I am the daughter of the earth and water, I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores : For after the rain, when, with never a stain, The pavilion of heaven is bare, And the winds and sunbeams, with their convex gleams, I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, 40.-COWPER'S GRAVE. ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. [See page 142.] Ir is a place where poets crowned may feel the heart's decaying- O poets! from a maniac's tongue was poured the deathless singing! And now, what time ye all may read through dimming tears his story, How discord on the music fell, and darkness on the glory, And how when, one by one, sweet sounds and wandering lights departed, He wore no less a loving face because so broken-hearted : He shall be strong to sanctify the poet's high vocation; With quiet sadness and no gloom I learn to think upon nim, Who suffered once the madness-cloud to His own love to blind him, And wrought within his shattered brain, such quick poetic senses Wild timid hares were drawn from woods to share his home-caresses, Uplooking to his human eyes with sylvan tendernesses; The very world, by God's constraint, from falsehood's ways removing, Its women and its men became beside him true and loving. But while in blindness he remained unconscious of the guiding, Like a sick child that knoweth not his mother whilst she blesses As if such tender words and looks could come from any other! The fever gone, with leaps of heart he sees her bending o'er him, Her face all pale from watchful love, the unweary love she bore him!— Thus woke the poet from the dream his life's long fever gave him, Beneath those deep pathetic Eyes, which closed in death to save him! Thus? oh, not thus ! no type of earth could image that awaking, Wherein he scarcely heard the chant of seraphs round him breaking, Or felt the new immortal throb of soul from body parted, But felt those eyes alone, and knew, "My Saviour! not deserted!" Deserted! who hath dreamt that when the cross in darkness rested, What tears have washed them from the soul, that one should be deserted ? Deserted! God could separate from His own essence rather, Yea, once, Immanuel's orphaned cry his universe hath shaken- It went up from the Holy's lips amid his lost creation, And I, on Cowper's grave, should see his rapture in a vision! (By permission of Messrs. Chapman and Hall.) 201 41.-THE SLAVES. J. E. CARPENTER. "COME to the land where slavery reigns, "Come, though I speed to the burning skies, Where the slave, bow'd down, on the parch'd earth lies; With her pirate crew, for ungodly gain. "There's a land that boasts of its good free will, Shall look on her past with a pang of shame. "There is one dark spot on the wave afar, "Mariner!-thine is the lot to be 66 I've read of the land where slavery reigns; I've heard men speak of the negro's chains I am not deaf to the voice of woe, I hear it, too frequent, wherever I go! You go to the slave,—but you leave behind 66 They wear not the chain, nor the festering ring, But they sell themselves-and for what they'll bring; For he earns it not in his-market price. "The negro toils 'neath the scorching sun, Hewing the mines in the earth's dark cell, 6 "Digging and delving through life that we Slavery! boast not its race is o'er, For it dwelleth close to the good man's door. 66 Slavery! Mark ye that chimney tall, Those narrow windows in that high wall! "There's slavery there, in that dim-lighted room, Till the task is done, for the coming day. 66 Slavery! is it the same dark tale "On the Afric shore,-in the English gaol? Or hath it no meaning on British ground? "Then, mariner, hence! and God prosper thee, 42. THE BELLS. EDGAR ALLAN POE. [Poe was born at Baltimore, U.S.A., about the year 1811, and left destitute when a mere child by his parents, who were strolling players. Adopted and sent to school by a Virginian planter, Mr. Allan, he was from the first ungrateful and unmanageable. He was expelled from a military academy in which Mr. Allan placed him; he enlisted in the army, then deserted and picked up a precarious living by contributing to American periodicals. His genius made him many friends, but he kept none; he deceived and disgraced all he came in contact with; he was morbidly reckless, and his diseased imagination is reflected in his writings. He seems to have written as he lived, in a dream of intoxication, in which despondency alternated with savage hilarity, and in which nothing real had a part. He died October 7, 1849, in a hospital at Baltimore.] HEAR the sledges with the bells— Silver bells! What a world of merriment their melody foretells! Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. What a world of happiness their harmony foretells; To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats Oh, from out the sounding cells, How it dwells On the Future! how it tells Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells! Hear the loud alarum bells- What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells! |