smile!

Dost know me, Petrel? Dost remember how I fed thee in the wake for many a mile, Whilst thou wouldst pat the waves, then, rising, take

The morsel up and wheel about the wake? Thou 'rt free, thou 'rt free, but for thine own dear sake

I keep thee caged awhile.

Away to sea! no matter where the coast: The road that turns to home turns never wrong:

Where waves run high my bird will not be lost:

His home I know: 't is where the winds are strong,

Where, on her throne of billows, rolling

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

THE SONNET'S VOICE

(A METRICAL LESSON BY THE SEASHORE) YON silvery billows breaking on the beach Fall back in foam beneath the star-shine clear,

The while my rhymes are murmuring in your ear

A restless lore like that the billows teach; For on these sonnet-waves my soul would reach

From its own depths, and rest within you, dear,

As, through the billowy voices yearning here, Great nature strives to find a human speech. A sonnet is a wave of melody:

From heaving waters of the impassion'd soul

A billow of tidal music one and whole
Flows in the "octave ;" then returning free,
Its ebbing surges in the "sestet" roll
Back to the deeps of Life's tumultuous sea.

COLERIDGE

I SEE thee pine like her in golden story Who, in her prison, woke and saw, one day, The gates thrown open - saw the sunbeams play,

With only a web 'tween her and summer's glory;

Who, when that web-so frail, so transitory

It broke before her breath-had fallen away,

Saw other webs and others rise for aye Which kept her prison'd till her hair was hoary.

Those songs half-sung that yet were alldivine

That woke Romance, the queen, to reign

afresh

Had been but preludes from that lyre of thine,

Could thy rare spirit's wings have pierced

the mesh

Spun by the wizard who compels the flesh, But lets the poet see how heav'n can shine.

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

THE DEAR OLD TOILING ONE

Он, many a leaf will fall to-night,
As she wanders through the wood!
And many an angry gust will break
The dreary solitude.

I wonder if she's past the bridge,
Where Luggie moans beneath,

While rain-drops clash in planted lines
On rivulet and heath.

Disease hath laid his palsied palm
Upon my aching brow;

The headlong blood of twenty-one
Is thin and sluggish now.

'Tis nearly ten! A fearful night,
Without a single star

To light the shadow on her soul
With sparkle from afar :

The moon is canopied with clouds,
And her burden it is sore;

What would wee Jackie do, if he
Should never see her more ?
Ay, light the lamp, and hang it up
At the window fair and free;

"T will be a beacon on the hill
To let your mother see.
And trim it well, my little Ann,
For the night is wet and cold,
And you know the weary, winding way
Across the miry wold.

All drench'd will be her simple gown,
And the wet will reach her skin:
I wish that I could wander down,
And the red quarry win,

To take the burden from her back,
And place it upon mine;

With words of cheerful condolence,

Not utter'd to repine.

You have a kindly mother, dears,
As ever bore a child,

And Heaven knows I love her well
In passion undefil'd.

Ah me! I never thought that she
Would brave a night like this,
While I sat weaving by the fire

A web of fantasies.

How the winds beat this home of ours With arrow-falls of rain;

[blocks in formation]

LUX EST UMBRA DEI

NAY, Death, thou art a shadow! Even as light

Is but the shadow of invisible God,
And of that shade the shadow is thin Night,
Veiling the earth whereon our feet have
trod;

So art Thou but the shadow of this life,
Itself the pale and unsubstantial shade
Of living God, fulfill'd by love and strife
Throughout the universe Himself hath
made:

And as frail Night, following the flight of earth,

Obscures the world we breathe in, for a while,

So Thou, the reflex of our mortal birth, Veilest the life wherein we weep and smile :

But when both earth and life are whirl'd away,

What shade can shroud us from God's deathless day?

THE NIGHTINGALE

I WENT a roaming through the woods alone, And heard the nightingale that made her

moan.

Hard task it were to tell how dewy-still Were flowers and ferns and foliage in

the rays Of Hesper, white amid the daffodil

Of twilight fleck'd with faintest chrysoprase;

And all the while, embower'd in leafy bays,

The bird prolong'd her sharp soul-thrilling

tone.

I went a roaming through the woods alone, And heard the nightingale that made her

moan.

But as I stood and listened, on the air

Arose another voice more clear and keen, That startled silence with a sweet despair, And still'd the bird beneath her leafy

screen:

The star of Love, those lattice-boughs between,

Grew large and lean'd to listen from his

zone.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]
« AnteriorContinuar »