"And from the very dawn of time, In every country, age and clime, Who were the Solons, Zenos, Dracos? Who the Stagyrites and Platos? Who the stoics and the schoolmen, Hammering words with brutum fulmen? Who the metaphysic spouters,
Dark expounders, drifting doubters? Great and little-sane ones, mad ones? Cobblers all! and very bad ones!
"And ye who seek to loose and bind,— Ye great reformers of mankind,- Who think the soul a mere machine, That you can trim, and oil, and clean, And all men's passions-broad as day— But dust that you can brush away; Who think you've all the skill and leather To put a proper shoe together: You're only cobblers like the rest,— Bungling cobblers at the best."
Sitting above the mountain-springs, 'Tis thus the ancient Cobbler sings;
You may hear his voice in the winter storm Ring through the mist that keeps him warm,
When he catches the clouds, you may hear the strain,
As they break from his hoary head in rain.
And when the summer thunders jar
There comes loud chorus from afar: "All are cobblers-high or low," Quoth the Cobbler of Glencroe.
A playful and pretty little poem by ROBERT STORY, an American poet, suggested by the fairy tale of The Whistle in Thorp's Yule-tide Stories.
"You have heard," said a youth to his sweetheart, who stood,
While he sat on a corn-sheaf, at daylight's decline, "You have heard of the Danish boy's whistle of woodI wish that the Danish boy's whistle were mine!"
"And what would you do with it? Tell me!" she said, While an arch smile played over her beautiful face; "I would blow it," he answer'd, "and then my fair maid Would fly to my side, and would here take her place."
"Is that all you wish it for? That may be yours Without any magic,” the fair maiden cried; "A favour so slight one's good nature secures!" And she playfully seated herself by his side.
"I would blow it again," said the youth, "and the charm Would work so, that not even Modesty's check Would be able to keep from my neck your fine arm!" She smiled, and she laid her fine arm round his neck.
"Yet once more would I blow, and the music divine
Would bring me, the third time, an exquisite blissYou would lay your fair cheek to this brown one of mine, And your lips, stealing past it, would give me a kiss."
The maiden laughed out in her innocent glee
"What a fool of yourself with the whistle you'd make ! For only consider, how silly 'twould be,
To sit there and whistle for-what you might take."
A correspondent has sent us the following, which he states to have been taken from an unbound and imperfect volume of poems that came to him accidentally, with no name upon the title-page. He deemed it very beautiful, abounding in fine and original thought, and that
some of the passages were worthy of a place in this collection. He is ignorant who is the writer and the lines are not known to ourselves; but if not already on the road to fame, he cannot long remain in obscurity. Every reader will recognize the merit of this composition.
Ir thou should'st die my little one!-This dread Comes ever with the look thou gav'st me now. It flashes through my thoughts, and then my heart Shakes with the muffled thunder, and big drops Fall from the cloud, my brain.—If thou should'st die, How blank to me were life! The round of life
Must ever have a centering point of love,
Thou lost, I were unsphered.
I cannot form in thought thy loss, or see
How that which leaps and speaks through thy sweet frame Should ever leave it; yet must feel it may; Must feel that restless little bell, thy voice, That keeps a jubilee within my heart; Those little pattering feet that all the day Like kittens gambol up and down the house; And those pure eyes that open through to God, Revealing to my gaze deep views of heaven; All, all that makes my little darling up, May change and lie before me still as sleep! But not with sleep's red roses on thy cheeks, Budding all night, blooming at break of day; Nor with the living dream within thy veins That charms off the iconoclast, decay; But like a pretty wreath of virgin snow That melts the while we look and by next morn Is not to mortal eye.
My little one, I harp upon this thought, and almost dream Thou art already dead, and wear my heart With the imagined grief. But, O deep joy! I waken from my thought, and thou art here, Sparkling beside me. O live on and be The little fountain where I come at eve, After the sweating day to cool my brain.
The homeliest soul will sicken of its home, Seeing a winged cloud in the blue vault; Or hearing through the city's maddening din The abandon'd carol of a caged lark; Or seeing primroses brought into town; Or reading of dreamy isles in the sunny south, Of marble palaces, Italian skies.
But when I wander and new scenes fill up The circle of my thought, amidst them all Comes ever and anon, across my brain,
A sweep as if 'twere from some soft dove-wing;- I pause-sweet heart! It is the thought of thee. And then I feel, if not a present bliss,
Thou art to me the deep reserved hope, Which is the secret life of present bliss.
Come near, my Beautiful, and let me gaze My soul all out into those beaming eyes, Until I lose my being all in thee.
For is not love a losing of one's self
In that which is beloved? Love feels no self: For though it spring in self, yet, like a flower, It lives not for the soil, but yields up all Its breathing essence to the wooed air.
It is not only grief that likes to weep Itself out in lone tears. Sweet, I must hide These coming drops of love, lest, wondering, thou Should'st ask, amidst thy prattle, what they mean. Thou could'st not know they were for love, all love, That are to thee tell-tales of hurt alone.
There, go and play, my jewel-I would read. Alas! my book has gone out like a fire In which a sunbeam strikes. I see no red Thought burning in it. Newer light from God Has fallen on my eyes and on my book,
And dazzled them to blindness. I have look'd Into this lovely beam until my eyes
Are kindled and can see nought but the light That flames in it and them.
Alas! if thou should'st die! And yet, sometimes
I think 'twere well for me thou didst die now, And to the heaven of my memory
Pass with the morning dew upon thy head, And be to me a fresh green thought for aye. For I may lose thee quite if thou abide
To suffer living change.
The hours drink out The beauty of the morn: what charm'd us then We cannot find in all the after day.
I have lost many pets by living death, And so might thee. The young of anything Finds the most honey'd corner in my heart: But if it stay until the streaks of dawn Have parted from it one by one, ah then My heart has lost its tenant, though it lives: It has not even the ghost of that lost love To haunt its desolate chambers, since the thing Is still embodied and denies the ghost. But drag it from my heart before its time, E'en in affection's increase, with the glow Of rising light upon it, and methinks The heart could cease not to be haunted by The sweet idea of the loved thing lost.
My precious one, and could I wish thee dead— Dead, that thou might'st escape the living death? False wish!-O thou canst never die to me, More than myself to myself: for I see much Of that same self in thee: the lines that bank Our beings in have by one stream been mark'd; And when thou liftest up those arched brows The light of my own soul looks out to me.- The years can not estrange thee: though they roll Thy budding youth all out and take thy bloom, My heart will glory in the mellow fruit. O thou art link'd unto me, blood and soul: Thy change must have its parallel in me.
It is a cruel thing that love may be On one side only; but a heart all warm Must cleave unto another dead and cold, And be unsightly as a growing branch Upon a rotten tree. Pray God, my love,
« 上一頁繼續 » |