Their hearts are bound with bands of brass,
That sigh or crying cannot pass.
All treasures did the Lord impart
To Pharaoh, save a contrite heart:
All other gifts unto his foes,
He freely gives, nor grudging knows;
But Love's sweet smart, and costly pain,
A treasure for his friends remain."
WEARY OF LIFE.
I SIT beneath the sunbeams' glow,
Their golden currents round me flow,
Their mellow kisses warm my brow,
But all the world is dreary.
The vernal meadow round me blooms,
And flings to me its faint perfumes;
Its breath is like an opening tomb’s—
I'm sick of life, I'm weary!
The mountain brook skips down to me,
Tossing its silver tresses free,
Humming like one in revery;
But, ah! the sound is dreary.
The trilling blue-birds o'er me sail,
There's music in the faint-voiced gale;
All sound to me a mourner's wail-
I'm sick of life, I'm weary.
The night leads forth her starry train,
The glittering moonbeams fall like rain,
There's not a shadow on the plain;
Yet all the scene is dreary.
The sunshine is a mockery,
The solemn moon stares moodily;
Alike is day or night to me—
I'm sick of life, I'm weary.
I know to some the world is fair,
For them there's music in the air,
And shapes of beauty everywhere;
But all to me is dreary.
Still sweep with their embattled lines
An endless reach of sky.
And though the hills of Death
May hide the bright array,
The marshalled brotherhood of souls
Still keeps its upward way.
Upward, for ever upward,
I see their march sublime,
And hear the glorious music
Of the conquerors of Time.
And long let me remember,
That the palest, fainting one
May to diviner vision be
A bright and blazing sun.
NAPOLEON! 'twas a high name lifted high!
It met at last God's thunder sent to clear
Our compassing and covering atmosphere,
And open a clear sight, beyond the sky,
Of supreme empire: this of earth's was done-
And kings crept out again to feel the sun.
The kings crept out-the peoples sat at home,
And finding the long-invocated peace
A pall embroidered with worn images
Of rights divine, too scant to cover doom
Such as they suffered,-cursed the corn that grew
Rankly, to bitter bread, on Waterloo.
A deep gloom centered in the deep repose-
The nations stood up mute to count their dead-
And he who owned the NAME which vibrated
Through silence,-trusting to his noblest foes,
When earth was all too gray for chivalry—
Died of their mercies, 'mid the desert sea.
O wild St. Helen! very still she kept him,
With a green willow for all pyramid,—
Which stirred a little if the low wind did,
A little more, if pilgrims overwept him
Disparting the lithe boughs to see the clay
Which seemed to cover his for judgment-day.
Nay not so long!-France kept her old affection,
As deeply as the sepulchre the corse,
Until dilated by such love's remorse
To a new angel of the resurrection,
She cried, "Behold, thou England! I would have
The dead whereof thou wottest, from that grave."
And England answered in the courtesy
Which, ancient foes turned lovers, may befit,—
"Take back thy dead! and when thou buriest it,
Throw in all former strifes 'twixt thee and me."
Amen, mine England! 'tis a courteous claim-
But ask a little room too . . . for thy shame!
Because it was not well, it was not well,
Nor tuneful with thy lofty-chanted part
Among the Oceanides,-that heart
To bind and bare, and vex with vulture fell.
I would, my noble England, men might seek
All crimson stains upon thy breast-not cheek!
SLEEPS the soft South-nursing its delicate breath,
To fan the first buds of the early spring;
And summer sighing, mourns his faded wreath,
Its many-colored glories withering.
Beneath the kisses of the new-waked North,—
Who yet in storms approaches not, but smiles
On the departing season, and breathes forth
A fragrance as of summer,-till, at whiles,
All that is sweetest in the varying year,
Seems softly blent in one delicious hour, Waking dim visions of some former sphere
Where sorrows, such as earth owns, had no power
To veil the changeless lustre of the skies,
And mind and matter formed one paradise.
EVENING IN WINTER.
ROBED like an abbess the snowy earth lies,
While the red sundown fades out of the skies.
Up walks the evening veiled like a nun,
Telling her starry beads one by one.
Where like the billows the shadowy hills lie,
Like a mast the great pine swings against the bright sky.
Down in the valley the distant lights quiver,
Gilding the hard-frozen face of the river.
When o'er the hilltops the moon pours her ray,
Like shadows the skaters skirr wildly away;
Whirling and gliding, like summer-clouds fleet,
They flash the white lightning from glittering feet
The icicles hang on the front of the falls,
Like mute horns of silver on shadowy walls;
Horns that the wild huntsman spring shall awake,
Down flinging the loud blast toward river and lake!
TO TIME, "THE OLD TRAVELLER."
THEY slander thee, old Traveller,
Who say that thy delight
Is to scatter ruin far and wide,
In thy wantonness of might;
For not a leaf that falleth
Before thy restless wings
But in thy flight thou changest,
To a thousand brighter things.
Thou passest o'er the battle-field
Where the dead lie stiff and stark,
Where nought is heard save the vulture's scream,
And the gaunt wolf's famished bark;
But thou hast caused the grain to spring
From the blood-enriched clay,
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