Page images
PDF
EPUB

AN ANGEL IN THE HOUSE.

O forty miles off Aberdour

'Tis fifty fathoms deep,

And there lies gude Sir Patrick Spens,

Wi' the Scots lords at his feet.

ANONYMOUS.

AN ANGEL IN THE HOUSE.

How sweet it were, if without feeble fright,
Or dying of the dreadful beauteous sight,
An angel came to us, and we could bear
To see him issue from the silent air

At evening in our room, and bend on ours
His divine eyes, and bring us from his bowers
News of dear friends, and children who have never
Been dead indeed- as we shall know forever.
Alas! we think not what we daily see
About our hearths-angels, that are to be,
Or may be if they will, and we prepare
Their souls and ours to meet in happy air:
A child, a friend, a wife whose soft heart sings
In unison with ours, breeding its future wings.

LEIGH HUNT.

[graphic][merged small]

WHEN spring, to woods and wastes around, Brought bloom and joy again,

The murdered traveller's bones were found, Far down a narrow glen.

THE MURDERED TRAVELLER.

The fragrant birch, above him, hung
Her tassels in the sky;

And many a vernal blossom sprung,
And nodded careless by.

The red-bird warbled, as he wrought
His hanging nest o'erhead;
And fearless, near the fatal spot,
Her young the partridge led.

But there was weeping far away,
And gentle eyes, for him,

With watching many an anxious day,

Were sorrowful and dim.

They little knew, who loved him so,
The fearful death he met,
When shouting o'er the desert snow,
Unarmed and hard beset;

Nor how, when round the frosty pole
The northern dawn was red,

The mountain wolf and wild-cat stole

To banquet on the dead;

Nor how, when strangers found his bones,

They dressed the hasty bier,

And marked his grave with nameless stones, Unmoistened by a tear.

But long they looked, and feared, and wept,
Within his distant home;

And dreamed, and started as they slept,

For joy that he was come.

Long, long they looked-but never spied
His welcome step again,

Nor knew the fearful death he died,

Far down that narrow glen.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

LOVE.

He stood beside a cottage lone,

And listened to a lute,

One summer eve, when the breeze was gone,

And the nightingale was mute.

The moon was watching on the hill;

The stream was staid, and the maples still,

To hear a lover's suit,

That, half a vow, and half a prayer,

Spoke less of hope than of despair,

And rose into the calm, soft air,

66

As sweet and low,

As he had heard-O, woe! O, woe!

The flutes of angels, long ago!

By every hope that earthward clings,

By faith that mounts on angel wings,

LOVE.

By dreams that make night-shadows bright,
And truths that turn our day to night,
By childhood's smile, and manhood's tear,
By pleasure's day, and sorrow's year,
By all the strains that fancy sings,
And pangs that time so surely brings,
For joy or grief, for hope or fear,
For all hereafter as for here,

In peace or strife, in storm or shine,
My soul is wedded unto thine!"

And for its soft and sole reply,
A murmur, and a sweet, low sigh,
But not a spoken word;

And yet they made the waters start

Into his eyes who heard,

For they told of a most loving heart,
In a voice like that of a bird;

Of a heart that loved though it loved in vain,
A grieving, and yet not a pain :

A love that took an early root
And had an early doom,

Like trees that never grow to fruit,
And early shed their bloom;

Of vanished hopes and happy smiles,
All lost for evermore,

Like ships that sailed for sunny isles,

But never came to shore !

THOMAS KIBBLE HERVEY.

« PreviousContinue »