A twilight-gloom pervades the distant hills,-
An azure softness mingling with the sky.
The fisher now drags to the yellow shore
His laden nets; and, in the sheltering cove,
Beyond yon rocky point, his shallop moors,
To tempt again the perilous deep at dawn.-
The sea is waveless as a lake ingulfed
'Mid sheltering hills; without a ripple spreads
Its bosom, silent and immense;—the hues
Of flickering day have from its surface died,
Leaving it garbed in sunless majesty.
With bosoming branches, round yon village hangs
Its row of lofty elm trees; silently,
Towering in spiral wreaths to the soft sky,
The smoke from many a cheerful hearth ascends,
Melting in ether.-As I gaze, behold
The evening star illumines the blue south,
Twinkling in loveliness. O, holy star!
Thou bright dispenser of the twilight dews,
Thou herald of night's glowing galaxy,
And harbinger of social bliss! how oft,
Amid the twilight of departed years,
Resting beside the river's mirror pure,
On trunk of massy oak, with eyes upturned
To thee in admiration, have I sat,
Dreaming sweet dreams, till earth-born turbulence
Was all forgot; and thinking that in thee,
Far from the rudeness of this jarring world,
There might be realms of quiet happiness!
Blackwood's Magazine.
INVOCATION TO THE QUEEN OF THE FAIRIES.
No Muse was ever invoked by me,
But a harp uncouth of olden key;
And with her have I ranged the border green,
The Grampians stern, and the starry sheen;
With my grey plaid flapping around the strings,
And my ragged coat with its waving wings.
But aye, my heart beat quick and high,
When an air of heaven in passing by
Breathed on the mellow chords, and then
I knew it was no earthly strain;
But a rapt note borne upon the wind
From some blest land of unbodied kind;
But whence it flew, or whether it came
From the sounding rock, or the solar beam,
Or the seraph choir, as passing away
O'er the bridge of the sky in the showery day,
When the cloudy curtain pervaded the east,
And the sunbeam kissed its watery breast;
In vain I looked to the cloud over head;
To the echoing mountain, dark and dread;
To the sun-fawn fleet, and aërial bow;
I knew not whence were the strains till now.
They were from thee, thou radiant dame,
O'er Fancy's region that reign'st supreme !
Thou lovely thing of beauty so bright,
Of everlasting new delight;
Of foible, of freak, of gambol and glee;
Of all that teases,
And all that pleases,
All that we fret at, yet love to see.
In petulance, pity, and passion refined,
Thou emblem extreme of the female mind!
Thou seest thyself, and smil'st to see
A shepherd kneel on his sward to thee;
But sure thou wilt come, with thy tuneful train,
To assist in his last and lingering strain.
O come from thy halls of the emerald bright,
Thy bowers of the green and the mellow light,
That shrink from the blaze of the summer noon,
And ope to the light of the modest moon;
I long to hail the enchanting mien
Of my loved Muse, my Fairy Queen,
Her rokelay of green with its sparry hue,
Its warp of the moonbeam and weft of the dew;
The smile where a thousand witcheries play,
And the eye that steals the soul away;
The strains that tell they were never mundane,
And the bells of her palfrey's flowing mane;
Ere now have I heard their tinklings light,
And seen my Queen at the noon of the night
Pass by with her train in the still moonlight.
Then she, who raised old Edmund's lay
Above the strains of the olden day;
And waked the Bard of Avon's theme
To the visions of a midnight dream;
And even the harp that rang abroad
O'er all the paradise of God,
And the sons of the morning with it drew,
By her was remodelled and strung anew.
Come thou to my bower deep in the dell,—
Thou Queen of the land 'twixt heaven and hell,--
That land of a thousand gilded domes,
The richest region that Fancy roams!
I have sought for thee in the blue harebell,
And deep in the foxglove's silken cell,
For I feared thou hadst drank of its potion deep,
And the breeze of this world had rocked thee asleep.
Then into the wild-rose I cast mine eye,
And trembled because the prickles were nigh,
And deemed the specks on the foliage green
Might be the blood of my Fairy Queen ;
Then gazing, wondered if blood could be
In an immortal thing like thee!
I have opened the woodbine's velvet vest,
And sought in the lily's snowy breast;
At gloaming, lain on the dewy lea
And looked to a twinkling star for thee,
That nightly mounted the orient sheen,
Streaming with purple, and glowing with green,
And thought, as I eyed its changing sphere,
My Fairy Queen might sojourn there.
Then would I sigh and turn me around,
And lay my ear to the hollow ground,
To the little air-springs of central birth,
That bring low murmurs out of the earth;
And there would I listen in breathless way,
Till I heard the worm creep through the clay,
And the mole deep grubbing in darkness drear,
That little blackamoor pioneer:
Nought cheered me, on which the daylight shone,
For the children of darkness moved alone;
Yet neither in field nor on flowery heath,
In heaven above nor on earth beneath,
In star, nor moon, nor midnight wind,
His elvish Queen could her Minstrel find.
But now I have found thee, thou vagrant thing!
Though where I may neither say nor sing;
But it was in a home so passing fair,
That an angel of light might have lingered there;
It was in a place never wet by the dew,
Where the sun never shone, and the wind never blew,
Where the ruddy cheek of youth ne'er lay,
And never was kissed by the breeze of day;
As sweet as the woodland airs of even,
And pure as the star of the western heaven;
As fair as the dawn of the sunny east,
And soft as the down of the solan's breast.
Yes, now have I found thee, and thee will I keep,
Though spirits yell on the midnight steep,
Though the earth should quake when nature is still,
And the thunders growl in the breast of the hill;
Though the moon should scowl through her pall of gray,
And the stars fling blood on the Milky Way;
Since now I have found thee, I'll hold thee fast
Till thou garnish my song,-it is the last :
Then a maiden's gift that song shall be,
And I'll call it a Queen for the sake of thee. Literary Souvenir.
They were the first
That ever burst
Into that silent sea!
'MID shouts that hailed her from the shore
And bade her speed, the bark is gone,
The dreary ocean to explore
Whose waters sweep the frigid zone;–
And bounding on before the gale,
To bright eyes shining through their tears,
"Twixt sea and sky, her snowy sail
A lessening speck appears.
Behold her next, 'mid icy isles,
Lone wending on her cheerless way;
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