The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool,
The playful children just let loose from school;
The watch-dog's voice that bayed the whispering
wind,
And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind, -
These all in sweet confusion sought the shade,
And filled each pause the nightingale had made.
But now the sounds of population fail,
No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale,
No busy steps the grass-grown foot-way tread,
But all the bloomy flush of life is fled.
All but yon widowed, solitary thing,
That feebly bends beside the plashy spring;
She, wretched matron, forced in age, for bread,
To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread,
To pick her wintry fagot from the thorn,
To seek her nightly shed, and weep till morn;
She only left of all the harmless train,
The sad historian of the pensive plain.
Near yonder copse, where once the garden
smiled,
And still where many a garden-flower grows wild;
There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose,
The village preacher's modest mansion rose.
A man he was to all the country dear,
And passing rich with forty pounds a year;
Remote from towns he ran his godly race,
Nor e'er had changed, nor wished to change, his
place;
Unskilful he to fawn, or seek for power,
By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour;
Far other aims his heart had learned to prize,
More bent to raise the wretched than to rise.
Ilis house was known to all the vagrant train.
He chid their wanderings, but relieved their pain;
The long-remembered beggar was his guest,
Whose beard descending swept his aged breast.
The ruined spendthrift, now no longer proud,
Claimed kindred there, and had his claims al-
The broken soldier, kindly bade to stay,
Sate by his fire, and talked the night away;
Wept o'er his wounds, or tales of sorrow done,
Shouldered his crutch, and showed how fields
He tried each art, reproved each dull delay,
Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way.
Beside the bed where parting life was laid, And sorrow, guilt, and pain by turns dismayed, The reverend champion stood. At his control, Despair and anguish fled the struggling soul; Comfort came down the trembling wretch to raise, And his last faltering accents whispered praise.
At church, with meek and unaffected grace, His looks adorned the venerable place; Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway, And fools, who came to scoff, remained to pray. The service past, around the pious man, With steady zeal, each honest rustic ran; E'en children followed with endearing wile, And plucked his gown, to share the good man's smile.
His ready smile a parent's warmth expressed, Their welfare pleased him, and their cares distressed;
To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given,
But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven.
As some tall cliff, that lifts its awful form,
Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm,
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are
spread,
Eternal sunshine settles on its head.
Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way,
With blossomed furze unprofitably gay,
There, in his noisy mansion, skilled to rule,
The village master taught his little school;
A man severe he was, and stern to view,
I knew him well, and every truant knew ;
Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace
The day's disasters in his morning face;
Full well they laughed with counterfeited glee
At all his jokes, for many a joke had he;
Full well the busy whisper circling round
Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned
Yet he was kind, or, if severe in aught,
The love he bore to learning was in fault.
The village all declared how much he knew,
"T was certain he could write, and cipher too;
Lands he could measure, times and tides presage,
And e'en the story ran that he could gauge;
In arguing too, the parson owned his skill,
For, e'en though vanquished, he could argue still,
While words of learned length and thundering
sound
Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around;
And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew
That one small head could carry all he knew.
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Near yonder thorn, that lifts its head on high,
Where once the sign-post caught the passing eye,
Low lies that house where nut-brown draughts
inspired,
Where graybeard mirth and smiling toil retired,
Where village statesmen talked with looks pro-
found,
Hoards e'en beyond the miser's wish abound,
And rich men flock from all the world around.
Yet count our gains. This wealth is but a name
That leaves our useful products still the same.
Not so the loss. The man of wealth and pride
Takes up a space that many poor supplied;
Space for his lake, his park's extended bounds,
And news much older than their ale went round. Space for his horses, equipage, and hounds:
Imagination fondly stoops to trace
The parlor splendors of that festive place,
The whitewashed wall; the nicely sanded floor;
The varnished clock that ticked behind the door;
The chest, contrived a double debt to pay,
A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day;
The pictures placed for ornament and use;
The twelve good rules; the royal game of goose;
The hearth, except when winter chilled the day,
With aspen boughs and flowers and fennel gay;
While broken teacups, wisely kept for show,
Ranged o'er the chimney, glistened in a row.
Vain, transitory splendor! could not all
Reprieve the tottering mansion from its fall?
Obscure it sinks, nor shall it more impart
An hour's importance to the poor man's heart;
Thither no more the peasant shall repair
To sweet oblivion of his daily care;
No more the farmer's news, the barber's tale,
No more the woodman's ballad shall prevail;
No more the smith his dusky brow shall clear,
Relax his ponderous strength, and lean to hear;
The host himself no longer shall be found
Careful to see the mantling bliss
round;
Nor the coy maid, half willing to be prest,
Shall kiss the cup to pass it to the rest.
Yes! let the rich deride, the proud disdain,
These simple blessings of the lowly train;
To me more dear, congenial to my heart,
One native charm, than all the gloss of art.
Spontaneous joys, where nature has its play,
The soul adopts, and owns their first-born sway;
Lightly they frolic o'er the vacant mind,
Unenvied, unmolested, unconfined:
But the long pomp, the midnight masquerade,
With all the freaks of wanton wealth arrayed,
In these, ere triflers half their wish obtain,
The toiling pleasure sickens into pain;
Aud, e'en while fashion's brightest arts decoy,
The heart, distrusting, asks if this be joy.
Ye friends to truth, ye statesmen, who survey
The rich man's joys increase, the poor's decay,
Tis yours to judge, how wide the limits stand
Between a splendid and a happy land.
Proud swells the tide with loads of freighted ore,
And shouting Folly hails them from her shore;
The robe that wraps his limbs in silken sloth
Has robbed the neighboring fields of half their
growth;
His seat, where solitary sports are seen,
Indignant spurns the cottage from the green;
Around the world each needful product flies,
For all the luxuries the world supplies:
While thus the land, adorned for pleasure all,
In barren splendor feebly waits the fall.
As some fair female unadorned and plain,
Secure to please while youth confirms her reign,
Slights every borrowed charm that dress supplies,
Nor shares with art the triumph of her eyes,
But when those charms are past, for charms
are frail, -
When time advances, and when lovers fail,
She then shines forth, solicitous to bless,
In all the glaring impotence of dress;
Thus fares the land by luxury betrayed,
In nature's simplest charms at first arrayed,
But verging to decline, its splendors rise,
While, scourged by famine from the smiling land,
Its vistas strike, its palaces surprise;
The mournful peasant leads his humble band;
And while he sinks, without one arm to save,
The country blooms, -a garden and a grave
Where then, ah! where shall poverty reside,
To 'scape the pressure of contiguous pride?
If to some common's fenceless limits strayed
He drives his flock to pick the scanty blade,
Those fenceless fields the sons of wealth divide,
And e'en the bare-worn common is denied.
If to the city sped, what waits him there?
To see profusion that he must not share;
To see ten thousand baneful arts combined
To pamper luxury and thin mankind;
To see each joy the sons of pleasure know
Extorted from his fellow-creature's woe.
Here while the courtier glitters in brocade,
There the pale artist plies the sickly trade ;
Here while the proud their long-drawn pomps
display,
There the black gibbet glooms beside the way.
The dome where Pleasure holds her midnight
reign,
Here, richly decked, admits the gorgeous train:
Tumultuous grandeur crowds the blazing square,
The rattling chariots clash, the torches glare.
Sure scenes like these no troubles e'er annoy!
Sure these denote one universal joy!
The good old sire the first prepared to go
To new-found worlds, and wept for others' woe;
Are these thy serious thoughts? Ah, turn But for himself in conscious virtue brave,
Where the poor houseless shivering female lies.
She once, perhaps, in village plenty blest,
Has wept at tales of innocence distrest;
1 Her modest looks the cottage might adorn,
Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn;
Now lost to all: her friends, her virtue fled,
Near her betrayer's door she lays her head,
And, pinched with cold, and shrinking from the
shower,
With heavy heart deplores that luckless hour,
When idly first, ambitious of the town,
She left her wheel and robes of country brown.
Do thine, sweet Auburn, thine, the loveliest
train,
Do thy fair tribes participate her pain?
E'en now, perhaps, by cold and hunger led,
At proud men's doors they ask a little bread!
Ah, no! To distant climes, a dreary scene,
Where half the convex world intrudes between,
Through torrid tracks with fainting steps they go,
Where wild Altama murmurs to their woe.
Far different there from all that charmed before,
The various terrors of that horrid shore, -
Those blazing suns that dart a downward ray,
And fiercely shed intolerable day;
Those matted woods where birds forget to sing,
But silent bats in drowsy clusters cling;
Those poisonous fields with rank luxuriance
crowned,
Where the dark scorpion gathers death around;
Where at each step the stranger fears to wake
The rattling terrors of the vengeful snake;
Where crouching tigers wait their hapless prey,
And savage men more murderous still than they;
While oft in whirls the mad tornado flies,
Mingling the ravaged landscape with the skies.
Far different these from every former scene,
The cooling brook, the grassy vested green,
The breezy covert of the warbling grove,
That only sheltered thefts of harmless love.
He only wished for worlds beyond the grave.
His lovely daughter, lovelier in her tears,
The fond companion of his helpless years,
Silent went next, neglectful of her charms,
And left a lover's for her father's arms.
With louder plaints the mother spoke her woes,
And blessed the cot where every pleasure rose ;
And kissed her thoughtless babes with many a tear,
And clasped them close, in sorrow doubly dear;
Whilst her fond husband strove to lend relief
In all the silent manliness of grief.
O Luxury thou curst by Heaven's decree,
How ill exchanged are things like these for thee!
How do thy potions, with insidious joy,
Diffuse their pleasures only to destroy !
Kingdoms by thee, to sickly greatness grown,
Boast of a forid vigor not their own.
At every draught more large and large they grow,
A bloated mass of rank, unwieldy woe;
Till, sapped their strength, and every part un
sound,
Down, down they sink, and spread a ruin round
Even now the devastation is begun,
And half the business of destruction done;
Even now, methinks, as pondering here I stand,
I see the rural virtues leave the land.
Down where yon anchoring vessel spreads the sail
That idly waiting flaps with every gale,
Downward they move, a melancholy band,
Pass from the shore, and darken all the strand.
Contented toil, and hospitable care,
And kind connubial tenderness, are there;
And piety with wishes placed above,
And steady loyalty, and faithful love.
And thou, sweet Poetry, thou loveliest maid,
Still first to fly where sensual joys invade ;
Unfit, in these degenerate times of shame,
To catch the heart, or strike for honest fame;
Dear charming nymph, neglected and decried,
My shame in crowds, my solitary pride;
Thou source of all my bliss and all my woe,
That found'st me poor at first, and keep'st me so ;
Good Heaven! what sorrows gloomed that Thou guide, by which the nobler arts excel,
That called them from their native walks away;
When the poor exiles, every pleasure past,
Hung round the bowers, and fondly looked their
last,
And took a long farewell, and wished in vain
For seats like these beyond the western main;
And shuddering still to face the distant deep,
Returned and wept, and still returned to weep.
Thou nurse of every virtue, fare thee well!
Farewell; and O, where'er thy voice be tried,
On Torno's cliffs, or Pambamarca's side,
Whether where equinoctial fervors glow,
Or winter wraps the polar world in snow,
Still let thy voice, prevailing over time,
Redress the rigors of the inclement clime;
Aid slighted truth with thy persuasive strain;
Teach erring man to spurn the rage of gain:
But when the light winds lie at rest,
And on the glassy, heaving sea The black duck, with her glossy breast,
Sits swinging silently,
How beautiful! no ripples break the reach, And silvery waves go noiseless up the beach
And inland rests the green, warm dell;
The brook comes tinkling down its side;
From out the trees the Sabbath bell
Rings cheerful, far and wide,
Mingling its sound with bleatings of the flocks, That feed about the vale among the rocks.
Nor holy bell, nor pastoral bleat,
In former days within the vale; Flapped in the bay the pirate's sheet;
Curses were on the gale;
Rich goods lay on the sand, and murdered men ; Pirate and wrecker kept their revels then.
But calm, low voices, words of grace,
Now slowly fall upon the ear;
A quiet look is in each face,
Subdued and holy fear :
Each motion 's gentle; all is kindly done ;Come, listen how from crime this isle was won.
LIGHT-WINGED Smoke! Icarian bird, Melting thy pinions in thy upward flight; Lark without song, and messenger of dawn, Circling above the hamlets as thy nest; Or else, departing dream, and shadowy form Of midnight vision, gathering up thy skirts; By night star-veiling, and by day Darkening the light and blotting out the sun; Go thou, my incense, upward from this hearth, And ask the gods to pardon this clear flame.
FROM "THE BUCCANEER."
THE island lies nine leagues away.
Along its solitary shore,
Of craggy rock and sandy bay, '
No sound but ocean's roar,
Save where the bold, wild sea-bird makes her home,
Her shrill cry coming through the sparkling foam.
LOW-ANCHORED cloud,
Newfoundland air,
Fountain-head and source of rivers,
Dew-cloth, dream-drapery,
And napkin spread by fays;
Drifting meadow of the air,
Where bloom the daisied banks and violets,
And in whose fenny labyrinth
The bittern booms and heron wades;
Spirit of lakes and seas and rivers,
Bear only perfumes and the scent
Of healing herbs to just men's fields.
THE EVENING CLOUD.
A CLOUD lay cradled near the setting sun,
A gleam of crimson tinged its braided snow;
Long had I watched the glory moving on
O'er the still radiance of the lake below.
Tranquil its spirit seemed, and floated slow!
Even in its very motion there was rest; While every breath of eve that chanced to blow Wafted the traveller to the beauteous west. Emblem, methought, of the departed soul ! To whose white robe the gleam of bliss is given,
And by the breath of mercy made to roll
Right onwards to the golden gates of heaven, Where to the eye of faith it peaceful lies, And tells to man his glorious destinies.
JOHN WILSON (Christopher North).
The moist winds breathe of crispèd leaves and flowers
In the damp hollows of the woodland sown, Mingling the freshness of autumnal showers With spicy airs from cedarn alleys blown. Beside the brook and on the umbered meadow,
Where yellow fern-tufts fleck the faded ground. With folded lids beneath their palmy shadow
The gentian nods, in dewy slumbers bound. Upon those soft, fringed lids the bee sits brooding,
Like a fond lover loath to say farewell,
Or with shut wings, through silken folds intruding,
Creeps near her heart his drowsy tale to tell. The little birds upon the hillside lonely
Flit noiselessly along from spray to spray, Silent as a sweet wandering thought that only Shows its bright wings and softly glides away.
NEWPORT BEACH.
WAVE after wave successively rolls on
And dies along the shore, until more loud
One billow with concentrate force is heard
To swell prophetic, and exultant rears
A lucent form above its pioneers,
And rushes past them to the farthest goal.
Thus our unuttered feelings rise and fall,
And thought will follow thought in equal waves,
Until reflection nerves design to will,
Or sentiment o'er chance emotion reigns,
And all its wayward undulations blends
In one o'erwhelming surge!
HENRY THEODORE TUCKERMAN
A STILL DAY IN AUTUMN.
I LOVE to wander through the woodlands hoary
In the soft light of an autumnal day,
When Summer gathers up her robes of glory,
And like a dream of beauty glides away.
How through each loved, familiar path she lingers,
Serenely smiling through the golden mist,
Tinting the wild grape with her dewy fingers
Till the cool emerald turns to amethyst;
Kindling the faint stars of the hazel, shining To light the gloom of Autumn's mouldering halls,
With hoary plumes the clematis entwining
Where o'er the rock her withered garland falls.
Warm lights are on the sleepy uplands waning Beneath soft clouds along the horizon rolled, Till the slant sunbeams through their fringes raining
Bathe all the hills in melancholy gold.
THE BIRCH STREAM.
AT noon, within the dusty town,
Where the wild river rushes down,
And thunders hoarsely all day long,
I think of thee, my hermit stream,
Low singing in thy summer dream
Thine idle, sweet, old, tranquil song.
Northward, Katahdin's chasmed pile
Looms through thy low, long, leafy aisle
Eastward, Olamon's summit shines;
And I upon thy grassy shore,
The dreamful, happy child of yore,
'Worship before mine olden shrines.
Again the sultry noontide hush
Is sweetly broken by the thrush,
Whose clear bell rings and dies away Beside thy banks, in coverts deep, Where nodding buds of orchis sleep
In dusk, and dream not it is day.
Again the wild cow-lily floats
Her golden-freighted, tented boats
In thy cool coves of softened gloom,
O'ershadowed by the whispering reed,
And purple plumes of pickerel-weed,
And meadow-sweet in tangled bloom. The startled minnows dart in flocks Beneath thy glimmering amber rocks, If but a zephyr stirs the brake; The silent swallow swoops, a flash Of light, and leaves, with dainty plash, A ring of ripples in her wake.
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