Life Without and Life Within Part 32

II.

I rise, and leaning from my cas.e.m.e.nt high, Feel from the morning twilight a delight; Once more youth's portion, hope, lights up my eye, And for a moment I forget the sorrows of the night.

III.

O glorious morn! how great is yet thy power!

Yet how unlike to that which once I knew, When, plumed with glittering thoughts, my soul would soar, And pleasures visited my heart like daily dew!

IV.

Gone is life's primal freshness all too soon; For me the dream is vanished ere my time; I feel the heat and weariness of noon, And long in night's cool shadows to recline.

FLAXMAN.

We deemed the secret lost, the spirit gone, Which spake in Greek simplicity of thought, And in the forms of G.o.ds and heroes wrought Eternal beauty from the sculptured stone-- A higher charm than modern culture won, With all the wealth of metaphysic lore, Gifted to a.n.a.lyze, dissect, explore.

A many-colored light flows from our sun; Art, 'neath its beams, a motley thread has spun; The prison modifies the perfect day; But thou hast known such mediums to shun, And cast once more on life a pure white ray.

Absorbed in the creations of thy mind, Forgetting daily self, my truest self I find.

THOUGHTS

ON SUNDAY MORNING, WHEN PREVENTED BY A SNOW STORM FROM GOING TO CHURCH.

Hark! the church-going bell! But through the air The feathery missiles of old Winter hurled, Offend the brow of mild-approaching Spring; She shuts her soft blue eyes, and turns away.

Sweet is the time pa.s.sed in the house of prayer, When, met with many of this fire-fraught clay, We, on this day,--the tribe of ills forgot, Wherewith, ungentle, we afflict each other,-- a.s.semble in the temple of our G.o.d, And use our breath to wors.h.i.+p Him who gave it.

What though no gorgeous relics of old days, The gifts of humbled kings and suppliant warriors, Deck the fair shrine, or cl.u.s.ter round the pillars; No stately windows decked with various hues, No blazon of dead saints repel the sun; Though no cloud-courting dome or sculptured frieze Excite the fancy and allure the taste, No fragrant censor steep the sense in luxury, No lofty chant swell on the vanquished soul.

Ours is the faith of Reason; to the earth We leave the senses who interpret her; The heaven-born only should commune with Heaven, The immaterial with the infinite.

Calmly we wait in solemn expectation.

He rises in the desk--that earnest man; No priestly terrors flas.h.i.+ng from his eye, No mitre towers above the throne of thought, No pomp and circ.u.mstance wait on his breath.

He speaks--we hear; and man to man we judge.

Has he the spell to touch the founts of feeling, To kindle in the mind a pure ambition, Or soothe the aching heart with heavenly balm, To guide the timid and refresh the weary, Appall the wicked and abash the proud?

He is the man of G.o.d. Our hearts confess him.

He needs no homage paid in servile forms, No worldly state, to give him dignity: To his own heart the blessing will return, And all his days blossom with love divine.

There is a blessing in the Sabbath woods, There is a holiness in the blue skies; The summer-murmurs to those calm blue skies Preach ceaselessly. The universe is love-- And this disjointed fragment of a world Must, by its spirit, man, be harmonized, Tuned to concordance with the spheral strain, Till thought be like those skies, deeds like those breezes, As clear, as bright, as pure, as musical, And all things have one text of truth and beauty.

There is a blessing in a day like this, When sky and earth are talking busily; The clouds give back the riches they received, And for their graceful shapes return they fulness; While in the inmost shrine, the life of life, The soul within the soul, the consciousness Whom I can only _name_, counting her wealth, Still makes it more, still fills the golden bowl Which never shall be broken, strengthens still The silver cord which binds the whole to Heaven.

O that such hours must pa.s.s away! yet oft Such will recur, and memories of this Come to enhance their sweetness. And again I say, great is the blessing of that hour When the soul, turning from without, begins To register her treasures, the bright thoughts, The lovely hopes, the ethereal desires, Which she has garnered in past Sabbath hours.

Within her halls the preacher's voice still sounds, Though he be dead or distant far. The band Of friends who with us listened to his word, With throngs around of linked a.s.sociations, Are there; the little stream, long left behind, Is murmuring still; the woods as musical; The skies how blue, the whole how eloquent With "life of life and life's most secret joy"!

TO A GOLDEN HEART WORN ROUND THE NECK.[44]

Remembrancer of joys long pa.s.sed away, Relic from which, as yet, I cannot part, O, hast thou power to lengthen love's short day?

Stronger thy chain than that which bound the heart?

Lili, I fly--yet still thy fetters press me In distant valley, or far lonely wood; Still will a struggling sigh of pain confess thee The mistress of my soul in every mood.

The bird may burst the silken chain which bound him, Flying to the green home, which fits him best; But, O, he bears the prisoner's badge around him, Still by the piece about his neck distressed.

He ne'er can breathe his free, wild notes again; They're stifled by the pressure of his chain.

LINES

ACCOMPANYING A BOUQUET OF WILD COLUMBINE, WHICH BLOOMED LATE IN THE SEASON.

These pallid blossoms thou wilt not disdain, The harbingers of thy approach to me, Which grew and bloomed despite the cold and rain, To tell of summer and futurity.

It was not given them to tell the soul, And lure the nightingale by fragrant breath: These slender stems and roots brook no control, And in the garden life would find but death.

The rock which is their cradle and their home Must also be their monument and tomb; Yet has my floweret's life a charm more rare Than those admiring crowds esteem so fair, Self-nurtured, self-sustaining, self-approved: Not even by the forest trees beloved, As are her sisters of the Spring, she dies,-- Nor to the guardian stars lifts up her eyes, But droops her graceful head upon her breast, Nor asks the wild bird's requiem for her rest, By her own heart upheld, by her own soul possessed.

Learn of the clematis domestic love, Religious beauty in the lily see; Learn from the rose how rapture's pulses move, Learn from the heliotrope fidelity.

From autumn flowers let hope and faith be known; Learn from the columbine to live alone, To deck whatever spot the Fates provide With graces worthy of the garden's pride, And to deserve each gift that is denied.

These are the shades of the departed flowers, My lines faint shadows of some beauteous hours, Whereto the soul the highest thoughts have spoken, And brightest hopes from frequent twilight broken.

Preserve them for my sake. In other years, When life has answered to your hopes or fears, When the web is well woven, and you try Your wings, whether as moth or b.u.t.terfly, If, as I pray, the fairest lot be thine, Yet value still the faded columbine.

But look not on her if thy earnest eye, Be filled by works of art or poesy; Bring not the hermit where, in long array, Triumphs of genius gild the purple day; Let her not hear the lyre's proud voice arise, To tell, "still lives the song though Regnor dies;"

Let her not hear the lute's soft-rising swell Declare she never lived who lived so well; But from the anvil's clang, and joiner's screw, The busy streets where men dull crafts pursue, From weary cares and from tumultuous joys, From aimless bustle and from voiceless noise, If there thy plans should be, turn here thine eye,-- Open the casket of thy memory; Give to thy friend the gentlest, holiest sigh.

DISSATISFACTION.

TRANSLATED FROM THEODORE KoRNER.

"Composed as I stood sentinel on the banks of the Elbe."

Fatherland! Thou call'st the singer In the blissful glow of day; He no more can musing linger, While thou dost mourn a tyrant's sway.

Love and poesy forsaking, From friends.h.i.+p's magic circle breaking, The keenest pangs he could endure Thy peace to insure.