Come hither, grief; one draught of thee

Will taste more sweet

Than all false joy's hypocrisy,
Which here doth greet
Deluded souls; one tear

Flows with more honey far

Than all Hyblæan hives; one pious sigh
Breathes sweeter air

Than all the fair

Arabia, and can sooner reach the sky.

TWO VISITS TO A GRAVE.

From an old Review. No name is appended to it.
I STOOD by the grave of one beloved,
On a chill and a windless night,

When not a blade of grass was moved
In its garb of virgin white.

The starry armament look'd down
From their glassy waste the while :
Perchance they could not seem to frown,
But they did not seem to smile.

Long time had pass'd since they laid him there,
But I heeded not of time;

I knew the stone, though blank and bare,
Unmark'd by line or rhyme.

Madly I wept that I had been

Over the wrinkled sea,

When he had found in this last sad scene

A home and a privacy.

The gloomy stillness of the hour

Came coldly o'er my heart;

And Faith and Hope forgot their power

To calm the sinner's smart.

I almost cursed the good great God,
And vow'd that I would be,
Even as he beneath the sod,
Though I had not lived as he.

I left the tomb, I ceased to weep;
But mocking forms of pain

Came thronging from the fields of sleep,
And forced me back again.

That morn the hoar-frost still was there,
In place of balmy dew,

Unshaken was the silver'd hair
Of the old churchyard yew.

I heard a company of birds

Their grateful carol troll:

And a sense of prayer, too full for words,
Arose within my soul.

The web of morning mist was gone,
Fresh wove in nature's loom,

And the sun, like a bold free spirit, shone
Clear on my father's tomb.

I worshipp'd, as the gold flood pour'd
On the scene before so dim,

And, when the beautiful I adored,
I was forced to think of him.

I thought, I pray'd, and thus became
More full of sweet content;

As the frost's foes, the sunbeams, frame
The earth to merriment.

I was not happy; but I pray'd

At heart that I might not be

As he who in that grave was laid,

Till I had lived as he.

ODE TO A MOUNTAIN TORRENT.

Translated from the German of STOLBERG, by WILLIAM TAYLOR. IMMORTAL youth,

Thou streamest forth from rocky caves;

No mortal saw

The cradle of thy might;

No ear has heard

Thy infant stainmering in the gushing spring,

How lovely art thou in thy silver locks;
How dreadful thundering from the echoing crags!
At thy approach

The fir-wood quakes;

Thou castest down, with root and branch, the fir;
Thou seizest on the rock,

And roll'st it scornful like a pebble on.

Thee the sun clothes in dazzling beams of glory,
And paints with colours of the heavenly bow
The clouds that o'er thy dusty cataracts climb.

Why hasten so to the cerulean sea;
Is not the neighbourhood of heaven good,
Not grand thy temple of encircling rocks,
Not fair the forests hanging o'er thy bed?
Hasten not so to the cerulean sea;
Youth, thou art here

Strong as a god,
Free as a god!

Though yonder beckon treacherous calms below,
The wavering lustre of the silent sea,
Now softly silver'd by the swimming moon,
Now rosy-golden in the western beam;
Youth, what is silken rest,

And what the smiling of the friendly moon,
Or gold and purple of the evening sun,
To him who feels himself in thraldom's bonds!

Here thou canst wildly stream

As bids thy heart:
Below thy masters are the changeful winds,
Or the dead stillness of the servile main.

Hasten not so to the cerulean sea;
Youth, thou art here

Strong as a god,
Free as a god!

THE EBB TIDE.

A passage in a poem contributed anonymously to an old number of the Athenæum. It is a fine bit of description.

THERE is a joy and beauty unto them

Whom the clear streams upbraid not, nor condemn,
In the swift flow of waters; to the pure

They cannot be indifferent; and be sure

That, therefore, dearest friend, I would that thou
Listen'd the steady rippling at the bow

Of my light boat, whose tall and slanted mast
Stoops ever to the unremitting blast.

The living wind rejoices, and is strong,

And would bear swiftly our swift thoughts along ;
The tide flows broadly up, and blots away

The river's windings; though, in ebb, it lay

Sinuous, and twisting like a silver snake

That winds its lithe form through the sounding brake.
Then might we mark how, when the currents shift,
The barges, anchor'd in mid channel, drift
Heavily round, and with the current flow
Far as their outstretch'd tethers let them go;
Or how the wavering sea-wreck, and all weeds
Which ocean in its oozy bottom feeds,

Stream backward with the altering stream; and sedge,
Heap'd up by many tides o'er all the ledge

Of shore, and mix'd with pebbles, shells, and sand,

To be a wall betwixt the sea and land,

Is fast left bare, save where the ebb trails back

A few lank weeds, like ribbands, in the track

Of its retreating. Would that thou mightst view
How the clouds, sailing o'er heaven's ocean blue,
Outstrip not us; or view them from behind
Moulded and shifted by the shaping wind
That drives them, as the poet, thought on thought,
Drives, shaping ever, until he has wrought
From their fine substance an immortal woof,
Spreading a temple's overreaching roof
To screen him from the glare and undelight
Of the day's splendour, of a day as bright
As this is now; yet which can weave a night

Of gloom upon life's onward stream, more dark
Than the shadow of my ocean-wandering bark,
Darkening my path before me, on this river,
More changing, more unquiet, and for ever
Eluding grasp.

THE STATUES.

Found in one of the journals of 1829. It is well worth snatching from oblivion.

I SOUGHT the hall where tranquil stood
The silent marble multitude,

The glorious gods, the godlike men,
That earth will never see again.

Their brows were full of inward thought,
Their eyes with sightless meaning fraught;
A finer blood than plays in man
Unseen through every member ran.

Beauty and age, the hostile powers
That struggle in this world of ours,
In friendly league for them had made,
A sphere of calm, a splendid shade.

By a deep life within sustain'd,
They, to themselves sufficing, reign'd;
Not more serene, or bright, or still
Angels that sleep on Horeb's hill.

I sought the hall wherein they stood
With hope to tame my fever'd blood,
To breathe the cold and stirless air,
That fill'd itself with beauty there.

And who, I said, 'mid brows so clear,
And eyes so pure from throb or tear,
Amid these pale embodied stars,
Would feel the world's convulsive jars ?

A sacred awe, a strengthening might,
Sits on each forehead's lineless height;
And those broad eyes will scare away
The thoughts that are not calm as they.