hills;

A vine-fringed river, winding to its rest On the calm bosom of a stormless sea, Bearing alike upon its placid breast, With earthly flowers and heavenly stars impressed,

The hues of time and of eternity: Such are the pictures which the thought of thee,

O friend, awakeneth, charming the keen pain

Of thy departure, and our sense of loss Requiting with the fulness of thy gain. Lo! on the quiet grave thy life-borne

cross,

Dropped only at its side, methinks doth shine,

Of thy beatitude the radiant sign!

No sob of grief, no wild lament be there, To break the Sabbath of the holy air; But, in their stead, the silent-breathing prayer

Of hearts still waiting for a rest like thine. O spirit redeemed! Forgive us, if henceforth,

With sweet and pure similitudes of earth, We keep thy pleasant memory freshly green,

Of love's inheritance a priceless part, Which Fancy's self, in reverent awe, is

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Thy thought goes with me on my way, And hence the prayer I breathe to-day;

O'er lapse of time and change of scene, The weary waste which lies between Thyself and me, my heart I lean.

Thou lack'st not Friendship's spell-word,

With such a prayer, on this sweet day,
As thou mayst hear and I may say,
I greet thee, dearest, far away!

PICTURES.

I.

LIGHT, warmth, and sprouting greenness, and o'er all

Blue, stainless, steel-bright ether, raining down

Tranquillity upon the deep-hushed town,

The freshening meadows, and the hillsides brown;

Voice of the west-wind from the hills of pine,

And the brimmed river from its distant fall,

Low hum of bees, and joyous interlude Of bird-songs in the streamlet-skirting wood,

Heralds and prophecies of sound and

sight,

Blessed forerunners of the warmth and light,

Attendant angels to the house of prayer, With reverent footsteps keeping pace with mine,

Once more, through God's great love, with you I share

A morn of resurrection sweet and fair As that which saw, of old, in Palestine,

Immortal Love uprising in fresh bloom From the dark night and winter of the tomb !

5th mo., 2d, 1852.

II.

White with its sun-bleached dust, the pathway winds

Before me; dust is on the shrunken grass,

Breath of the blessed Heaven for which we pray,

Blow from the eternal hills! - make glad our earthly way!

8th mo., 1852.

DERNE.56

NIGHT on the city of the Moor!
On mosque and tomb, and white-walled
shore,

On sea-waves, to whose ceaseless knock
The narrow harbor-gates unlock,
On corsair's galley, carack tall,
And plundered Christian caraval!
The sounds of Moslem life are still
No mule-bell tinkles down the hill

boughs I pass;

Frail screen against the Hunter of the sky, Who, glaring on me with his lidless eye, While mounting with his dog-star high and higher Ambushed in light intolerable, unbinds The burnished quiver of his shafts of fire.

Between me and the hot fields of his South

A tremulous glow, as from a furnacemouth,

Glimmers and swims before my dazzled sight,

As if the burning arrows of his ire Broke as they fell, and shattered into light;

Yet on my cheek I feel the western wind, And hear it telling to the orchard trees,

And to the faint and flower-forsaken bees,

Tales of fair meadows, green with con

stant streams,

khan,

The dusty Bornou caravan
Lies heaped in slumber, beast and man;
The Sheik is dreaming in his tent,
His noisy Arab tongue o'erspent ;
The kiosk's glimmering lights are gone,
The merchant with his wares with-
drawn ;

Rough pillowed on some pirate breast,
The dancing-girl has sunk to rest;
And, save where measured footsteps
fall

Along the Bashaw's guarded wall,
Or where, like some bad dream, the

Jew

Creeps stealthily his quarter through, Or counts with fear his golden heaps, The City of the Corsair sleeps!

But where yon prison long and low
Stands black against the pale star-glow,
Chafed by the ceaseless wash of waves,
There watch and pine the Christian
slaves;
Rough-bearded men, whose far-off wives
Wear out with grief their lonely lives ;
And youth, still flashing from his eyes
The clear blue of New England skies,
A treasured lock of whose soft hair
Now wakes some sorrowing mother's
prayer;

Or, worn upon some maiden breast,
Stirs with the loving heart's unrest!

A bitter cup each life must drain,
The groaning earth is cursed with pain,
And, like the scroll the angel bore
The shuddering Hebrew seer before,

O'erwrit alike, without, within,
With all the woes which follow sin;
But, bitterest of the ills beneath
Whose load man totters down to death,
Is that which plucks the regal crown
Of Freedom from his forehead down,
And snatches from his powerless hand
The sceptred sign of self-command,
Effacing with the chain and rod
The image and the seal of God;
Till from his nature, day by day,
The manly virtues fall away,
And leave him naked, blind and mute,
The godlike merging in the brute !

Why mourn the quiet ones who die
Beneath affection's tender eye,
Unto their household and their kin
Like ripened corn-sheaves gathered in?
O weeper, from that tranquil sod,
That holy harvest-home of God,
Turn to the quick and suffering,
Thy tears upon the living dead!
Thank God above thy dear ones' graves,
They sleep with Him,
slaves.

- shed

165

Strives evermore at fearful odds
With Nature and the jealous gods,
And dares the dread recoil which late
Or soon their right shall vindicate.

'T is done, - the hornéd crescent falls!
The star-flag flouts the broken walls!
Joy to the captive husband! joy
To thy sick heart, O brown-locked boy!
In sullen wrath the conquered Moor
Wide open flings your dungeon-door,
And leaves ye free from cell and chain,
The owners of yourselves again.
Dark as his allies desert-born,
Soiled with the battle's stain, and worn
With the long marches of his band
Through hottest wastes of rock and
sand,

Scorched by the sun and furnace-breath
Of the red desert's wind of death,
With welcome words and grasping
hands,

The victor and deliverer stands !

;

What dark mass, down the mountainsides

Swift-pouring, like a stream divides?
A long, loose, straggling caravan,
Camel and horse and arméd man.
The moon's low crescent, glimmering

o'er

The self-forgetful ones, who stake Home, name, and life for Freedom's sake.

God mend his heart who cannot feel

The impulse of a holy zeal,

And sees not, with his sordid eyes,
The beauty of self-sacrifice!
Though in the sacred place he stands,
Uplifting consecrated hands,
Unworthy are his lips to tell
Of Jesus' martyr-miracle,
Or name aright that dread embrace
Of suffering for a fallen race!

ASTREA.

"Jove means to settle
Astræa in her seat again,
And let down from his golden chain
An age of better metal."
BEN JONSON, 1615

O POET rare and old!
Thy words are prophecies;
Forward the age of gold,
The new Saturnian lies.

whom

Thou brave and true one!
upon
Was laid the cross of martyrdom,
How didst thou, in thy generous youth,
Bear witness to this blessed truth!

Thy cross of suffering and of shame
A staff within thy hands became,
In paths where faith alone could see
The Master's steps supporting thee.

Thine was the seed-time; God alone
Beholds the end of what is sown ;
Beyond our vision, weak and dim,

The harvest-time is hid with Him.

Yet, unforgotten where it lies,
That seed of generous sacrifice,
Though seeming on the desert cast,
Shall rise with bloom and fruit at last.

EVA.

DRY the tears for holy Eva,
With the blessed angels leave her;
Of the form so soft and fair
Give to earth the tender care.

For the golden locks of Eva
Let the sunny south-land give her

* Thomas à Kempis. Imit. Christ.

Gentle Eva, loving Eva, Child confessor, true believer, Listener at the Master's knee, "Suffer such to come to me.'

O, for faith like thine, sweet Eva, Lighting all the solemn river, And the blessings of the poor Wafting to the heavenly shore !

TO FREDRIKA BREMER.57

SEERESS of the misty Norland,

Daughter of the Vikings bold, Welcome to the sunny Vineland, Which thy fathers sought of old !

Soft as flow of Silja's waters,

When the moon of summer shines, Strong as Winter from his mountains Roaring through the sleeted pines.

Heart and ear, we long have listened

To thy saga, rune, and song, As a household joy and presence We have known and loved thee long.

By the mansion's marble mantel,

Round the log-walled cabin's hearth, Thy sweet thoughts and northern fancies

Meet and mingle with our mirth.

And o'er weary spirits keeping
Sorrow's night-watch, long and chill,
Shine they like thy sun of summer
Over midnight vale and hill.

We alone to thee are strangers,

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Thou our friend and teacher art; Come, and know us as we know thee; Let us meet thee heart to heart!

To our homes and household altars
We, in turn, thy steps would lead,
As thy loving hand has led us
O'er the threshold of the Swede.

RIL.

"The spring comes slowly up this way." Christabel.

'Tis the noon of the spring-time, yet

never a bird

In the wind-shaken elm or the maple is heard;

For green meadow-grasses wide levels of

snow,

And blowing of drifts where the crocus should blow;

Where wind-flower and violet, amber and white,

On south sloping brooksides should smile in the light,

O'er the cold winter-beds of their latewaking roots

The frosty flake eddies, the ice-crystal shoots;

And, longing for light, under winddriven heaps,

Round the boles of the pine-wood the ground-laurel creeps,

Unkissed of the sunshine, unbaptized of showers,

With buds scarcely swelled, which should burst into flowers! We wait for thy coming, sweet wind of the south!

For the touch of thy light wings, the kiss of thy mouth; For the yearly evangel thou bearest from God, Resurrection and life to the graves of the sod!

Up our long river-valley, for days, have not ceased

The wail and the shriek of the bitter northeast,

Raw and chill, as if winnowed through