Page images
PDF
EPUB

With dreams like thine own floating clouds,

The vague, but not the vain.

No feelings are less vain than those

That bear the mind away,

Till, blent with nature's mysteries,
It half forgets its clay;
It catches loftier impulses,
And owns a nobler power;
The poet and philosopher
Are born of such an hour.

But now where may we seek a place

For any spirit's dream?

Our steps have been o'er every soil,

Our sails o'er every stream.

Those isles, the beautiful Azores,
The fortunate, the fair!

We looked for their perpetual spring,

To find it was not there.

Bright El Dorado, land of gold,

We have so sought for thee,

There's not a spot in all the globe
Where such a land can be.

How pleasant were the wild beliefs

That dwelt in legends old ;

Alas! to our posterity

Will no such tales be told.

We know too much; scroll after scroll

Weighs down our weary shelves;

Our only point of ignorance
Is centered in ourselves.

Alas! for thy past mystery,
For thine untrodden snow,

Nurse of the tempest, hadst thou none
To guard thy outraged brow?
Thy summit, once the unapproached,
Hath human presence owned;
With the first step upon thy crest,
Mont Blanc, thou wert dethroned.

THE BOY OF EGREMOND.

BY SAMUEL ROGERS.

"SAY what remains when hope is fled?"
She answered, "Endless weeping!"
For, in the herdsman's eye she read
Who in his shroud lay sleeping.

At Embsay rung the matin-bell, The stag was roused on Barden-fell; The mingled sounds were swelling, dying, And down the Wharfe a hern was flying;

When near the cabin in the wood,
In tartan clad, and forest-green,
With hound in leash and hawk in hood,
The Boy of Egremond was seen.
Blithe was his song, a song of yore;
But where the rock is rent in two,
And the river rushes through,

His voice was heard no more!

'Twas but a step! the gulf was passed; But that step it was his last!

As through the mist he winged his way,
(A cloud that hovers night and day,)
The hound hung back, and back he drew
The master and his merlin too.

That narrow space of noise and strife
Received their little all of life!

There now the matin-bell is rung;

The "Miserere" duly sung;

And holy men, in cowl and hood,
Are wandering up and down the wood.
But what avail they? Ruthless lord,
Thou didst not shudder when the sword
Here on the young its fury spent,
The helpless and the innocent.

Sit now, and answer groan for groan.
The child before thee is thy own:
And she who wildly wanders there,
The mother in her long despair,

с

Shall oft remind thee, waking,. sleeping,

Of those who by the Wharfe were weeping;
Of those who would not be consoled,

When red with blood the river rolled.

THE HOLIDAY.

BY THE REV. THOMAS MAUDE.

HARK to that joyous shout! Methinks I hear
The cry of gladness—yes, it fills my ear,
When from the prison school-room all rush out,
Wild with delight
a noisy, laughing rout!
4 holiday! -the tasks were just begun,

Bright through the window shone the mocking sun;
When with the master's Sunday's coat, his dame,
Bustling and smiling, to the school-room came,
And call'd him thence! A gentle stranger's come,
To take his little prattling ur hin home;
And the young smiler, ere he rides away,
Begs for his sake to ask a holiday.

'T is asked-'t is granted! With reluctance feigned, The double favour is in form obtained;

But the good master chuckles while he grants,
Well pleased to tend his orchard trees and plants.
What gladdening tidings! O, the joy within
Twenty young hearts; and, ah! the deafening din!

[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][merged small][merged small]
« PreviousContinue »