Among rare ornament and tracery;
And swarms along the transoms huge and carved, And plays upon the sculptured draperies,
The statues, worship-faces, finials,
The spiral volutes, scrolls, and mimic urns;
And touches lightly, still recumbent forms,
White marble hands clasped over marble breasts;
And kisses fearfully white lips and eyes,
And throbbless brows that sleep unconsciously
In all the rigid peace of sepulture :
And breaks away and skims along the aisles,
As sensible unto the ear as is
The street-lights lingering quiver to the eye!
The old man listens, and the shrivelled face
Grows strangely fresh again: the cold hard lines
Depart a nervous tremor runs around
The thin seared lips; the sightless balls roll up
And round, e'en as the eye-balls work beneath
The half-closed lids of one a-dream; and great
White globes of tears slide off and dash upon
The bony fingers, all a-twitch with nerve.
But suddenly the chant is hush'd; and through
The vacuous pause the echoes rush and clasp
And wild and frantic-eyed swoop here and there
Sink down to faint vociferations; melt,
Dissolve, and swooning, die away, away!
The old man lifts his white head with a start,
And, sighing low, sings in his soul a song :-
"O! wherefore pauseth the lofty strain, The triumph and ecstasy?
Why sinketh my spirit to bonds again
From the transport of liberty?
My soul is a-weary of waking gloom,
My limbs are with pain a-wrack:
O waft me away on that strain once more,
Ah! tenderly waft me back!
For I am a desolate, sear'd old man,
And dark as a dawnless sea;
A stranger man in the world of men :
Alone in my misery !
The scourge of care and the tooth of age
Have wrought on me many a track;
I stand in the mirk of a vanished day,
O tenderly waft me back.
pure I loved, and the base I scorned Have passed from the world and me;
And I long for my home with a longing strange
My home o'er the darkest sea :
The further I go the sadder I am,
And the more I find I lack;
My sun hath gone down on a northern night;
O tenderly waft me back!
Away from the cold and the shadow'd now-
The nothingness, hunger, woe;
Away from the weakness that rains with tears,
From all that 'tis pain to know :—
Away to the haunts of the glorious hills
Where the winds of the roses smack,
And the earth lies glad in a noontide glow;
O tenderly waft me back!
Away to the time of my youth and might―
Of rapture and liberty,
When the voices of nature were tropes of fun,
And the wild winds spirits of glee;
When I breasted the trees and vanquished the nuts
In a brief and a bloodless strife;
Imprisoned the bee in the foxglove bell,
And laugh'd in the face of life;
When health gave my footsteps a lithesome ring,
My features a lustre bright;
And the poet Hope gave me eyes and ears,
And loving-a bosom light:
When life was the glimpse of a joy-wing'd hour,
The world-all I hoped or dream'd;
When faces were minds, appearances truths,
And dewdrops the gems they seem'd.
Away to the scene of my fair lad-love,
Whose features I most forget;
But whose goodness and worth lay sweet on the
And gladden my memory yet.
When my eyes were awake, and could drink the sky
And the grandeur-world's great dower;
When music to me was a worship-breath
A rapture, a tongue, a power!
They say I'm a child, and I feel like a child,
Am weak as a child, ah me!
O waft me away, to the brief bright sky
Of the life that I dream'd might be :
There let me close up the weary lids,
Forgetting the now and then,
And pass to the birth of a deathless life
From the sorrowful world of men."
The old man listens, but no more, no more
The wonder-spirit flutters to his ear:
Comes but the sound, by echo multiplied
Into a troop of footsteps in the aisle.
He drops his head, and, for a moment, sobs
In quiet helplessness; then draws once, twice,
His russet sleeve across his darkened eyes,
And, rising, gropes his way and totters out
Into the wide, cold world, beneath the night
That melteth into dawn for him no more.
"What happy moments did I count !
Blessed was I then, all bliss above!
Now, for this consecrated fount
Of murmuring, sparkling, living love,
What have I? shall I dare to tell?
A comfortless and hidden WELL."-Wordsworth.
HE came amid the calm of autumn days,
Came from her distant home among the hills,
To spend a tiny sheaf of days with us.
Her parents and our parents, in the days
When they were young and newly gone to house,
Had been near neighbours, and the closest friends;
Had parted later, where their roads diverged,
In mutual confidence, esteem, regret.
And now she came with kindly messages
And warm remembrances from them to us,
In token that the past was unforgot.
'Twas many a day since we had met; and each
Was changed. We scarce were more than children then, And now, well, we were changed: the world was changed. We each had grown into another sphere,
Bounded by other skies, and lit by suns
Of different hues; and life had changed its shape.
She had grown beautiful; her woman-form
Was rounded into perfect symmetry.
Her face was soft, and fair, and delicate,
And constantly reminded one of music;
For ever as the eye gazed, on the heart
Arose a sense of harmonies; a swell
Of soft refrains, that thrilled one as they died.
But, oh her glory was the flood of hair
That gushing o'er her shoulders, shrouded her.
No line was on her forehead, and no shade
Touched with a saddening, sobering influence
The laughter of her life; so far, indeed,
As human eye might penetrate the show.
We liked her from the first, and those to me
Were blessed days. The intercourse with true
And tender womanhood has been the one
Green grove of palms in all my desert life!
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