AYE, let us think of Him awhile,
That, with a coffin for a boat,
Rows daily o'er the Stygian moat,
And for our table choose a tomb:
There's dark enough in any skull
To charge with black a raven plume;
And for the saddest funeral thoughts
A winding-sheet hath ample room,
Where Death, with his keen-pointed style,
Hath writ the common doom.
How wide the yew-tree spreads its gloom,
And o'er the dead lets fall its dew,
As if in tears it wept for them,
The many human families
That sleep around its stem!
How cold the dead have made these stones,
With natural drops kept ever wet!
Lo! here the best, the worst, the world
Doth now remember or forget,
Are in one common ruin hurl'd,
And love and hate are calmly met;
The loveliest eyes that ever shone,
The fairest hancs, and locks of jet.
Is 't not enough to vex our souls,
And fill our eyes, that we have set
Our love upon a rose's leaf,
Our hearts upon a violet?
Blue eyes, red cheeks, are frailer yet;
And, sometimes, at their swift decay
Beforehand we must fret:
The roses bud and bloom again;
But love may haunt the grave of love,
And watch the mould in vain.'
SWEET Eve! I love to wander 'mid thy shades,
When all creation sinks to peaceful rest,
And yon bright orb uprears her silver crescent,
In the soft smiling skies.
'Tis at such hours the wearied spirit rests,
Breathes gentleness, and peace, and thrilling joy;
It flies to other brighter regions,
Converses with its God, and breathes in heaven.
No murmur steals athwart the stilly air,
Save the soft lullabies of yon fair rill,
Sighing like music o'er a seraph's grave-
How calm! how still! how peaceful!
But there are men o'er whose seared breasts such
So sweetly beauteous, can have no power-
Ambitious breasts, stabbed by Ambition and, her
But let me stroll, 'mid nature's loveliest scenes,
And view my God in his most wond'rous works,
Despise all meaner things, and soar to Heaven.
How sweet and solemn, all alone,
With reverend step, from stone to stone,
In a small village church-yard lying,
O'er intervening flowers to move-
And as we read the names unknown,
Of young and old, to judgment gone,
And hear, in the calm air above,
Time onwards softly flying,
To meditate, in Christian love,
Upon the dead and dying!
Across the silence seem to go
With dream-like motion, wavery, slow,
And shrouded in their folds of snow,
The friends we loved long, long ago!
Gliding across the sad retreat,
How beautiful their phantom feet!
What tenderness is in their eyes,
Turned where the poor survivor lies,
'Mid monitory sanctities!
What years of vanished joy are found
From one uplifting of that hand
In its white stillness! When the shade
Doth glimmeringly in sunshine fade
From our embrace, how dim appears
This world's life through a mist of tears!
Vain hopes! wild sorrows! needless fears!
Such is the scene around me now:-
A little church-yard, on the brow
Of a green pastoral hill;
Its sylvan village sleeps below,
And faintly, here, is heard the flow
Of Woodburn's summer rill;
A place where all things mournful meet,
And yet the sweetest of the sweet!
The stillest of the still!
With what a pensive beauty fall
Across the mossy mouldering wall
That rose-tree's clustering arches! See
The robin red-breast warily,
Bright through the blossoms leaves his nest!
Sweet ingrate! through the winter blest
At the firesides of men-but shy
Through all the sunny-summer hours-
He hides himself among the flowers
In his own wild festivity.
What lulling sound, and shadow cool,
Hangs half the darken'd church-yard o'er,
From thy green depths, so beautiful,
Thou gorgeous sycamore!
Oft hath the lowly wine and bread,
Been blest beneath thy murmuring tent;
Where many a bright and hoary head,
Bowed at that awful sacrament.
Now all beneath the turf are laid,
On which they sat, and sang, and prayed.
Alone that consecrated tree
Ascends the tapering spire, that seems
To lift the soul up silently
To heaven, with all its dreams!
While in the belfry, deep and low,
From his heaved bosom's purple gleams
The dove's continuous murmurs flow,
A dirge-like song, -half bliss, half woe,
The voice so lonely seems!
WHEN spring unlocks the flowers to paint the laugh
When summer's balmy showers refresh the mower'stoil; When winter binds in frosty chains the fallow and the
In God the earth rejoiceth still, and owns his Maker good.
The birds that wake the morning, and those that love the shade,
The winds that sweep the mountain or lull the drowsy
The sun that from his amber bower rejoiceth on his way, The moon and stars their Master's name in silent pomp
• Shall man, the lord of nature, expectant of the sky-Shall man, alone unthankful, his little praise deny? No; let the year forsake his course, the seasons cease
Thee, Master, must we always love, and Saviour
The flowers of spring may wither, the hope of summer
The autumn droop in winter, the bird forsake the shade, The winds be lull'd, the sun and moon forget their old
But we, in nature's latest hour, O Lord, will cling to
|
