Tam. Ah, Hadad, meanest thou to reproach the Friend Who gave so much, because he gave not all?
Had. Perfect benevolence, methinks, had willed
Unceasing happiness, and peace, and joy;
Filled the whole universe of human hearts
With pleasure, like a flowing spring of life.
Tam. Our Prophet teaches so, till man rebelled.
Had. Mighty rebellion! Had he 'leagured heaven
With beings powerful, numberless, and dreadful,
Strong as the enginery that rocks the world
When all its pillars tremble; mixed the fires
Of onset with annihilating bolts
Defensive volleyed from the throne; this, this
Had been rebellion worthy of the name,
Worthy of punishment. But what did man?
Tasted an apple! and the fragile scene,
Eden, and innocence, and human bliss,
The nectar-flowing streams, life-giving fruits,
Celestial shades, and amaranthine flowers,
Vanish; and sorrow, toil, and pain, and death,
Cleave to him by an everlasting curse.
Tam. Ah! talk not thus.
Had. Is this benevolence?
Nay, loveliest, these things sometimes trouble me;
For I was tutored in a brighter faith.
Our Syrians deem each lucid fount, and stream,
Forest, and mountain, glade, and bosky dell,
Peopled with kind divinities, the friends
Of man, a spiritual race, allied
To him by many sympathies, who seek
His happiness, inspire him with gay thoughts,
Cool with their waves, and fan him with their airs.
O'er them, the Spirit of the Universe,
Or Soul of Nature, circumfuses all
With mild, benevolent, and sun-like radiance;
Pervading, warming, vivifying earth,
As spirit does the body, till green herbs,
And beauteous flowers, and branchy cedars, rise;
And shooting stellar influence through her caves,
Whence minerals and gems imbibe their lustre.
Tam. Dreams, Hadad, empty dreams.
They invocate with cheerful, gentle rites,
Hang garlands on their altars, heap their shrines
With Nature's bounties, fruits, and fragrant flowers.
Not like yon gory mount that ever reeks-
Tam. Cast not reproach upon the holy altar.
Had. Nay, sweet.-Having enjoyed all pleasures here That Nature prompts, but chiefly blissful love,
At death, the happy Syrian maiden deems
Her immaterial flies into the fields,
Or circumambient clouds, or crystal brooks,
And dwells, a Deity, with those she worshipped,
Till time, or fate, return her in its course
To quaff, once more, the cup of human joy.
Tam. But thou believ'st not this.
Thou didst; for I have feared, my gentle Tamar,
Thy spirit is too tender for a law
Announced in terrors, coupled with the threats
Of an inflexible and dreadful Being,
Whose word annihilates, whose awful voice
Thunders the doom of nations, who can check
The sun in heaven, and shake the loosened stars,
Like wind-tossed fruit, to earth, whose fiery step
The earthquake follows, whose tempestuous breath
Divides the sea, whose anger never dies,
Never remits, but everlasting burns,
Burns unextinguished in the deeps of hell.
Jealous, implacable-
Tam. Peace! impious! peace!
Had. Ha! says not Moses so?
The Lord is jealous.
Tam. Jealous of our faith,
Our love, our true obedience, justly his;
And a poor recompense for all his favors.
Implacable he is not; contrite man
Ne'er found him so.
Had. But others have,
If oracles be true.
Tam. Little we know
Of them; and nothing of their dire offence.
Had. I meant not to displease, love; but my soul
Sometimes revolts, because I think thy nature
Shudders at him and yonder bloody rites.
How dreadful! when the world awakes to light,
And life, and gladness, and the jocund tide
Bounds in the veins of every happy creature,
Morning is ushered by a murdered victim,
Whose wasting members reek upon the air,
Polluting the pure firmament; the shades
Of evening scent of death; almost, the shrine
O'ershadowed by the holy cherubim;
And where the clotted current from the altar
Mixes with Kedron, all its waves are gore.
Nay, nay, I grieve thee-'tis not for myself,
But that I fear these gloomy things oppress
Thy soul, and cloud its native sunshine.
Tam. (in tears, clasping her hands.)
Witness, ye heavens! Eternal Father, witness!
Blest God of Jacob! Maker! Friend! Preserver!
That, with my heart, my undivided soul,
I love, adore, and praise thy glorious name
Confess thee Lord of all, believe thy laws
Wise, just, and merciful, as they are true.
O Hadad, Hadad! you misconstrue much
The sadness that usurps me: 'tis for thee
I grieve for hopes that fade-for your lost soul,
And my lost happiness.
Beloved princess. Why distrust my faith?
Tam. Thou know'st, alas! my weakness; but remember,
I never, never will be thine, although
The feast, the blessing, and the song were past,
Though Absalom and David called me bride,
Till sure thou own'st, with truth and love sincere,
The Lord Jehovah.
Roman Catholic Chaunt. From " Percy's Masque.”— HILLHOUSE.
O, HOLY VIRGIN, call thy child;
Her spirit longs to be with thee;
For, threatening, lower those skies so mild,
Whose faithless day-star dawned for me.
From tears released to speedy rest,
From youthful dreams which all beguiled,
To quiet slumber on thy breast,
O, holy Virgin, call thy child.
Joy from my darkling soul is fled,
And haggard phantoms haunt me wild;
Despair assails, and Hope is dead:
O, holy Virgin, call thy child.
WHEN the firmament quivers with daylight's young beam.
And the woodlands, awaking, burst into a hymn,
And the glow of the sky blazes back from the stream,-
How the bright ones of heaven in the brightness grow de M
Oh, tis sad, in that moment of glory and song,
To see, while the hill-tops are waiting the sun, The glittering host, that kept watch all night long O'er Love and o'er Slumber, go out one by one ;
Till the circle of ether, deep, rosy and vast,
Scarce glimmers with one of the train that were there; And their leader, the day-star, the brightest and last, Twinkles faintly, and fades in that desert of air.
Thus Oblivion, from midst of whose shadow we came,
Steals o'er us again when life's moment is gone;
And the crowd of bright names in the heaven of fame
Grow pale and are quenched as the years hasten on.
Let them fade-but we'll pray that the age, in whose flight
Of ourselves and our friends the remembrance shall die,
May rise o'er the world, with the gladness and light
Of the dawn that effaces the stars from the sky,
September.-CARLOS WILCOX.
THE sultry summer past, September comes,
Soft twilight of the slow-declining year;—
All mildness, soothing loneliness and peace;
The fading season ere the falling come,
More sober than the buxom blooming May,
And therefore less the favorite of the world,
But dearest month of all to pensive minds.
The idlest thing that flattery knew,
The most unmeaning jest,
From those sweet lips profanely drew
Names of the Holiest !
I thought-How sweet that voice would be,
Breathing this prayer to heaven-
My God, I worship only thee;
O, be my sins forgiven!"
He knoweth our Frame, He remembereth we are Dust.DANA.
THOU, who didst form us with mysterious powers,
Didst give a conscious soul, and call it ours,
'Tis thou alone who know'st the strife within;
Thou'lt kindly judge, nor name each weakness sin.
Thou art not man, who only sees in part,
Yet deals unsparing with a brother's heart;
For thou look'st in upon the struggling throng
That war-the good with ill-the weak with strong.
And those thy hand hath wrought of finer frame,
When grief o'erthrows the mind, thou wilt not blame.
"It is enough!" thou'lt say, and pity show;
"Thy pain shall turn to joy, thou child of wo!—
Thy heart find rest-thy dark mind clear away,
And thou sit in the peace of heaven's calm day!"
Is this thy prison-house, thy grave, then, Love?
And doth death cancel the great bond that holds
Commingling spirits? Are thoughts that know no bounds,
But, self-inspired, rise upward, searching out
The Eternal Mind-the Father of all thought-
Are they become mere tenants of a tomb?—
Dwellers in darkness, who the illuminate realms
* We scarcely know where, in the English language, we could point out a finer extract than this,-of the same character. It has a softened grandeur worthy of the subject; especially in the noble paragraph commencing "O, listen, man!"-ED.
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