58

MIDSUMMER

For life is driven from all the landscape brown;
The bird has sought his tree, the snake his den,
The trout floats dead in the hot stream, and men
Drop by the sun-stroke in the populous town:
As if the Day of Fire had dawned, and sent
Its deadly breath into the firmament.

Bluster

PALTIELS

A SCENE ON THE BANKS OF THE HUDSON.

C

OOL shades and dews are round my way,

And silence of the early day;

Mid the dark rocks that watch his bed,

Glitters the mighty Hudson spread,
Unrippled, save by drops that fall

From shrubs that fringe his mountain wall;
And o'er the clear still water swells

The music of the Sabbath bells.

All, save this little nook of land,
Circled with trees, on which I stand;
All, save that line of hills which lie
Suspended in the mimic sky-

Seems a blue void, above, below,

Through which the white clouds come and go ·

And from the green world's farthest steep
I gaze into the airy deep.

Loveliest of lovely things are they,
On earth, that soonest pass away.
The rose that lives its little hour
Is prized beyond the sculptured flower.
Even love, long tried and cherished long,
Becomes more tender and more strong,
At thought of that insatiate grave
From which its yearnings cannot save.

THE EVENING WIND.

River! in this still hour thou hast

Too much of heaven on earth to last;
Nor long may thy still waters lie,
An image of the glorious sky.
*Thy fate and mine are not repose,
And ere another evening close,
Thou to thy tides shalt turn again,
And I to seek the crowd of men.

S'

THE EVENING WIND.

PIRIT that breathest through my lattice, thou

That cool'st the twilight of the sultry day, Gratefully flows thy freshness round my brow;

Thou hast been out upon the deep at play,

Riding all day the wild blue waves till now,

Roughening their crests, and scattering high their spray, And swelling the white sail. I welcome thee

To the scorched land, thou wanderer of the sea!

Nor I alone-a thousand bosoms round
Inhale thee in the fulness of delight;
And languid forms rise up, and pulses bound
Livelier, at coming of the wind of night;
And, languishing to hear thy grateful sound,
Lies the vast inland stretched beyond the sight.
Go forth into the gathering shade; go forth,
God's blessing breathed upon the fainting earth!

55

Go, rock the little wood-bird in his nest,

Curl the still waters, bright with stars, and rouse The wide old wood from his majestic rest,

Summoning from the innumerable boughs The strange, deep harmonies that haunt his breast: Pleasant shall be thy way where meekly bows The shutting flower, and darkling waters pass, And where the o'ershadowing branches sweep the grass.

The faint old man shall lean his silver head

To feel thee; thou shalt kiss the child asleep,

And dry the moistened curls that overspread

His temples, while his breathing grows more deep;
And they who stand about the sick man's bed,
Shall joy to listen to thy distant sweep,

And softly part his curtains to allow
Thy visit, grateful to his burning brow.

TO THE FRINGED GÈNTIAN.

57

Go-but the circle of eternal change,

Which is the life of nature, shall restore,

With sounds and scents from all thy mighty range,
Thee to thy birthplace of the deep once more;
Sweet odors in the sea-air, sweet and strange,
Shall tell the homesick mariner of the shore;
And, listening to thy murmur, he shall deem
He hears the rustling leaf and running stream.

TO THE FRINGED GENTIAN.

HOU blossom bright with autumn dew,

THOU

And colored with the heaven's own blue,
That openest when the quiet light
Succeeds the keen and frosty night—

Thou comest not when violets lean
O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen,
Or columbines, in purple dressed,
Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest.

Thou waitest late and com'st alone,
When woods are bare and birds are flown,
And frosts and shortening days portend
The aged year is near his end.

Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye
Look through its fringes to the sky,
Blue-blue—as if that sky let fall
A flower from its cerulean wall.