And all that fired heroic toil
Hath now become a meaner spoil,
For time and circumstance to win,
While self is throned secure within.-
TERRIFIC bard! and mighty; in thy strain
A torrent of inspiring passion sounds;
Whether for cities by th' Almighty cursed,
Thy wail arose; or, on enormous crimes
That darken'd heav'n with supernat❜ral gloom,
Thy flash of indignation fell, alike
The feelings quiver when thy voice awakes!
Borne in the whirlwind of a dreadful song,
The spirit travels round the destin'd globe,
While shadows, cast from solemn years to come,
Fall round us, and we feel a God is nigh!
But when a gladness from thy music flows, Creation brightens !-glory paints the sky. The sun hath got an everlasting smile, And Earth is temper'd for immortal spring: The lion smoothes his ruffled mane, the lamb And wolf together feed, and by the den Of serpents, see! the rosy infant play.—
There is a day, the darkness of whose scene In visitings of dread can oft subdue
The brightness of the passing world,―to come,
When the huge frabic of a stately globe
Shall bow with terror in the storm of doom!
Then, in that hour of chaos, while the Earth
And Heaven shall fade like elemental dreams,
Alone, Isaiah!-standing on some rock
Tremendous, should thy daring voice be heard
In bursts of woe magnificently wild,-
The last that lingers round a dying world!
A CHILD beside a mother kneels,
With lips of holy love;
And fain would lisp the vow it feels
To them enthroned above.
That cherub gaze, that stainless brow
So exquisitely fair !—
Who would not be an infant now,
To breathe an infant's prayer?
No sin hath shaded its young heart,
The eye scarce knows a tear;
'Tis bright enough from earth to part,
And grace another sphere !
And I was once a happy thing,
Like that which now I see ;
No May-bird on ecstatic wing,
More beautifully free.
The cloud that bask'd in moontide glow,
The flower that danced and shone,
All hues and sounds, above, below,
Were joys to feast upon !
Let wisdom smile-I oft forget
The colder haunts of men,
To hie where infant hearts are met,
And be a child again;
I look into the laughing eyes,
And see the wild thoughts play, While o'er each cheek a thousand dies Of mirth and meaning stray.
Oh! manhood, could thy spirit kneel,
Beside that sunny child,
As fondly pray, and purely feel,
With soul as undefiled;
That moment would encircle thee,
With light and love divine;
Thy gaze might dwell on Deity,
And heaven itself be thine!
INFLUENCE OF MUSIC ON THE MIND.
The heaven of music! how it wafts and waves
Itself, in all the poetry of sound,—
Amid an atmosphere of human heart
Suffused, so full the homage here outbreathed:
Now throbbing like a happy thing of air,
Then dying a voluptuous death, as lost
In its own lux'ry, now alive again
In sweetness,-wafted like a vocal clod
Mellifluously breaking,-seems the strain!
And what a play of magic on each face
Of feeling! Dark and thund'ry when it rolls,
The eyes turn inward with a dream profound;
When festive, such as storms a hero's mind,
A spirit revels in the raptured face!
But when, from faint and feeble ecstacy
Of tune, into a melancholy tone
That pierces, ray-like, through the gloom of years,
The music dies,—then, icy thrills the blood,
And glitt❜ring sadness on each eye-ball spreads,
Like dewy rapture from the soul distill'd.
All music is the mystery of sound,
Whose soul lies sleeping in the air, till roused,-
And lo, it pulses into melody!
Deep, low, or wild, obedient to the throb
Of instrumental magic: on its wings
Are visions, too, of tenderness and love,
Beatitude and joy. Thus, over waves
Of beauty, landscapes in their loveliest glow,
And the warm languish of their summer streams,
And list'ning soul is borne; while Home renews
Her paradise, beneath the moonlight veil
That mantles o'er the past, till unshed tears
Gleam in the eye of memory. But when
Some harmony of preternatural swell
Begins, then, awful-wing'd, the spirit soars
Away, and mingles with immensity!
BORN in that land where Summer's pregnant beam
Was brightest, where the fruits of Eden hung,
And the rich mulberry spread a snowy bloom,
While grapes empurpled ev'ry terraced hill,—
Her shape and spirit magic influence caught
From Syria's clime of glory;-nature's grace.
By power of exquisite attraction, seem'd
Reflected from it; light and beauty fill'd
Her soul, and flash'd from those irradiate eyes!—
And walk'd she not, as Israel's daughter would,
The mighty scenes where patriarchal feet
Had trodden, where the God of Zion spake !-
Lake, fount, and river, and the mountains three
Which camp'd her warriors, and that still o'erlook
Esdraelon's plain, where tented Arabs dwell,
Around whose home, when dewy nightfall comes,
The gamboling flocks to reedy murmurs play,*
From each and all pure inspiration sprung,
And told how beautiful religion look'd,
By youth entempled in a spotless heart!
And yet on her, so delicately young, Infection breathed, and poison'd blood and brain, Till all the bloom of animation died!
* See Malte Brun on Palestine.
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