All things rejoice in youth and love,
The fulness of their first delight!
And learn from the soft heavens above
The melting tenderness of night.
Maiden that read'st this simple rhyme,
Enjoy thy youth, it will not stay;
Enjoy the fragrance of thy prime,
For oh! it is not always May!
Enjoy the Spring of Love and Youth,
To some good angel leave the rest;
For Time will teach thee soon the truth,
There are no birds in last year's nest!

THE RAINY DAY.

THE day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,

And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary.

My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining,
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,"

Some days must be dark and dreary.

GOD'S-ACRE.

I LIKE that ancient Saxon phrase, which calls
The burial-ground God's-Acre! It is just;
It consecrates each grave within its walls,
And breathes a benison o'er the sleeping dust.
God's-Acre! Yes, that blessed name imparts
Comfort to those who in the grave have sown
The seed, that they had garnered in their
hearts,

Their bread of life, alas! no more their own. Into its furrows shall we all be cast,

In the sure faith, that we shall rise again At the great harvest, when the archangel's blast

Shall winnow, like a fan, the chaff and grain. Then shall the good stand in immortal bloom, In the fair gardens of that second birth; And each bright blossom mingle its perfume With that of flowers, which never bloomed on earth.

With thy rude ploughshare, Death, turn up the sod,

And spread the furrow for the seed we sow; This is the field and Acre of our God,

This is the place, where human harvests. grow!

TO THE RIVER CHARLES.
RIVER! that in silence windest
Through the meadows, bright and free,
Till at length thy rest thou findest
In the bosom of the sea!

Four long years of mingled feeling,
Half in rest, and half in strife,
I have seen thy waters stealing
Onward, like the stream of life.
Thou hast taught me, Silent River!
Many a lesson, deep and long;
Thou hast been a generous giver:
I can give thee but a song.

Oft in sadness and in illness,

I have watched thy current glide,
Till the beauty of its stillness
Overflowed me, like a tide.

And in better hours and brighter,
When I saw thy waters gleam,
I have felt my heart beat lighter,
And leap onward with thy stream.
Not for this alone I love thee,

Nor because thy waves of blue
From celestial seas above thee
Take their own celestial hue.

Where yon shadowy woodlands hide thee,
And thy waters disappear,

Friends I love have dwelt beside thee,
And have made thy margin dear.

More than this;-thy name reminds me
Of three friends, all true and tried:
And that name, like magic, binds me
Closer, closer to thy side.
Friends my soul with joy remembers!
How like quivering flames they start,
When I fan the living embers

On the hearth-stone of my heart!
'Tis for this, thou Silent River!
That my spirit leans to thee;
Thou hast been a generous giver,
Take this idle song from me.

THE GOBLET OF LIFE.

FILLED is Life's goblet to the brim:
And though my eyes with tears are dim,
I see its sparkling bubbles swim,
And chaunt a melancholy hymn
With solemn voice and slow.
No purple flowers,-no garlands green,
Conceal the goblet's shade or sheen,
Nor maddening draughts Hippocrene,'
Like gleams of sunshine, flash between
Thick leaves of mistletoe.

This goblet, wrought with curious art,
Is filled with water, that upstart,
When the deep fountains of the heart
By strong convulsions rent apart,
Are running all to waste.

O, thou child of many prayers!

And as it mantling passes round,
With fennel is it wreathed and crowned,
Whose seed and foliage sun-imbrowned
Are in its waters steeped and drowned,
And give a bitter taste.

Above the lowly plants it towers.
The fennel with its yellow flowers,
And in an earlier age than ours,
Was gifted with the wondrous powers
Lost vision to restore.

It gave new strength and fearless mood;
And gladiators, fierce and rude,
Mingled it in their daily food;
And he who battled and subdued,
A wreath of fennel wore.

Then in Life's goblet freely press
The leaves that give it bitterness,
Nor prize the coloured water less,
For in thy darkness and distress,
New light and strength they give!
And he who has not learned to know
How false its sparkling bubbles show,
How bitter are the drops of woe,
With which its brim may overflow,
He has not learned to live.

The prayer of Ajax was for light;
Through all that dark and desperate flight,
The blackness of that noonday night,
He asked but the return of sight,
To see his foeman's face.

Let our unceasing, earnest prayer
Be, too, for light,- for strength to bear
Our portion of the weight of care,
That crushes into dumb despair
One half the human race.
O, suffering, sad humanity!
O'ye afflicted one, who lie
Steeped to the lips in misery,
Longing, and yet afraid to die,
Patient, though sorely tried!
I pledge you in this cup of grief,
Where floats the fennel's bitter leaf!
The Battle of our Life is brief,
The alarm, the struggle,-the relief,-
Then sleep we side by side.

MAIDEN HOOD.

MAIDEN! with the meek, brown eyes,
In whoso orbs a shadow lies,
Like the dusk in evening skies!.
Thou whose locks outshine the sun,
Golden tresses wreathed in one,
As the braided streamlets run!
Standing, with reluctant feet,
Where the brook and river meet,
Womanhood and childhood fleet!
Gazing, with a timid glance,
On the brooklet's swift advance,
On the river's broad expanse!
Deep and still, that gliding stream
Beautiful to thee must seem,
As the river of a dream.
Then why pause with indecision,
Wken bright angels in thy vision
Beckon thee to fields Elysian?
Seest thou shadows sailing by,
As the dove, with startled eye,
Sees the falcon's shadows fiy?
Hearest thou voices on the shore,
That our ears perceive no more,
Deafened by the cataract's roar?

Life hath quicksands.-Life hath snares!
Care and age come unawares!

Like the swell in some sweet tune,
Morning rises into noon,

May glides onward into June.

Childhood is the bough where slumbered
Birds and blossoins many-numbered;
Age, that bough with snows encumbered.
Gather, then, each flower that grows,
When the young heart overflows,
To embalmi that tent of snows.

Bear a lily in thy hand;

Gates of brass cannot withstand
One touch of that magic wand.

Bear, through sorrow, wrong, and ruth,
In thy heart the dew of youth,
On thy lips the smile of truth.

Oh, that dew, like balm shall steal
Into wounds that cannot heal,
Even as sleep our eyes doth seal;
And that smile, like sunshine, dart
Into many a sunless heart,
For a smile of God thou art

"Beware the pine-tree's withered branch! Beware the awful avalanche!"

This was the peasant's last Good-night,
A voice replied, far up the height,
Excelsior!

At break of day, as heaven-ward
The pious monks of St. Bernard
Uttered the oft-repeated prayer,
A voice cried through the startled air,
Excelsior!

A traveller, by the faithful hound,
Half-buried in the snow was found,
Still grasping in his hand of ice
That banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!

There in the twilight cold and grey,
Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay,
And from the sky, serene and far,
A voice fell, like a falling star,
Excelsior!

[The following poems, with one exception, were written at sea, in the latter part of October. I had not then heard of Dr. Channing's death. Since that event, the poem addressed to him is no long appropriate. I have decided, however, to let it remain as it was written, a feeble testimony of my admiration for a great and good man.]

TO WILLIAM E. CHANNING
THE pages of thy book I read,
And as I closed each one,
My heart, responding, ever said,
"Servant of God! well done!"

Well done! Thy words are great and bold!
At times they seem to me

Like Luther's in the days of old,
Half-battles for the free.

Go on, until this land revokes

The old and chartered Lie,

The feudal curse, whose whips and yokes Insult humanity

A voice is ever at thy side,

Speaking in tones of might,

Like the prophetic voice, that cried
To John in Patmos,

"Write!"

Write! and tell out this bloody tale
Record this dire eclipse,

This Day of Wrath, this Endless Wail,
This dread Apocalypse!

THE SLAVE'S DREAM.

BESIDE the ungathered rice he lay,
His sickle in his hand;

His breast was bare, his matted hair
Was buried in the sand,

Again, in the mist and shadow of sleep,
He saw his Native Land.

Wide through the landscape of his dreams
The lordly Niger flowed;

Beneath the palm-trees on the plain
Once more a king he strode;

And heard the tinkling caravans
Descend the mountain-road.

He saw once more his dark-eyed queen
Among her children stand;

They clasped his neck, they kissed his cheeks,
They held him by the hand!-

A tear burst from the sleeper's lids

And fell into the sand.

And then at furious speed he rode

Along the Niger's bank;

His bridle-reins were golden chains,
And, with a martial clank,

At each leap he could feel his scabbard of steel
Smiting his stallion's flank.

Before him, like a blood-red flag,
The bright flamingoes flew;

From morn till night he followed their flight,
O'er plains where the tamarind grew
Till he saw the roofs of Caffre huts,
And the ocean rose to view.

At night he heard the lion roar,
And the hyæna scream,

And the river-horse as he crushed the reeds
Beside some hidden stream;

And it passed, like a glorious roll of drums,
Through the triumph of his dream.

The forests, with their myriad tongues,
Shouted of liberty:

And the Blast of the Desert cried aloud,
With a voice so wild and free,
That he started in his sleep and smiled
At their tempestuous glee.
He did not feel the driver's whip,
Nor the burning heat of day;

For Death had illumined the Land of Sleep,
And his lifeless body lay

A worn-out fetter, that the soul
Had broken and thrown away!

THE GOOD PART.

THAT SHALL NOT BE TAKEN AWAY.

SHE dwells by great Kenhawa's side,
In valleys green and cool:
And all her hope and all her pride
Are in the village school.

Her soul, like the transparent air
That robes the hills above,
Though not of earth, encircles there
All things with arms of love.

And thus she walks among her girls,
With praise and mild rebukes:
Subduing e'en rude village churls
By her angelic looks.

She reads to them at eventide
Of One who came te save;

To cast the captive's chains aside,
And liberate the slave.

And oft the blessed time foretells
When all men shall be free:
And musical as silver beнs,
Their falling chains shall be.

And following her beloved Lord,
In decent poverty,

She makes her life one sweet record,
And deed of charity.

For she was rich, and gave all

To break the iron bands

Of those who waited in her hall,
And laboured in her lands.

Long since beyond the Southern Sea
Their outbound sails have sped,
While she, in meek humility,
Now earns her daily bread.

It is their prayers, which never cease,
That clothe her with such grace,
Their blessing is the light of peace
That shines upon her face.

THE SLAVE IN THE DISMAL SWAMP.
IN the dark fens of the Dismal Swamp
The hunted negro lay;

He saw the fire of the midnight camp,
And heard it at times a horse's tramp
And a bloodhound's distant bay.

Where will-o'-the wisps and glow-worms shine,
In bulrush and in brake;

Where waving mosses shroud the pine,
And the cedar grows, and the poisonous vine
Is spotted like the snake;

Where hardly a human foot could pass,
Or a human heart would dare,

On the quaking turf of the green morass
He couched in the rank and tangled grass,
Like a wild beast in his lair.

THE SLAVE SINGING AT MIDNIGHT. LOUD he sang the psalm of David.

He, a Negro and enslaved,

Sang of Israel's victory,

Sang of Zion, bright and free.

In that hour, when night is calmest,
Sang he from the Hebrew Psalmist,
In a voice so sweet and clear
That I could not choose but hear,

Songs of triumph, and ascriptions,
Such as reached the swart Egyptians,
When upon the Red Sea coast
Perished Pharaoh and his host.
And the voice of his devotion
Filled my soul with strange emotion;
For its tones by turns were glad,
Sweetly solemn, wildly sad.
Paul and Silas, in their prison,
Sang of Christ, the Lord arisen,
And an earthquake's arm of might,
Broke their dungeon-gates at night.
But, alas! what holy angel
Brings the Slave this glad evangel?
And what earthquakes arm of might
Breaks his dungeon-gates at night?

THE WITNESSES.

IN Ocean's wide domains,
Half buried in the sands,
Like skeletons in chains,

With shackled feet and hands.

Beyond the fall of dews,
Deeper than plummet lies,
Float ships with all their crews,
No more to sink nor rise.
There the black Slave-ship swims,
Freighted with human forms,
Whose fettered, fleshless limbs
Are not the sport of storms.
These are the bones of slaves;

They gleam from the abyss;
They cry, from yawning waves,
"We are the Witnesses!"
Within Earth's wide domains

Are markets for men's lives,
Their necks are galled with chains,
Their wrists are cramped with gyves,
Dead bodies, that the kite

In deserts makes its prey;
Murders, that with affright
Scare schoolboys from their play.
All evil thoughts and deeds;
Anger, and lust, and pride;
The foulest, rankest weeds,
That choke Life's groaning tide!
These are the woes of Slaves;
They glare from the abyss;
They cry, from unknown graves,
"We are the Witnesses!"

THE QUADROON GIRL.
THE Slaver in the broad lagoon
Lay moored with idle sail;
He waited for the rising moon,
And for the evening gale.

Under the shore his boat was tied,
And all her listless crew
Watched the grey alligator slide
Into the still bayou.

Odours of orange-flowers and spice,
Reached them from time to time,
Like airs that breathe from Paradise
Upon a world of crime.

The Planter, under his roof of thatch,
Smoked thoughtfully and slow;
The Slaver's thumb was on the latch,
He seemed in haste to go.

He said, "My ship at anchor rides
In yonder broad lagoon

I only wait the evening tides.
And the rising of the moon.'

Before them, with her face upraised
In timid attitude,

Like one half curious, half-amazed,
A Quadroon maiden stood.

Her eyes were large, and full of light,
Her arms and neck were bare;

No garment she wore save a kirtle bright,
And her own long, raven air.

And on her lips there played a smile
As holy, meek, and faint,

As lights in some cathedral aisle,
The features of a saint.

"The soil is barren,-the farm is old,"
The thoughtful Planter said;
Then looked upon the Slaver's gold,
And then upon the maid.

His heart within him was at strife
With such accursed gains;

For he knew whose passions gave her life,
Whose blood ran in her veins.

But the voice of nature was too weak;
He took the glittering gold!

Then pale as death grew the maiden's cheek,
Her hands as icy cold.

The Slaver led her from the door,

He led her by the hand,

To be his slave and paramour
In a strange and distant land.

THE WARNING.

BEWARE! The Israelite of old, who tore

71

The lion in his path,-when, poor and blind, He saw the blessed light of heaven no more, Shorn of his noble strength and forced to grind In prison, and at last led forth to be A pander to Philistine revelry,

Upon the pillars of the temple laid

His desperate hands, and in its overthrow Destroyed himself, and with him those who made

A cruel mockery of his sightless woe; The poor, blind Slave, the scoff and jest of all, Expired, and thousands perished in the fall! There is a poor, blind Samson in this land,

Shorn of his strength, and bound in bonds of steel,

Who may, in some grim revel raise his hand,
And shake the pillars of this Commonweal,
Till the vast Temple of our liberties

A shapeless mass of wreck and rubbish lies.

CARILLON.

IN the ancient town of Bruges,
In the quaint old Flemish city,
As the evening shades decended,
Low and loud and sweetly blended,
Low at times and loud at times,
And changing like a poet's rhymes,
Rang the beautiful wild chimes
From the Belfry in the market
Of the ancient town of Bruges.
Then with deep sonorous clangour
Calmly answering their sweet anger,
When the wrangling bells had ended,
Slowly struck the clock eleven,
And, from out the silent heaven,
Silence on the town descended,
Silence, silence everywhere,
On the earth and in the air,
Save that footsteps here and there
Of some burgher home returning,
By the street lamps faintly burning,
For a moment woke the echoes
Of the ancient town of Bruges.
But amid my broken slumbers
Still I heard those magic numbers,
As they loud proclaimed the flight
And stolen marches of the night;
Till their chimes in sweet collision
Mingled with each wandering vision,
Mingled with the fortune-telling
Gipsy-bands of dreams and fancies,
Which amid the vast expanses
Of the silent land of trances
Have their solitary dwelling,
All else seemed asleep in Bruges,
In the quaint old Flemish city.

And I thought how like these chime
Are the poet's airy rhymes,
All his rhymes and roundelays,
His conceits, and songs and ditties,
From the belfry of his brain,
Scattered downward, though in vain,
On the roofs and stones of cities!
For by night the drowsy ear
Under its curtains cannot hear,
And by day men go their ways,
Hearing the music as they pass,
But deeming it no more, alas!
Than the hollow sound of brass.
Yet perchance a sleepless wight,
Lodging at some humble inn
In the narrow lanes of life,
When the dusk and hush of night
Shut out the incessant din

Of daylight and its toils and strife,
May listen with a calm delight
To the poet's melodies,

Till he hears, or dreams he hears,
Intermingled with the song,
Thoughts that he has cherished long;
Hears amid the chime and singing
The bells of his own village ringing,
And wakes and finds his slumberous eyes
Wet with most delicious tears

Thus dreamed I, as by night I lay
In Bruges at, the Fleur-de-Blé,
Listening with a wild delight

To the chimes that through the night,
Rang their changes from the Belfry
Of that quaint old Flemish city.

THE BELFRY OF BRUGES.

IN the market-place of Bruges stands the belfry old and brown:

Thrice consumed and thrice rebuilded, still it watches o'er the town.

As the summer morn was breaking, on that lofty tower I stood,

And the world threw off the darkness, like the weeds of widowhood.

Thick with towns and hamlets studded, and with streams and vapours grey.

Like a shield embossed with silver, round and vast the landscape lay.

At my feet the city slumbered. From its chimneys here and there,

Wreaths of snow-white smoke, ascending, vanished, ghost-like into air.

Not a sound rose from the city at the early morn

ing hour,

But I heard a heart of iron beating in the an

cient tower.

From their nests beneath the rafters sang the swallows wild and high;

And the world, beneath me sleeping, seemed more distant than the sky.

Then most musical and solemn, bringing back the olden times,

With their strange, unearthly changes rang the melancholy chimes,

Like the psalms from some old cloister, when the nuns sing in the choir;

And the great bell tolled among them, like the chanting of a friar.

Visions of the days departed, shadowy phantoms filled my brain,

They who live in history only seem to walk the earth again;

All the Foresters of Flanders,3-mighty Baldwin Bras de Fer.

Lyderick du Bucq and Cressy, Philip, Guy de Dampierre.

I beheld the pageants splendid, that adorned those days of old;

Stately dames, like queens attended, knights who bore the Fleece of Gold;5

Lombard and Venetian merchants with deepladen argosies:

Ministers from twenty nations; more than royal pomp and ease.