42

THE EDGE OF THE SWAMP.

A whooping crane erects his skeleton form,

And shrieks in flight. Two summer ducks, aroused To apprehension as they hear his cry,

Dash up from the lagoon with marvellous haste,

Following his guidance.

Meetly taught by these,

And startled at our rapid, near approach,

The steel-jaw'd monster, from his grassy bed,
Crawls slowly to his slimy green abode,
Which straight receives him.

You behold him now,

His ridgy back uprising as he speeds

In silence to the centre of the stream,
Whence his head peers alone. A butterfly,
That, travelling all the day, has counted climes
Only by flowers, to rest himself a while,
Lights on the monster's brow. The surly mute
Straightway goes down, so suddenly, that he,
The dandy of the summer flowers and woods,
Dips his light wings and spoils his golden coat
With the rank water of that turbid pond.
Wondering and vex'd, the plumed citizen
Flies, with a hurried effort, to the shore,
Seeking his kindred flowers; but seeks in vain :
Nothing of genial growth may there be seen,
Nothing of beautiful! Wild ragged trees,
That look like felon spectres-fetid shrubs,
That taint the gloomy atmosphere-dusk shades,
That gather, half a cloud and half a fiend
In aspect, lurking on the swamp's wild edge-
Gloom with their sternness and forbidding frowns
The general prospect. The sad butterfly,
Waving his lacker'd wings, darts quickly on,
And, by his free flight, counsels us to speed
For better lodgings, and a scene more sweet
Than these drear borders offer us to-night.

SPRING.

BY NATHANIEL P. WILLIS.

THE Spring is here, the delicate-footed May,
With its slight fingers full of leaves and flowers,
And with it comes a thirst to be away,

Wasting in wood-paths its voluptuous hours:
A feeling that is like a sense of wings,
Restless to soar above these perishing things.

We pass out from the city's feverish hum,
To find refreshment in the silent woods;
And Nature, that is beautiful and dumb,

Like a cool sleep upon the pulses broods:
Yet even there a restless thought will steal,
To teach the indolent heart it still must feel.

Strange, that the audible stillness of the noon,
The waters tripping with their silver feet,
The turning to the light of leaves in June,

And the light whisper as their edges meet: Strange, that they fill not, with their tranquil tone, The spirit, walking in their midst alone.

There's no contentment in a world like this,
Save in forgetting the immortal dream;

We may not gaze upon the stars of bliss,

That through the cloud-rifts radiantly stream; Bird-like, the prison'd soul will lift its eye,

And pine till it is hooded from the sky.

THE PAST.

BY WILLIAM C. BRYANT.

THOU unrelenting Past!

Strong are the barriers round thy dark domain,
And fetters, sure and fast,

Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign.

Far in thy realm withdrawn

Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom,
And glorious ages gone

Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb.

Childhood, with all its mirth,

Youth, manhood, age, that draws us to the ground, And last, man's life on earth,

Glide to thy dim dominions, and are bound.

Thou hast my better years,

Thou hast my earlier friends—the good-the kind, Yielded to thee with tears—

The venerable form-the exalted mind.

My spirit yearns to bring

The lost one back: yearns with desire intense,
And struggles hard to wring

The bolts apart, and pluck thy captives thence.
In vain thy gates deny

All passage save to those who hence depart;
Nor to the streaming eye

Thou giv❜st them back, nor to the broken heart.
In thy abysses hide

Beauty and excellence unknown: to thee

Earth's wonder and her pride

Are gather'd, as the waters to the sea:

THE PAST.

Labours of good to man, Unpublish'd charity, unbroken faith: Love that midst grief began,

And grew with years, and falter'd not in death.

Full many a mighty name
Lurks in thy depths, unutter'd, unrevered;
With thee are silent fame,
Forgotten arts, and wisdom disappear'd.

Thine for a space are they :
Yet shalt thou yield thy treasures up at last;
Thy gates shall yet give way,

Thy bolts shall fall, inexorable Past!

Has

All that of good and fair

gone into thy womb from earliest time,
Shall then come forth, to wear

The glory and the beauty of its prime.

They have not perish'd-no!

Kind words, remember'd voices once so sweet,
Smiles, radiant long ago,

And features, the great soul's apparent seat,

All shall come back; each tie

Of pure perfection shall be knit again;
Alone shall Evil die,

And Sorrow dwell a prisoner in thy reign.

And then shall I behold

Him, by whose kind paternal side I sprung,
And her who, still and cold,

Fills the next grave-the beautiful and young.

45

THE SPIRIT OF BEAUTY.

BY RUFUS DAWES.

THE Spirit of Beauty unfurls her light,
And wheels her course in a joyous flight;
I know her track through the balmy air,
By the blossoms that cluster and whiten there;
She leaves the tops of the mountains green,
And gems the valley with crystal sheen.

At morn, I know where she rested at night,
For the roses are gushing with dewy delight;
Then she mounts again, and round her flings
A shower of light from her crimson wings;
Till the spirit is drunk with the music on high,
That silently fills it with ecstasy.

At noon she hies to a cool retreat,

Where bowering elms over waters meet;
She dimples the wave where the green leaves dip,
As it smilingly curls like a maiden's lip,
When her tremulous bosom would hide, in vain,
From her lover the hope that she loves again.

At eve she hangs o'er the western sky
Dark clouds for a glorious canopy,
And round the skirts of their deepen'd fold
She paints a border of purple and gold,
Where the lingering sunbeams love to stay,
When their god in his glory has pass'd away.

She hovers around us at twilight hour,

When her presence is felt with the deepest power;