Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

A GARDEN.

Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite
Beyond it, blooms the garden that I love.
News from the humming city comes to it
In sound of funeral or of marriage bells;
And, sitting muffled in dark leaves, you hear
The windy clanging of the minster clock;
Although between it and the garden lies

A league of grass, wash'd by a slow broad stream,
That stirr'd with languid pulses of the oar,
Waves all its lazy lilies, and creeps on,
Barge-laden, to three arches of a bridge
Crown'd with the minster-towers.

MEMORY.

Hopes and recollections worn

TENNYSON.

Close to the vital seat of human clay :
Glad meetings-tender partings, that upstay
The drooping mind of absence.

WORDSWORTH.

THE BOOK OF NATURE.

The book of nature He himself hath writ
God still delights to read, and star by star
Unfolds the volume of the universe
Fate-clasped; in time and order by Him fixed.

A FADED VIOLET.

The odour from the flower is gone,
Which like thy kisses breathed on me;
The colour from the flower is flown,
Which glow'd of thee, and only thee!

A shrivell'd, lifeless, vacant form,
It lies on my abandon'd breast,
And mocks the heart which is yet warm,
With cold and silent rest.

I weep-my tears revive it not!

I sigh-it breathes no more on me!
Its mute and uncomplaining lot
Is such as mine should be.

BAILEY.

SHELLEY.

A LADY WEEPING.

So she sate

In mournful attitude and motionless,
Most like the marble weepers upon graves,
Save that as dews gather in half-closed flowers,
Ever the tear-drops in her half-closed eyes
Gather'd, and fell, and gather'd yet again.

NYMPHS.

OSBORN.

And now his limbs imbathed

Amid immortal nymphs, serenely pure,

Like living lilies floating on the tide,

In love with their own shadows, as they lay
Beneath the cooling moon.

TO THE RIVER DUDDON.

BAILEY.

And may thy poet, cloud-born stream, be free
(The sweets of earth contentedly resigned,
And each tumultuous working left behind
At seemly distance) to advance like thee-
Prepared in peace of heart, in calm of mind,
And soul, to mingle with eternity.

WOMAN'S LOVE.

WORDSWORTH.

Oh! woman wrong'd can cherish hate
More deep and dark than manhood may ;
But, when the mockery of fate

Hath left revenge its chosen way,

And the fell curse, which years have nurs'd,
Full on the spoiler's head hath burst-
When all her wrong, and shame, and pain,
Burns fiercely on his heart and brain-
Still lingers something of the spell

Which bound her to the traitor's bosom ;
Still, 'midst the vengeful fires of hell,

Some flowers of old affection blossom.

WHITTIER.

ATHENS.

A marvellously musical passage from MILTON.

BEHOLD

Where on the Egean shore a city stands,
Built nobly; pure the air, and light the soil;
Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts
And eloquence, native to famous wits
Or hospitable, in her sweet recess,
City or surburban, studious walks and shades.
See there the olive grove of Academe,

Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird

Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long;
There flowery hill Hymettus, with the sound
Of bee's industrious murmur, oft invites
To studious musing; there Ilissus rolls

His whispering stream: within the walls then view
The schools of ancient sages; his who bred
Great Alexander to subdue the world,
Lyceum there, and painted Stoa next:

There shalt thou hear and learn the secret power
Of harmony, in tones and numbers hit

By voice or hand; and various measured verse,
Eolian charms and Dorian lyric odes;

And his who gave them breath, but higher sung,
Blind Melesigenes, thence Homer call'd,
Whose poem Phœbus challenged for his own.
Thence what the lofty grave tragedians taught
In chorus or iambic, teachers best

Of moral prudence, with delight received
In brief sententious precepts, while they treat
Of fate, and chance, and change in human life;
High actions, and high passions best describing.
Thence to the famous orators repair,

Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence
Wielded at will the fierce democratie,

Shook the arsenal, and fulmined over Greece

To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne.

To sage Philosophy next lend thine ear,

From Heaven descended to the low-roof'd house
Of Socrates; see there his tenement,

[blocks in formation]

Whom, well inspired, the oracle pronounced
Wisest of men; from whose mouth issued forth
Mellifluous streams, that water'd all the schools
Of Academics old and new, with those
Surnamed Peripatetics, and the sect
Epicurean, and the Stoic severe.

THE POOR MAN SPEAKETH ABOUT TREES.

From an anonymous volume of great merit entitled, Verses by a Poor Man.

How pleasant are the waving trees,

The oak, the ash, the birch;
How beautiful the old yew seems,
That grows beside the church:

And those tall linden trees, whose boughs
Bring shadows o'er the dead,

Making a gloomy canopy

Over their cold low bed:

The firs that crown the lofty hills,
Like giants in their pride;
Or like a darkling thunder cloud,
At even, on their side;

O yes-they seem to me to point
Upwards, and mock the skies;

So high their dark plumes wave in air,
So high their spears arise.

The alder tree grows near some stream;
Aud the yellow willow slender,

O'er which the large palm throws his arms,
As if he would defend her.

The silky catkins oft we took
Delighted from the twig,

In childish days, and climbed for them,
The trees to us so big.

We filled our little pockets full-
We loved such pretty things:
Oh! childhood ever flies away
Fast on its golden wings.

And then the fruitful elder tree,
Of whose small juicy berry
The country people make sweet wine,
To drink and to be merry,

I love the shady sycamore,

With its leaves so large and round, That lie, in dull November hours, Thick-spotted, on the ground.

And then the trees in some large wood,
Far from the noise of towns,
Wearing in autumn time their leaves,
Like variegated crowns.

The hazel in the hedge and copse,
The holly in the glen,
They beautify this home below,
Given from God to men.

Oh, grant me places where the trees
Are scattered thickly round;
Where woods are mix'd with waterfalls,

And rocks rise from the ground.

Trees are the things that children love,
And men delight to see;

And they bring a thousand memories
Of by-gone days to me.

« AnteriorContinuar »