ON THE RAMPARTS AT ANGOULEME.

HY art thou speechless, O thou setting Sun ?
Speak to this earth, speak to this listening scene,
Where Charente flows among the meadows

green,

And in his gilded waters, one by one,
The inverted minarets of poplar quake
With expectation, until thou shalt break
The intolerable silence. See! he sinks
Without a word; and his ensanguined bier
Is vacant in the west, while far and near
Behold! each coward shadow eastward shrinks.
Thou dost not strive, O Sun, nor dost thou cry
Amid thy cloud-built streets; but meek and still
Thou dost the type of Jesus best fulfil,

A noiseless revelation in the sky.

UR thoughts are greater than ourselves, our dreams

Ofttimes more solid than our acts; our hope With more of substance and of shadow teems

Than our thin joys, and hath a nobler scope.
O sons of men! there is a Presence here,
Here in our undying spirits, which
With an unearthly wealth doth oft enrich
The reason hourly sanctified by fear.
Herewith men prophesy, herewith men press
To their own hearts in studious loneliness
Forms greater than they dare to tell: beneath
The shadow of their own imaginings

They sit, withdrawn and sheltered; for a wreath
Encircles them, a wreath of Angels' wings.

IKE a musician that with flying finger
Startles the voice of some new instrument,

And, though he know that in one string are blent
All its extremes of sound, yet still doth linger
Among the lighter threads, fearing to start
The deep soul of that one melodious wire,
Lest it, unanswering, dash his high desire,
And spoil the hopes of his expectant heart ;--
Thus, with my mistress oft conversing, I
Stir every lighter theme with careless voice,
Gathering sweet music and celestial joys
From the harmonious soul o'er which I fly;
Yet o'er the one deep master-chord I hover,
And dare not stoop, fearing to tell-I love her.

AD soul, whom God, resuming what He gave,
Medicines with bitter anguish of the tomb,

Cease to oppress the portals of the grave,
And strain thy aching sight across the gloom.
The surged Atlantic's winter-beaten wave
Shall sooner pierce the purpose of the wind,
Than thy storm-tossed and heavy-swelling mind
Grasp the full import of his means to save.
Through the dark night lie still; God's faithful grace

Lies hid, like morning, underneath the sea;

Let thy slow hours roll, like these weary stars,

Down to the level ocean patiently;

Till his loved hands shall touch the Eastern bars,

And his full glory shine upon thy face.

SOLITUDE.

SOLITUDE!-amidst these ancient oaks,

Whose shadows broad sleep on the mossy

ground,

And breeze-fanned boughs send forth a slumberous sound,

Whose rugged trunks the hoary lichen cloaks,

Where leaps the squirrel, and the raven croaks—
These rifted thorns, with snaky ivy bound,

In many a fold fantastic, round and round,—
These tree-Laocoons-which the woodman's strokes
Shall never make to totter to their fall,—

Which time alone shall waste,-how dear art thou To me, who commune with thy calmness now, When peaceful Evening spreads her purple pall,

And Contemplation, with her scroll unfurled,

Brings sad-sweet thoughts to wean me from the world.