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WHO ARE THE LIVING OF THE EARTH?

JOHN MILLS. FROM THE FESTIVE WREATH," 1842.

WHO are the living of the earth?

Not they that creep, like slugs, from birth
Through noteless years to nameless graves.-
The spark celestial early craves
Celestial aliment, and wings,

To roam amid all glorious things;
The pinions germ-the heights are won,
And richly then lives Fancy's Son !
Music winding the world about
Tempts spirit-cloister'd echoes out;
Within him, Beauty's moulds and dies

Mingle their eternities.

Mark him on yon promontory

Fledging his vision for flight of glory;

For, oh, what a beautiful world is ours,

Bright waters, green meadows, and twilight bowers!

And seen by the youth from his mountain-peak,

They sleep on the plain so bland and meek ;

The blue sky kissing the ocean white,

Dim on the outer verge of sight;

The city's pride of spires and domes;
The hamlet-cluster of peasant homes :
The river, curved like an argent snake
Through flowery sward, and woodland brake.
For years 'twill be life's dew to find
That scene's fair reflex in his mind!

Mark the same mute, earnest form,
When the spirit of the speeding storm
Sends mystic bodings through the trees,
Which move and moan without a breeze;
When clouds brood low o'er the stifled earth,
And scowl in the throes of the thunder birth;
When boundeth the big, unswerving rain;
When the lurid line cleaves the vault in twain,
And the sound-billows leap from the firmament,
As if heaven's primeval vail were rent ;-
Mark that flush'd brow and throbbing eye,
For, solved by intensest sympathy,

His spirit is blent with the tempest strife.-
Oh this is living,-this is life!

Who are the living of the earth?

The bubbles of passion and joyless mirth
Are freighted with many a slave of lust,
Whose name shall moulder with his dust;
But what of worthy life has this,——
To note the orb of early bliss
Wane from its goodly matin-prime
Chill and dim with lapsing time,
Even memory trembling with the breath

Above the oblivious maw of death?

A nobler tale hath every age,

Of bard, and orator, and sage

Immortal. Oh, thou old Greek glory,`
The sire sublime of song and story!
And thou, our own, whose poet-spell
Pierced highest heaven and deepest hell!
Twins in darkness and in light,

Twins in weakness and in might !

What power thus wraps the mighty heart
In steel defiance to the dart

Which quells all meaner lives and fames?
Ye would not die! Ye green'd your names
With amaranth for ever vernal,

Blooming by the stream eternal,

Whose waters zone the earth, that we
May lave our lorn humanity,

While from their fringed verge we cull
Wreaths of the deathless beautiful!

And the world hath yet some nobly great,
Who have planted the heel on baffled Fate,
And some hath yet our own loved land;
And some are here. Hail, Poet-band!

A glorious dower is yours, as well
Your own entrancing lyres can tell.

From depths of thought and heights of dream
Ye have caught the old ethereal beam.
Your souls are seas of priceless things,

Emotions and imaginings,

And ye scoop the leaping waves among,

To freshen the world with the dews of song. Earth's glow and burnish in your eyes,

Ye gaze upon a paradise:

For you the day hath a radiant car,

And steeds of fire, which shower afar,

From their burning hoofs, our golden light:
And chastely beautiful the night

Puts on her sable stole and smiles,

While the pale Queen-moon and the starry isles
Look love, and sing in their choired spheres
Till the flowers are trembling with Nature's tears!

Are the flowers fair in their dewy dreaming?
Are the streams pure on their moss-beds gleaming?
Are bird-voices sweet in pleasant green places?
Is there soul in the smiles of our human graces?
Why bare the great Mother this lavish birth?
'Twas for you, ye living of the Earth!

FRIENDS.

JAMES MONTGOMERY.

FRIEND after friend departs;

Who hath not lost a friend?

There is no union here of hearts
That finds not here an end;
Were this frail world our final rest,
Living or dying none were blest.