Till I felt the dark power o'er my reveries stealing, From the gloom of the thicket that over me hung, And the thoughts that awoke, in that rapture of feeling,

Were formed into verse as they rose to my tongue.

Bright visions! I mixed with the world, and ye faded,
No longer your pure rural worshipper now;
In the haunts your continual presence pervaded,
Ye shrink from the signet of care on my brow.

In the old mossy groves on the breast of the mountains,

In deep lonely glens where the waters complain, By the shade of the rock, by the gush of the fountain, I seek your loved footsteps, but seek them in vain.

Oh, leave not forlorn and forever forsaken,
Your pupil and victim to life and its tears!
But sometimes return, and in mercy awaken
The glories ye showed to his earlier years.
Cummington, 1815; New York, 1826.

"New York Review," February, 1826.

THE NEW MOON.

HEN, as the garish day is done,

WHE

Heaven burns with the descended sun,

'Tis passing sweet to mark,

Amid that flush of crimson light,
The new moon's modest bow grow bright,
As earth and sky grow dark.

Few are the hearts too cold to feel
A thrill of gladness o'er them steal,
When first the wandering eye
Sees faintly, in the evening blaze,
That glimmering curve of tender rays
Just planted in the sky.

The sight of that young crescent brings Thoughts of all fair and youthful thingsThe hopes of early years;

And childhood's purity and grace,

And joys that like a rainbow chase

The passing shower of tears.

The captive yields him to the dream
Of freedom, when that virgin beam
Comes out upon the air;

And painfully the sick man tries
To fix his dim and burning eyes
On the sweet promise there.

Most welcome to the lover's sight
Glitters that pure, emerging light;
For prattling poets say,

That sweetest is the lovers' walk,
And tenderest is their murmured talk,
Beneath its gentle ray.

And there do graver men behold
A type of errors, loved of old,
Forsaken and forgiven;

And thoughts and wishes not of earth.
Just opening in their early birth,

Like that new light in heaven.

New York, March, 1826.

"New York Review," March, 1826.

THE JOURNEY OF LIFE.

ENEATH the waning moon I walk at night,

BENEATH moon I at a

And muse on human life-for all around

Are dim uncertain shapes that cheat the sight,
And pitfalls lurk in shade along the ground,
And broken gleams of brightness, here and there,
Glance through, and leave unwarmed, the death-like air.

The trampled earth returns a sound of fear-
A hollow sound, as if I walked on tombs;
And lights, that tell of cheerful homes, appear
Far off, and die like hope amid the glooms.
A mournful wind across the landscape flies,
And the wide atmosphere is full of sighs.

And I, with faltering footsteps, journey on,

Watching the stars that roll the hours away,
Till the faint light that guides me now is gone,
And, like another life, the glorious day
Shall open o'er me from the empyreal height,
With warmth, and certainty, and boundless light.

New York, 1826.

Edition of 1832.

THE GLADNESS OF NATURE.

S this a time to be cloudy and sad,

a

When our mother Nature laughs around;

When even the deep blue heavens look glad,

And gladness breathes from the blossoming ground?

There are notes of joy from the hang-bird and wren,
And the gossip of swallows through all the sky;
The ground-squirrel gayly chirps by his den,
And the wilding bee hums merrily by.

The clouds are at play in the azure space

And their shadows at play on the bright-green vale, And here they stretch to the frolic chase, And there they roll on the easy gale.

There's a dance of leaves in that aspen bower,

There's a titter of winds in that beechen tree,

There's a smile on the fruit, and a smile on the flower, And a laugh from the brook that runs to the sea.