Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

5.

To him, thy child, thyself revealing,
He sees what all is meant to be;
From him thy secret not concealing,
Thou bidd'st his will aspire to Thee.
And so we own in thy creation
An image painting all thou art;
And crowning all the revelation
Thy loftiest work, a human heart.
6.

The will, the love, the sunlike reason,
Which thou hast made the strength of man,
May ebb and flow through day and season,
And oft may mar their seeming plan;
But Thou art here to nerve and fashion
With better hopes our world of care,
To calm each base and lawless passion,
And so the heavenly life repair.
7.

In all the track of earth-born ages,
Each day displays thy guidance clear,
And, best divined by holiest sages,
Makes every child in part a seer.
Thy laws are bright with purest glory,
To us thou givest congenial eyes,
And so in earth's unfolding story,
We read thy truth that fills the skies.

8.

But 'mid thy countless forms of being
One shines supreme o'er all beside,
And man, in all thy wisdom seeing,
In Him reveres a sinless guide.
In Him alone, no longer shrouded
By mist that dims all meaner things,

Thou dwell'st, O God! unveil'd, unclouded,
And fearless peace thy presence brings.

9.

Then teach my heart, celestial Brightness!
To know that Thou art hid no more,

To sun my spirit's dear-bought whiteness
Beneath thy rays, and upward soar.

In all that is, a law unchanging

Of Truth and Love may I behold,

And own, 'mid thought's unbounded ranging,

The timeless One proclaim'd of old!

HYMN X.
1.

Time more than earthly o'er this hour prevails,
While thus I stand beside the newly-dead;
My heart is raised in awe, in terror quails
Before these relics, whence the life is fled.

2.

That face, so well-beloved, is senseless now,
And lies a shrunken mask of common clay;
No more shall thought inspire the pulseless brow,
Or laughter round the mouth keep holiday.

3.

In vain affection yearns to own as man
This clod turn'd over by the plough of death;
The sharpen'd nose, the frozen eyes we scan,
And wondering think the heap had human breath.

4.

An hour ago its lightest looks or throbs,
Impell'd in me the bosom's ample tide;
Its farewell words awaken'd sighs and sobs,
To me more vivid seem'd than all beside.

5.

Now not a worm is crawling o'er the earth,
But shows than this an impulse more divine;
And wandering lost in stunn'd reflection's dearth,
I only feel what total loss is mine.

6.

Cold hand, I touch thee! Perish'd friend! I know
What years of mutual joy are gone with thee;
And yet from these benumb'd remains there flow
Calm thoughts that first with chasten'd hopes agree.

7.

How strange is death to life! and yet how sure
The law which dooms each living thing to die!
Whate'er is outward cannot long endure,
And all that lasts eludes the subtlest eye.

8.

Because the eye is only made to spell

The grosser garb and failing husk of things;
The vital strengths and streams that inlier dwell,
Our faith divines amid their secret springs.

9.

The stars will sink as fade the lamps of earth,
The earth be lost as vapour seen no more,
And all around that seems of oldest birth,
Abides one destined day—and all is o'er.

10.

Himalah's piles, like heaps of autumn leaves,
Will one day spread along the winds of space,
And each strong stamp of man the world receives
Will flit like steps in sand without a trace.

11.

Yet something still will somewhere needs abide
Of all whose being e'er has fill'd our thought;
In different shapes to other worlds may glide,
But still must live as more than empty naught.

12.

The trees decay'd, their parent soil will feed,
Whence trees may grow more fair than grew the first;
To worlds destroy'd, so worlds may still succeed,
And still the earliest may have been the worst.

13.

Thus, never desperate, muse believing men;
But what, O Power Divine! shall men become?
This pale memorial meets my gaze again,
And grief a moment bids my hopes be dumb.

14.

Not thus, O God! desert us! Rather I
Should sink at once to unremembering clay,
And close my sight on thy translucent sky,
Than yield my soul to death a helpless prey;

15.

Oh! rather bear beyond the date of stars
All torments heap'd that nerve and soul can feel,
Than but one hour believe destruction mars
Without a hope the life our breasts reveal.

16.

Bold is the life and deep and vast in man,
A flood of being pour'd uncheck'd from Thee;
To Thee return'd by thine eternal plan,
When tried and train'd thy will unveil'd to see.

17.

The spirit leaves the body's wondrous frame,
That frame itself a world of strength and skill;
The nobler inmate new abodes will claim,
In every change to Thee aspiring still.

18.

Although from darkness born, to darkness fled,
We know that light beyond surrounds the whole;
The man survives, though the weird-corpse be dead,
And He who dooms the flesh, redeems the soul.

[blocks in formation]

Unmeasured might, unmingled good, A moving frame, an engine strong,

In countless beings shown;

That fills each leaf in all the wood,
In every bud is known.

6.

Beneath thy sun their fruits mature,
And so a world sustain ;
Yet still the procreant seeds endure,
And all shall flower again.

For thought and choice to guide;
When these to it no more belong
In darkness laid aside,

12.

Give Thou the life which we require,
That rooted fast in Thee,
From Thee to Thee we may aspire,
And earth thy garden be.

SONG OF A RETURNED EXILE.

BY B. SIMMONS.

1.

SWEET Corrin!* how scftly the evening light goes,
Fading far o'er thy summit from ruby to rose,
As if loth to deprive the deep woodlands below
Of the love and the glory they drink in its glow :
Oh, home-looking Hill! how beloved dost thou rise
Once more to my sight through the shadowy skies;
Shielding still, in thy sheltering grandeur unfurl'd,
The landscape to me that so long was the world.
Fair evening-blest evening! one moment delay
Till the tears of the pilgrim are dried in thy ray—
Till he feels that through years of long absence not one
Of his friends-the lone rock and grey ruin-is gone.

2.

Not one: as I wind the sheer fastnesses through,
The valley of boyhood is bright in my view!
Once again my glad spirit its fetterless flight

May wing through a sphere of unclouded delight,

O'er one maze of broad orchard, green meadow, and slope

From whose tints I once pictured the pinions of hope;

Still the hamlet gleams white-still the church yews are weeping,
Where the sleep of the peaceful my fathers are sleeping;

The vane tells, as usual, its fib from the mill,

But the wheel tumbles loudly and merrily still,
And the tower of the Roches stands lonely as ever,
With its grim shadow rusting the gold of the river.

3.

My own pleasant River, bloom-skirted, behold,
Now sleeping in shade, now refulgently roll'd,
Where long through the landscape it tranquilly flows,
Scarcely breaking, Glen-coorah, thy glorious repose!
By the Park's lovely pathways it lingers and shines,
Where the cushat's low call, and the murmur of pines,
And the lips of the lily seem wooing its stay
'Mid their odorous dells ;-but 'tis off and away,
Rushing out through the clustering oaks, in whose shade,
Like a bird in the branches, an arbour I made,
Where the blue eye of Eve often closed o'er the book,
While I read of stout Sinbad, or voyaged with Cook.

4.

Wild haunt of the Harper!† I stand by thy spring,
Whose waters of silver still sparkle and fling

Their wealth at my feet,-and I catch the deep glow,
As in long-vanish'd hours, of the lilacs that blow

The picturesque mountain of Corrin, (properly Cairn-thierna, i. e. the Thane or Lord's cairn,) is the termination of a long range of hills which encloses the valley of the Blackwater and Funcheon, (the Avonduff and Fanshin of Spenser,) in the county of Cork, and forms a striking feature of scenery, remarkable for pastoral beauty and romance.

† One of the most beautiful bends of the Funcheon is taken through the demesne of Moorepark, near Kilworth, close to a natural grotto or cavern, called from time immemorial the cave of Thiag-na-fibah-(Tim or Teague the Bard.)

By the low cottage-porch-and the same crescent moon
That then plough'd, like a pinnace, the purple of June,
Is white on Glen-duff, and all blooms as unchanged
As if years had not pass'd since thy greenwood I ranged-
As if ONE were not fled, who imparted a soul
Of divinest enchantment and grace to the whole,
Whose being was bright as that fair moon above,
And all deep and all pure as thy waters her love.

5.

Thou long-vanish'd Angel! whose faithfulness threw
O'er my gloomy existence one glorified hue!
Dost thou still, as of yore, when the evening grows dim,
And the blackbird by Douglass is hushing its hymn,
Remember the bower by the Funcheon's blue side
Where the whispers were soft as the kiss of the tide ?
Dost thou still think, with pity and peace on thy brow,
Of him who, toil-harass'd and time-shaken now,

While the last light of day, like his hopes, has departed,
On the turf thou hast hallow'd sinks down weary-hearted,
And calls on thy name, and the night-breeze that sighs
Through the boughs that once blest thee is all that replies ?

6.

But thy summit, far Corrin, is fading in grey,

And the moonlight grows mellow on lonely Cloughlea ;
And the laugh of the young, as they loiter about,
Through the elm-shaded alleys rings joyously out:
Happy souls! they have yet the dark chalice to taste,
And like others to wander life's desolate waste-
To hold wassail with sin, or keep vigil with woe;
But the same fount of yearning wherever they go,
Welling up in their heart-depths to turn at the last
(As the stag when the barb in his bosom is fast)
To their lair in the hills on their childhood that rose,
And find the sole blessing I seek for-REPOSE! *

*"Some of the epitaphs at Ferrara pleased me more than the more splendid monuments at Bologna. For instance, Martini Luighi implora pace.' Can any thing be more full of pathos? Those few words say all that can be said or sought; the dead had had enough of life—all they wanted was rest, and this they implore.”—LORD BYRON.

« AnteriorContinuar »