CHALKLEY HALL.39

How bland and sweet the greeting of this breeze To him who flies

From crowded street and red wall's weary gleam, Till far behind him like a hideous dream

The close dark city lies!—

Here, while the market murmurs, while men throng
The marble floor

Of Mammon's altar, from the crush and din
Of the world's madness let me gather in
My better thoughts once more.

Oh! once again revive, while on my ear
The cry of Gain

And low hoarse hum of Traffic die away,
Ye blessed memories of my early day
Like sere grass wet with rain!—

Once more let God's green earth and sunset air
Old feelings waken;

Through weary years of toil and strife and ill,
Oh, let me feel that my good angel still
Hath not his trust forsaken.

And well do time and place befit my mood:
Beneath the arms

Of this embracing wood, a good man made
His home, like Abraham resting in the shade
Of Mamre's lonely palms.

Here, rich with autumn gifts of countless years,
The virgin soil

Turned from the share he guided, and in rain
And summer sunshine throve the fruits and gram
Which blessed his honest toil.

Here, from his voyages on the stormy seas,
Weary and worn,

He came to meet his children and to bless
The Giver of all good in thankfulness
And praise for his return.

And here his neighbors gathered in to greet
Their friend again,

Safe from the wave and the destroying gales,
Which reap untimely green Bermuda's vales,
And vex the Carib main.

To hear the good man tell of simple truth,
Sown in an hour

Of weakness in some far-off Indian isle,
From the parched bosom of a barren soil,
Raised up in life and power:

How at those gatherings in Barbadian vales,
A tendering love

Came o'er him, like the gentle rain from heaven,
And words of fitness to his lips were given,
And strength as from above:

How the sad captive listened to the Word,
Until his chain

Grew lighter, and his wounded spirit felt
The healing balm of consolation melt
Upon its life-long pain:

How the armed warrior sate him down to hear
Of Peace and Truth,

And the proud ruler and his Creole dame,
Jewelled and gorgeous in her beauty came,
And fair and bright-eyed youth.

Oh, far away beneath New England's sky,
Even when a boy,

Following my plough by Merrimack's green shore,

His simple record I have pondered o'er
With deep and quiet joy.

And hence this scene, in sunset glory warm-
Its woods around,

Its still stream winding on in light and shade,
Its soft, green meadows and its upland glade-
To me is holy ground.

And dearer far than haunts where Genius keeps
His vigils still;

Than that where Avon's son of song is laid,
Or Vaucluse hallowed by its Petrarch's shade,
Or Virgil's laurelled hill.

To the gray walls of fallen Paraclete,
To Juliet's urn,

Fair Arno and Sorrento's orange grove,
Where Tasso sang, let young Romance and Love
Like brother pilgrims turn.

But here a deeper and serener charm

To all is given;

And blessed memories of the faithful dead

O'er wood and vale and meadow-stream have shed The holy hues of Heaven!

TO J. P.

NOT as a poor requital of the joy

With which my childhood heard that lay of thine, Which, like an echo of the song divine At Bethlehem breathed above the Holy Boy, Bore to my ear the Airs of Palestine,― Not to the poet, but the man I bring In friendship's fearless trust my offering:

How much it lacks I feel, and thou wilt see,
Yet well I know that thou hast deemed with me
Life all too earnest, and its time too short
For dreamy ease and Fancy's graceful sport;
And girded for thy constant strife with wrong
Like Nehemiah fighting while he wrought
The broken walls of Zion, even thy song
Hath a rude martial tone, a blow in every thought

THE CYPRESS-TREE OF CEYLON.

[IBN BATUTA, the celebrated Mussulman traveller of the fourteenth century, speaks of a Cypress-tree in Ceylon, universally held sacred by the natives, the leaves of which were said to fall only at certain intervals, and he who had the happiness to find and eat one of them, was restored, at once, to youth and vigor The traveller saw several venerable JOGEES, or saints, sitting silent and motionless under the tree, patiently awaiting the falling of a leaf.]

THEY sat in silent watchfulness
The sacred cypress-tree about,

And, from beneath old wrinkled brows
Their failing eyes looked out.

Gray Age and Sickness waiting there
Through weary night and lingering day-
Grim as the idols at their side

And motionless as they.

Unheeded in the boughs above

The song of Ceylon's birds was sweet;
Unseen of them the island flowers
Bloomed brightly at their feet.

O'er them the tropic night-storm swept,
The thunder crashed on rock and hill;
The cloud-fire on their eye-balls blazed,
Yet there they waited still!

What was the world without to them? The Moslem's sunset-call-the dance Of Ceylon's maids-the passing gleam Of battle-flag and lance ?

They waited for that falling leaf,
Of which the wandering Jogees sing:
Which lends once more to wintry age
The greenness of its spring.

Oh!--if these poor and blinded ones
In trustful patience wait to feel
O'er torpid pulse and failing limb
A youthful freshness steal;

Shall we, who sit beneath that Tree,
Whose healing leaves of life are shed
In answer to the breath of prayer
Upon the waiting head:

Not to restore our failing forms,
And build the spirit's broken shrine,
But, on the fainting SOUL to shed
A light and life divine:

Shall we grow weary in our watch,
And murmur at the long delay ?
Impatient of our Father's time
And his appointed way

?

Or, shall the stir of outward. things

Allure and claim the Christian's eye, When on the heathen watcher's ear Their powerless murmurs die ?

Alas! a deeper test of faith

Than prison cell or martyr's stake,
The self-abasing watchfulness
Of silent prayer may make.