Thou seest a friend in every smile; thy days,
Like singing birds, in gladness speed along;
And not a tear that trembles on thy lids
But shines away, and sparkles into joy!
APOSTROPHE TO FEMALE VIRTUES.
LAND of my soul! maternal isle,
Array'd by Freedom's holy smile;
Whose throne is founded in the cause
Of native worth and noble laws
Oh! long may Private Life be found
The glory of our English ground,
And woman on her stainless brow
Wear the bright soul we honour now!—
For though thy fleets o'erawed the main,
Till every billow felt thy reign,
And captive Empires drew the car
Of vict'ry from triumphant war,—
The strength is canker'd if the core
Of private life be sound no more.—
Consumption on the cheek can bloom,
When beauty but declares a tomb,
And eyes their brightest meaning shed,
While every ray foretells the dead!
And thus may fatal glory be
An empire's garb of infamy,
If once that spring of manly pride,-
True gallantry-be stain'd or dried;
Or, woman from her high domain
Must dwindle into meaner reign.
The grace, the lustre, and the glow,
Of what our softer moods bestow;
The hopes that keep the heart awake,
And self from out the selfish take:
The glory and the might of all
Domestic hours elysium call,-
Born of her magic, blend their sway,
To charm the clouds of time away!
And if there be a home on earth,
Where nature most reveals its worth,
And Love his godhead can disclose
To feelings in their fond repose,
"Till human hearts become divine,
Angel of Life!-that home is thine!
A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD.
How meekly piled, how venerably graced,
This hamlet fane! by mellowing age imbrown'd,
And freckled like a rock of sea-worn hue.
No marble tombs of agonizing pomp
Are here; but turf-graves of unfading green,
Where loved, yet lowly, generations sleep:
And o'er them many a Sabbath sigh is heaved
From hearts that live on sadness from the tomb.-
And such is thine, lone muser! by yon grave Now ling'ring with a soul-expressive eye
Corn-fields glowing brown, and bright With promise, sumptuous in the noon-glare seen; The meadows, speckled with a homeward tribe
Of village matrons, sons, and holy sires,—
The hymning birds, all music as they soar,
And those twin brooks, so beautifully glad,
That whisper happy secrets to the wind,-
Such life and beauty by the landscape breathed,
And yet, a tomb-shade overclouds it all
A churchyard! 'tis a homely word, yet full
Of feeling; and a sound that o'er the heart
Might shed religion. In the gloom of graves
I read the curse primeval, and the Voice
That wreak'd it, seems to whisper by these tombs
Of village quiet, that around me lie
In green humility:—can Life, the dead
Among, be musing, nor to me advance
The spirit of her thought? True, Nature wears
No rustic mourning here: in golden play
Her sprightly grass-flowers wave; the random breeze
Hums in the noon, or with yon froward boughs
A murm'ring quarrel wakes: and yet how oft
In such a haunt, the insuppressive sigh
Is heard, while feelings that may pilot years
To glory, spring from out a minute's gloom!
BRITISH MISSIONARIES.
GO FORTH AND TEACH!—and ye have gone, and done
Deeds that will shine, when thou art dark, O Sun;
Heroes! whose crowns with gems of glory shine,
Dug from the depths of heaven's eternal mine;
O what a conquest hath the cross obtained!
There, where of old a hell of darkness reign'd,
And crime and havoc, fiend-begotten pair,
In mortal bosoms made their savage lair,
And issued thence, to riot, rage, or kill,
Like incarnations of a demon's will,--
The peace that passeth understanding grows,
And Earth seems born again without her woes;
So wondrously the spell divine descends,
And man with nature in communion blends.
The isles have seen HIM! and the deserts raise
Anthems that thrill the halls of heaven with praise :
Crouching and tame the tiger passions lie,
Hush'd by the gaze of an Almighty eye;
Temples and homes of sacred truth abound,
Where Satan once with all his crew was found;
And, hark! at sunset while the shady calm
Of forest coolness floats on wings of balm,
As roams the pilgrim in that dying glare,
From a lone hamlet winds the voice of prayer,-
Breath of the soul by Jesus taught to prize
And blend with music heard beyond the skies!-
Ecstatic thought! the zenith of our dreams,
Error has died in truth's victorious beams:
And where the savage round his altar fed
On the warm fragments of the limbless dead,
Cots which an English heart delights to hail
Deck the green wilds of many a foreign dale,
And turn'd by Piety's familiar hand,
Religion sees her tear-worn bibles stand.
BEAUTY OF HOLINESS.
Nor all the pomp and pageantry of worlds
Reflect such glory on the eye supreme,
As the meek virtues of one holy man :
For ever doth his Angel from the face
Divine, beatitude and wisdom draw:
And in his prayer, what privilege adored!—
Mounting the heavens, and claiming audience there:
Yes! there, amid a high immortal host
Of seraphs, hymning in eternal choir,
A lip of clay its orisons can send,
In temple, or in solitude outbreathed.
BANEFUL INFLUENCE OF A CORRUPT
PRESS.
THAT mighty lever that has moved the world,
The press of England,—from her dreadless source
Of living action, here begins to shake
The far-off isles, and awe the utmost globe!
She is a passion, pour'd into mankind,
Dark, deep, and silent oft, but ever felt;
Mixed with the mind, and feeding with a food
Of thought, the moral being of a soul;
Or, shaping solemn destinies for Time,
And dread Eternity. Terrific Power!
Thou mightst have half annihilated Hell,
And her great denizens, by glorious sway:
But now so false, so abject, and so foul *
Become,-n
-no blasting Pestilence e'er shed
Such ruin from her tainted wings, as thou
May'st carry in thy circulating floods
Of thought and feeling, into human hearts.
Of course with some honourable exceptions.
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