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With thy clear, keen joyance
Languor cannot be;
Shadow of annoyance

Never came near thee;

Thou lovest, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

Waking or asleep,

Thou of death must deem

Things more true and deep

Than we mortals dream,

Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

We look before and after,

And pine for what is not:

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet if we could scorn

Hate and pride and fear;

If we were things born

Not to shed a tear,

I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures

Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures

That in books are found,

Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness

From my lips would flow,

The world should listen then, as I am listening now!

FISHER SONG.

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.

HURRAH! the seaward breezes

Sweep down the bay amain;
Heave up, my lads, the anchor!
Run up the sail again!
Leave to the lubber landsman
The rail-car and the steed;
The stars of heaven shall guide us,
The breath of heaven shall speed.

Now, brothers, for the ice-bergs
Of frozen Labrador,
Floating spectral in the moonshine

Along the low, black shore!

Where like snow the gannet's feathers
On Brador's rocks are shed,
And the noisy murre are flying
Like black scud, overhead.

Hurrah! for the Red Island

With the white cross on its crown!
Hurrah! for Meccatina,

With its mountains bare and brown!

Where the caribou's tall antlers
O'er the dwarf-wood freely toss,
And the footstep of the Mickmack
Has no sound upon the moss.

Though the mist upon our jackets
In the bitter air congeals,
And our lines wind stiff and slowly
From off the frozen reels;

Though the fog be dark around us,
And the storm blow high and loud,
We will whistle down the wild wind
And laugh beneath the cloud!

In the darkness as in daylight,
On the water as on land,
God's eye is looking on us

And beneath us is his hand!
Death will find us soon or later
On the deck or in the cot;
And we cannot meet him better
Than in working out our lot.

Hurrah!-hurrah!- the west wind Comes freshening down the bay, The rising sails are filling;

Give way, my lads, give way! Leave the coward landsman clinging To the dull earth like a weed, The stars of heaven shall guide us

The breath of heaven shall speed!

TO NIGHT.

BLANCO WHITE.

MYSTERIOUS night! When our first parent knew
Thee from report divine, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,
This glorious canopy of light and blue?
Yet, 'neath the curtain of translucent dew,
Bathed in the rays of that great setting flame,
Hesperus with the host of heaven came,
And lo! creation widened on man's view.

Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed
Within thy beams, O sun? or who could find,
While fly and leaf and insect lay revealed,

That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind?
Why do we, then, shun death with anxious strife?
If light can so deceive, wherefore not life?

TO A SWALLOW BUILDING UNDER THE EAVES AT CRAIGENPUTTOCK.

JANE WELSH CARLYLE.

THOU, too, hast travelled, little fluttering thing,
Hast seen the world, and now thy weary wing
Thou, too, must rest.

But much, my little bird, could'st thou but tell,
I'd give to know why here thou likest so well
To build thy nest.

For thou hast passed fair places in thy flight,
A world lay all beneath thee where to light;
And strange thy taste,

Of all the varied scenes that met thine eye,
Of all the spots for building 'neath the sky,
To choose this waste.

Did fortune try thee? was thy little purse
Perchance run low, and thou, afraid of worse,
Felt here secure?

Ah no, thou need'st not gold, thou happy one!
Thou know'st it not-of all God's creatures, man
Alone is poor.

What was it then? Some mystic turn of thought
Caught under German eaves, and hither brought,
Marring thine eye

For the world's loveliness, till thou art grown
A sober thing that dost but mope and moan,'
Not knowing why?

Nay, if thy mind be sound, I need not ask,
Since here I see thee working at thy task
With wing and beak.

A well-laid scheme doth that small head contain,
At which thou work'st, brave bird, with might and main,
Nor more need'st seek!

In truth, I rather take it thou hast got
By instinct wise much sense about thy lot,
And hast small care

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