Its chambers unfilled as its children depart,
The melody stilled in its desolate heart!
Yet the verdure shall creep to the mouldering wall,
And the sunshine shall sleep in the heart of "The
Hall;"
And the foot of the pilgrim shall find till the last
Some fragrance of Home at this shrine of the Past.
In one room of this deserted mansion we came upon an old harpsichord with a single unbroken string. Evoking the last sound from it, we extracted the key, which you will find herewith."—Letter from the Old Dominion.
WHAT of the night, old sleeper?
What of thy watch so lone?
Of the darkness and dust, and deeper,
The silence that shrouds thine own?
What song for the tuneless Reaper
Who binds all songs in one?
Crown thou his sheaf, oh sleeper!
With a requiem monotone!
One chord in thy heart unbroken!
One key to that chord alone!
A touch-and thy thought hath spoken;
A sigh-and thy song hath flown!
A sigh for the single token
Of all who have sung and flown!
Of symphonies ceased forever;
Of harmonies heard no more;
Of chords that have ceased to quiver
Or ever thy task was o'er:
Songs and their symphonies never
Dying in requiems more.
Silence and darkness blended,
Dust on a desolate shore,
Footprints of angels ascended
Around us forevermore!
When the lips of the beautiful singers
With the silvery chords lie low,
And only an echo lingers
Of the melodies sweet and old,
To blend 'neath their seraph fingers
With a hymn from their harps of gold.
A STILLNESS in the lonely hall,
A shadow on the vacant wall,
A broken hearth, an incense flown,
And dust upon the altar-stone;
What deeper gloom to match the shade
That wraps the lonely Colonnade?
White roses round the columns cling,
White moonbeams in the flow'r may fling
A mingled shadow, when appear
The lost of many a lonely year,
In phantom forms, that meet and fade Along the lonely Colonnade.
No more beneath the moonlit leaves
The evening star its song receives.;
For many golden chords are riven
That sent that twilight song to heaven,
And scattered far the feet that strayed
Along the lonely Colonnade.
No more in murmured tones rehearse
The hero's tale, the lover's verse,
Nor voice of song, nor sigh of flute,
Where lips of sweeter tone are mute;
Oh, lips! that loving hands have laid.
Far from the lonely Colonnade.
Oh, sister if the past imparts
But dreams of sadness to our hearts,
Why ask we of the coming years
A better blessedness than tears,
Amid the pale white flowers arrayed
Along life's lonely Colonnade?
BELOW the granite chain.
Appalachian,
Above the sandy plain,
Which under-dips the main,
There lies a belt of hills,
Which the Middle Georgian tills.
The hills and how came they?
The yellow, red, and gray?
The gravel, sand, and clay?
The big ones, why so tall?
The little ones, so small?
How came they here at all?
Is the mystery that fills
The history of the hills,
With much perplexity
For my geology.
Whether deposited
In the deep ocean's bed,
As one might softly spread
An ancient feather-bed
Over an earthquake's head.
Till waking with a shout,
The giant laid about,
And made a hill "crop out"
For every deadly blow
Delivered down below.
Or whether 'twas the gift
(A most prodigious lift!)
Of the era known as drift,"
When the ice-raft stole away
The gravel, sand, and clay
From many an Arctic bay,
And "bowlder," by the way,
Bore southward day by day
Till on the floor it lay,-
On the grooved and furrowed floor
Of the slow-receding sea,—
And, cracking with a roar,
Poured mud from every pore,
To make one hillock more,
Which the slow-receding sea,
With its softly-lapping hands
Amid the moistened sands,
Like a man that undertakes
To mould before he bakes,
Or a child that patti-cakes,—
Which the slow-receding sea,
With its softly-dimpled hands,
With its foam-white ruffled hands,
With its diamonded hands,
Bequeathed as "Cotton-Lands"
To all the world—to me,
And my Geology,
A much perplexi-T.
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