Beautiful Poetry. THE LIFE OF THE BLESSED. Translated from the Spanish of LUIS PONCE DE LEON. REGION of life and light! Land of the good whose earthly toils are o'er! Thy vernal beauty, fertile shore, There, without crook or sling, Walks the good shepherd; blossoms white and red And to sweet pastures led, His own loved flock beneath his eye is fed. He guides, and near him they And heavenly roses blow, Deathless, and gather'd but again to grow. He leads them to the height Named of the infinite and long-sought Good, And where his feet have stood Springs up, along the way, their tender food. 1 And when, in the mid skies, The climbing sun has reach'd his highest bound, With all his flock around, He witches the still air with numerous sound. From his sweet lute flow forth And draw the ardent will Might but a little part, A wandering breath of that high melody, And change it till it be Transform'd and swallow'd up, O love! in thee. Ah! then my soul should know, Released, should take its way To mingle with thy flock and never stray. DREAM OF A WANDERER. By FRANCIS DAVIS, a living poet of Ireland, having great promise in him. I LOOK'D upon the ocean, And I look'd upon the strand; I look'd upon the heaven That o'erhung the stranger's land; Wanton'd o'er my wasted cheek. But a soothing angel hover'd Oh, the sweetness and the brightness Woo'd the daisies, With a heaven in their tone; And the fountains On the mountains All in ruddied silver shone. How I leap'd upon those mountains! Through a galaxy of joy: And the mountain billows marshall'd What tears of burning bitterness! As around me Waved the tawny autumn's pride, Yea, the treasures, THE THREE FISHERMEN. By the Rev. CHARLES Kingsley, author of Yeast, &c. THREE fishers went sailing out into the West, Out into the West as the sun went down, Each thought of the woman who loved him the best, And there's little to earn, and many to keep, Though the harbour-bar be moaning. Three wives sat up in the lighthouse tower, And trimm'd the lamps as the sun went down, And they look'd at the squall, and they look'd at the shower, And the rack it came rolling up, ragged and brown; But men must work, and women must weep, Though storms be sudden, and waters deep, And the harbour-bar be moaning. Three corpses lay out on the shining sands, In the morning gleam, as the tide went down, And the women are watching and wringing their hands, For those that will never come back to the town; For men must work, and women must weep, And the sooner it 's over, the sooner to sleep, And good-bye to the bar and its moaning. MEN say, Columbia, we shall hear thy guns. Nor force nor fraud shall sunder us! Oh ye And rich as Chaucer's speech, and fair as Spenser's dream. |