Oh strange return!-grew black, and gasped, Fair rounds of radiant points invest his and died. Horror of horrors! what! his only son! How looked our hermit when the fact was done? Not hell, though hell's black jaws in sunder part hair; Celestial odors breathe through purpled air; The form ethereal bursts upon his sight, And breathe blue fire, could more assault his And moves in all the majesty of light. heart. Confused and struck with silence at the deed, He flies, but trembling fails to fly with speed: Though loud at first the pilgrim's passion grew, Sudden he gazed, and wist not what to do: His steps the youth pursues. The country And in a calm his settling temper ends. lay But silence here the beauteous angel broke Perplexed with roads: a servant showed the (The voice of music ravished as he spoke): "Thy prayer, thy praise, thy life to vice un way; A river crossed the path; the passage o'er The youth, who seemed to watch a time to Approached the careless guide and thrust him in; Plunging he falls, and, rising, lifts his head, Then flashing turns, and sinks among the dead. "The Maker justly claims that world he Wild, sparkling rage inflames the father's In this the right of Providence is laid; eyes; Than those which lately struck thy wonder- And 'twas my ministry to deal the blow. ing eyes? The poor fond parent, humbled in the dust, Yet, taught by these, confess the Almighty Now owns in tears the punishment was just. just, And where you can't unriddle learn to trust. "But how had all his fortune felt a wrack Had that false servant sped in safety back! "The great, vain man who fared on costly This night his treasured heaps he meant to food, Whose life was too luxurious to be good, Who made his ivory stands with goblets shine And forced his guests to morning draughts Has, with the cup, the graceless custom lost, steal, "The mean, suspicious wretch whose bolted The sage stood wondering as the seraph flew door Thus looked Elisha when, to mount on high, Ne'er moved in duty to the wandering His master took the chariot of the sky: And, loose from dross, the silver runs be- But the scent of the roses will hang round it low. still. Though far my lot The evening air— Soft witness of the floweret's fragrant death— The moonlight fair On snowy waste sleeps not with sweeter ray I love thee still, And I shall love thee ever, and above The mountain-rill Seeks with no surer flow the far bright sea A year has flown, My heart's best angel, since to thee I strung In faltering tone, My love undying, though in all my dreams Thy smiles have lingered like the stars in streams. On ruffled wing, From thine, and though Time's onward-roll- Like storm-tossed bird, that year has sped ing tide May never bear me, dearest, to thy side. I would forget; Alas! I strive in vain in dreams, in dreams, No star has met away Into the shadowed past, and not a day To me could bring Familiar joys like those I knew of yore, Alas for Time! For me his sickle reaps the harvest fair My gaze for years whose beauty doth not Of hopes that blossomed in the summer air shine, Of youth's sweet clime, Whose look of speechless love is not like But leaves to bloom the deeply-rooted tree Which thou hast planted, deathless Memory. thine. Beneath its shade I muse, and muse alone, while daylight dies, Changing its dolphin hues in western skies; And when they fade, And when the moon, of fairy stars the queen, Waves her transparent wand o'er all the scene, I seek the vale, And while inhaling the moss-rose's breath Thine image in the loveliness that dwells 'Mid inland forests and sequestered dells. I am thine own, My dearest, though thou never mayst be mine; I would not, if I could, the band untwine Since first I breathed to thee that word of fire Less sweet than thine, unmatched Eliza- Re-echoed now-how feebly!--by my lyre. beth A vision pale As the fair robes of seraphs in the night Rises before me with supernal light. I seek the mount, Love, constant love! Age cannot quench it; like the primal ray From the vast fountain that supplies the day, Far, far above Our cloud-encircled region, it will flow And there, in closest commune with the blue, As pure and as eternal in its glow. Thy spiritual glances meet my view; I seek the fount, Oh, when I die If until then thou mayst not drop a tearWeep then for one to whom thou wert most dear, To whom thy sigh, Denied in life, in death, if fondly given, Will seem the sweetest incense-air of heaven. Dost thou not turn, Fairest and sweetest, from the flowery way On which thy feet are treading every day, And seek to learn Tidings sometimes of him who loved thee well More than his pen can write or tongue can tell? Gaze not thine eyes O wild and lustrous eyes, ye were my fateUpon the lines he fashioned not of late, But when the skies |