Page images
PDF
EPUB

Contemplation.

HE, who, awakened to the inward exercise of thought, delights to build up an inner world in his own spirit, fills the wide horizon of the open sea with the sublime idea of the infinite; his eye dwells especially on the distant line where air and water join, and where stars arise and set in every renewed alteration. In such contemplations there mingles, as in all human joy, a breath of sadness and longing.

HUMBOLT'S KOSMOS.

Love Token.

ОH! only those

Whose souls have felt this one idolatry

Can tell how precious is the slightest thing
Affection gives and hallows! A dead flower
Will long be kept, remembrancer of look
That made each leaf a treasure.

L. E. L.

Music's Power.

(HAVE you not heard in music's sound
Some chords which o'er your heart,
First fling a moment's magic round
Then silently depart?!

But when the echo on the air

Roused by that simple lay,

It leaves a world of feeling there

We cannot chase away.

Yes, yes, a sound hath power to bid them come Youth's half-forgotten hopes, childhood's remembered home.

When sitting in your silent home
You gaze around and weep,

Or call to those who cannot come,
Nor wake from dreamless sleep;
Those chords, so oft as you bemoan
"The distant and the dead,"

Bring dimly back the fancied tone

Of some sweet voice that's fled!

Yes, yes, a sound hath power to bid them come Youth's half-forgotten hopes, childhood's remembered home.

And when amid the festal throng,

You are, or would be gay

[ocr errors]

And seek to wile with dance and song,

Your sadder thoughts away,

They strike those chords, and smiles depart,
As, rushing o'er your soul

The untold feelings of the heart

Awake and spurn control!

Yes, yes, a sound has power to bid them come

Youth's half-forgotten hopes, childhood's remem

bered home.

MRS. NORTON.

Twilight.

THE day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.

I see the lamps of the village

Gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me,
That my soul cannot resist.

A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not akin to pain,

And resembles sorrow only

As the mist resembles the rain

LONGFELLOW.

The Author.

STILL those wild and valueless essays, those soft and secret confessions of his own heart, were a delight to him. He began to taste the transport, the intoxication of an author. And oh! what a luxury is there in that first love of the muse! that process by which we give a palpable form to the long intangible visions which have flitted across us; the beautiful ghost of the ideal within us, which we invoke in the Godara of our still closets, with the wand of the simple pen. BULWER.

Memory.

YES, memory has honey cells,
And some of them are ours;

For in the sweetest of them dwells

The dream of early hours.

L. E. L.

Night.

YE stars! which are the poetry of heaven! If in your bright leaves we would read the fate

Of men and empires, 't is to be forgiven
That in our aspirations to be great

Our destinies o'erleap their mortal state
And claim a kindred with you; for ye are
A beauty and a mystery, and create

In us such love and reverence from afar,

That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves a star.

All heaven and earth are still-though not in

sleep;

But breathless as we grow when feeling most; And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep; All heaven and earth are still; from the high host

Of stars, to the lulled lake and mountain-rest,
All is concentered in a life intense

When not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost,
But hath a part of being, and a sense
Of that which is of all Creator and defense.

BYRON.

« PreviousContinue »