REMEMBRANCE OF THE PICTURES ON THE MILL-BRIDGE,

I WAS BUT A BOY WHEN FIRST I MET THEE

118

POEMS.

THE VOICE OF NATURE.

I SAT all day upon the lonely shore,

Sad, very sad, from all my kind apart;

No sound came near me save the wild wave's roar,
But that was music to my weary heart:
Entranc'd, I heeded not the flight of time,
Hour after hour flew by unreck'd by me;
My own sad thoughts seem'd like a mystic rhyme
Set to the music of the sounding sea:
Scarcely I knew I lived, for to the past,

As to another life, my mind looked back;
And to my soul, a ship with shatter'd mast,
No beacon hope shone out to show the track.

B

At length the sun sank down, and o'er the deep

A sweet and solemn silence 'gan to brood, The moon rose up behind the craggy steep,

And touch'd with silver light cliff, strand, and flood: Then, though no hope was mine, yet by degrees

Peace in the sea's voice o'er my spirit stole, And, with the wafting of the evening breeze,

The Voice of Nature calm'd my troubled soul.