"INNOCENT CHILD AND SNOW-WHITE
NNOCENT child and snow-white flower!
Well are ye paired in your opening hour. Thus should the pure and the lovely meet, Stainless with stainless, and sweet with sweet.
White as those leaves, just blown apart; Are the folds of thy own young heart; Guilty passion and cankering care Never have left their traces there.
Artless one! though thou gazest now O'er the white blossom with earnest brow, Soon will it tire thy childish eye;
Fair as it is, thou wilt throw it by.
Throw it aside in thy weary hour,
Throw to the ground the fair white flower; Yet, as thy tender years depart,
Keep that white and innocent heart.
SUPPOSED ΤΟ BE WRITTEN AT A HAMLET NEAR THE FOOT OF
OT from the sands or cloven rocks,
Thou rapid Arve! thy waters flow; Nor earth, within her bosom, locks
Thy dark unfathomed wells below. Thy springs are in the cloud, thy stream Begins to move and murmur first Where ice-peaks feel the noonday beam, Or rain-storms on the glacier burst.
Born where the thunder and the blast And morning's earliest light are born, Thou rushest swoln, and loud, and fast, By these low homes, as if in scorn: Yet humbler springs yield purer waves; And brighter, glassier streams than thine, Sent up from earth's unlighted caves,
With heaven's own beam and image shine.
Yet stay; for here are flowers and trees; Warm rays on cottage-roofs are here; And laugh of girls, and hum of bees, Here linger till thy waves are clear. Thou heedest not-thou hastest on;
From steep to steep thy torrent falls; Till, mingling with the mighty Rhone, It rests beyond Geneva's walls.
Rush on but were there one with me That loved me, I would light my hearth Here, where with God's own majesty
Are touched the features of the earth. By these old peaks, white, high, and vast, Still rising as the tempests beat, Here would I dwell, and sleep, at last, Among the blossoms at their feet.
TO COLE, THE PAINTER, DEPARTING FOR
HINE eyes shall see the light of distant skies; Yet, COLE! thy heart shall bear to Europe's strand A living image of our own bright land,
Such as upon thy glorious canvas lies; Lone lakes-savannas where the bison roves-
Rocks rich with summer garlands—solemn streams- Skies, where the desert eagle wheels and screams- Spring bloom and autumn blaze of boundless groves. Fair scenes shall greet thee where thou goest—fair, But different-everywhere the trace of men, Paths, homes, graves, ruins, from the lowest glen To where life shrinks from the fierce Alpine air. Gaze on them, till the tears shall dim thy sight, But keep that earlier, wilder image bright.
THE TWENTY-SECOND OF DECEMBER.
ILD was the day; the wintry sea
Moaned sadly on New-England's strand,
When first the thoughtful and the free, Our fathers, trod the desert land.
They little thought how pure a light,
With years, should gather round that day; How love should keep their memories bright, How wide a realm their sons should sway.
Green are their bays; but greener still
Shall round their spreading fame be wreathed, And regions, now untrod, shall thrill
With reverence when their names are breathed.
Till where the sun, with softer fires,
Looks on the vast Pacific's sleep, The children of the pilgrim sires This hallowed day like us shall keep. New York, 1829.
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