Stretch the pulley-now he springs!
Yet another-now he swings!
Let him bid the land rejoice
Peace be on his earliest voice!
SCHILLER'S Song of the Bell.
With gladness on his wings, calls forth, “Arise!
To trace the hills, the vales, where thousand dyes
The ground adorn,
While the dew sparkles yet within the violet's eyes."
And when the day
In golden slumber sinks, with accents sweet
Mild evening comes to lure the willing feet
With her to stray.
Where'er the bashful flowers the observant eye may greet.
Near the moist brink
Of music-loving streams they ever keep,
And often in the lucid fountains peep,
Oft, laughing, drink
Of the mad torrent's spray, perched near the thundering steep:
And everywhere
Along the plashy marge, and shallow bed
Of the still waters, they innumerous spread;
Rocked gently there
The beautiful Nymphæa' pillows its bright head.
Within the rocky clifts, they love to hide;
And hang adventurous on the steep hill-side;
Or rugged fell,
Where the young eagle waves his wings in youthful pride.
In the green sea
Of forest-leaves, where nature wanton plays,
They modest bloom; though through the verdant maze
The tulip-tree
Its golden chalice oft triumphantly displays.
Embedded 'mid its glossy leaves on high,
There the superb Magnolia lures the eye;
While, waving light,
The locust's myriad tassels scent the ambient sky.
Ye valleys, where the spring perpetual reigns,
And flowers unnumbered o'er the purple plains
Exuberant showers-
How fancy revels in your lovelier domains!
All love the light;
And yet what numbers spring within the shade,
And blossom where no foot may e'er invade!
Till comes a blight,-
Comes unawares,-and then incontinent they fade!
And thus they bloom,
And thus their lives ambrosial breathe away;
Thus flourish too the lovely and the gay;
Youth, beauty, flower, alike consigns to swift decay.
MINDFUL of disaster past,
And shrieking at the northern blast,
The fleecy storm returning still,
The morning hour and evening chill,
Reluctant comes the timid Spring;
Scarce a bee, with airy ring,
Murmurs the blossomed boughs around,
That clothe the garden's southern bound:
Scarce a sickly straggling flower
Decks the rough castle's rifted tower:
Scarce the hardy primrose peeps
From the dark dell's entangled steeps:
O'er the field of waving broom,
Slowly shoots the golden bloom;
And, by fits, the furze-clad dale
Tinctures the transitory gale,
While from the shrubbery's naked maze,
Where the vegetable blaze
Of Flora's brightest 'broidery shone,
Every chequered charm is flown,
Save that the lilac hangs to view
Its bursting gems in clusters blue.
Scant along the ridgy land
The beans their new-born ranks expand;
The fresh-turned soil, with tender blades
Thinly the spreading barley shades;
Fringing the forest's devious edge,
Half-robed appears the hawthorn hedge;
Or to the distant eye displays
Weakly green its budding sprays.
The swallow, for a moment seen,
Skims in haste the village green:
From the gray moor, on feeble wing,
The screaming plovers idly spring:
The butterfly, gay-painted, soon,
Explores awhile the tepid noon;
And fondly trusts its tender dyes
To fickle suns, and flattering skies.
Fraught with a transient, frozen shower,
If a cloud should haply lower,
Sailing o'er the landscape dark,
Mute on a sudden is the lark;
But when gleams the sun again
O'er the pearl-besprinkled plain,
And from behind his watery veil,
Looks through the thin descending hail;
She mounts, and, lessening to the sight,
Salutes the blithe return of light,
And high her tuneful track pursues,
'Mid the dim rainbow's scattered hues.
Where in venerable rows,
Widely waving oaks enclose
The moat of yonder antique hall,
Swarm the rooks with clamorous call;
And, to the toils of nature true,
Wreathe their capacious nests anew.
Musing through the lawny park,
The lonely poet loves to mark
How various greens, in faint degrees,
Tinge the tall groups in various trees;
While careless of the changing year,
The pine cerulean, never sere,
Towers distinguished from the rest,
And proudly vaunts her winter vest.
Within some whispering osier isle,
Where Glym's low banks neglected smile,
And each trim meadow still retains
The winter torrent's oozy strains,
Beneath a willow, long forsook,
The fisher seeks his 'customed nook;
And bursting through the crackling sedge,
That crowns the current's caverned edge,
He startles from the bordering wood,
The bashful wild duck's early brood,
O'er the broad downs, a novel race,
Frisk the lambs, with faltering pace,
And with eager bleatings fill
The foss that skirts the beaconed hill.
His free-born vigour yet unbroke
To lordly man's usurping yoke,
The bounding colt forgets to play,
Basking beneath the noon-tide ray,
And stretched among the daisies pied
Of a green dingle's sloping side;
While far beneath, where nature spreads
Her boundless length of level meads,
In loose luxuriance taught to stray
A thousand tumbling rills inlay
With silver veins the vale, or pass
Redundant through the sparkling grass.
Yet in these presages rude,
'Midst her pensive solitude,
Fancy, with prophetic glance,
Sees the teeming months advance,
The field, the forest, green and gay,
The dappled slope, the tedded hay;
Sees the reddening orchard blow;
The harvest wave, the vintage flow;
Sees June unfold his glossy robe
Of thousand hues o'er all the globe;
Sees Ceres grasp her crown of corn,
And Plenty load her ample horn.
'Twas night,-our anchored vessel slept
Out on the glassy sea;
And still as heaven the waters kept,
And golden bright, as he,
The setting sun, went sinking slow
Beneath the eternal wave;
And the ocean seemed a pall to throw
Over the monarch's grave.
There was no motion of the air
To raise the sleeper's tress,
And no wave-building winds were there,
On ocean's loveliness;
But ocean mingled with the sky
With such an equal hue,
That vainly strove the 'wildered eye
To part their gold and blue.
And ne'er a ripple of the sea
Came on our steady gaze,
Save when some timorous fish stole out
To bathe in the woven blaze,-
When floating in the light that played
All over the resting main
He would sink beneath the wave, and dart
To his deep blue home again.
Yet, while we gazed, that sunny eve,
Across the twinkling deep,
A form came ploughing the golden wave,
And rending its holy sleep;
It blushed bright-red, while growing on
Our fixed, half-fearful gaze;
But it wandered down, with its glow of light,
And its robe of sunny rays.
It seemed like molten silver, thrown
Together in floating flame;
And as we looked, we named it then,
The fount whence all colours came:
There were rainbows furled with a careless grace,
And the brightest red that glows;
The purple amethyst there had place,
And the hues of a full-blown rose.
And the vivid green, as the sun-lit grass
Where the pleasant rain hath been;
And the ideal hues, that, thought-like, pass
Through the minds of fanciful men;
They beamed full clear,—and that form moved on,
Like one from a burning grave;
And we dared not to think it a real thing,
But for a rustling wave.
The sun just lingered in our view,
From the burning edge of ocean,
When by our bark that bright one passed
With a deep, disturbing motion:
The far-down waters shrank away,
With a gurgling rush upheaving,
And the lifted waves grew pale and sad,
Their mother's bosom leaving.
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