And consecrated palaces of mind! Come out, thou pale and visionary youth, And mark the paths of nature! Sweetly breathes The cool noon zephyr through the green arcades Look how the grain bends to the breezes' kiss- Look now about thee, student!-See the sheaves Over the lonely landscape mark the girls The twilight hastens on- That thou didst often wander from the crowd, Than in the monarch's palace. Where she is, Philadelphia, May 20, 1829. MY BIRTH-DAY. BY N. P. WILLIS, ESQ. My birth-day! As the day comes round, MOORE. I. I'm twenty-two;-I'm twenty-two, they gaily give me joy, As if I should be glad to hear that I was less a boy; They do not know how carelessly their words have given pain To one, whose heart would leap to be a happy boy again! II. A change has o'er my spirit passed, my mirthful hours are few, The light is all departed now my early feelings knew; deep, But now, like shadows on the sea, upon my thoughts they creep. III. And love was as a holy star when this brief year was young, And my whole worship of the sky on one sweet ray was flung; But worldly things have come between, and shut it from my sight, And though that star shines purely yet, I mourn its hidden light! IV. And fame! I bent to it my knee, and bowed to it my brow, And it is like a coal upon my living spirit now; But when I prayed for fire from Heaven to touch the soul, I bowed, I little thought the lightning flash would come in such a cloud. V. Ye give me joy! Is it because another year has fled? That I am farther from my youth, and nearer to the dead? Is it that manhood's cares are come, - my happy boy hood o'er, Because the visions I have loved, will visit me no more! VI. Oh wherefore give me joy, when I can smile no welcome back? I've found no flower, and seen no light, on manhood's weary track: My love is deep-ambition deep-and heart and mind will on, But love is fainting by the way, and fame consumes ere won! Philadelphia, May 2, 1829. LUNACY. BY JOHN BOWRING, ESQ. THE saddest scene of sadness is the fall Of intellectual greatness from its height; That darkness is most desolate of all Which shadows and o'erwhelms mind's glorious light: A page unreadable in the fair book O Infinite Wisdom,- of Thy mystery ; To Thee, O God! not there-To thee I look! |