What more than Artichoke the rill
Of Helicon? Than Pipe-stave hill
Arcadia's mountain-view?

No sweeter bowers the bee delayed,
In wild Hymettus' scented shade,
Than those you dwell among;
Snow-flowered azalias, intertwined
With roses, over banks inclined

With trembling harebells hung!

A charmed life unknown to death,.
Immortal freshness Nature hath ;
Her fabled fount and glen

Are now and here: Dodona's shrine
Still murmurs in the wind-swept pine, —
All is that e'er hath been.

--

The Beauty which old Greece or Rome
Sung, painted, wrought, lies close at home;
We need but eye and ear

In all our daily walks to trace
The outlines of incarnate grace,

The hymns of gods to hear!

A

IN PEACE.

TRACK of moonlight on a quiet lake,

Whose small waves on a silver-sanded shore Whisper of peace, and with the low winds make Such harmonies as keep the woods awake, And listening all night long for their sweet sake

A green-waved slope of meadow, hovered o'er By angel-troops of lilies, swaying light

On viewless stems, with folded wings of white;
A slumberous stretch of mountain-land, far seen
Where the low westering day, with gold and green,
Purple and amber, softly blended, fills

The wooded vales, and melts among the hills;
A vine-fringed river, winding to its rest

On the calm bosom of a stormless sea,

Bearing alike upon its placid breast,

With earthly flowers and heavenly stars impressed, The hues of time and of eternity:

Such are the pictures which the thought of thee, O friend, awakeneth, - charming the keen pain Of thy departure, and our sense of loss Requiting with the fulness of thy gain.

Lo! on the quiet grave thy life-borne cross,
Dropped only at its side, methinks doth shine,
Of thy beatitude the radiant sign!

No sob of grief, no wild lament be there,
To break the Sabbath of the holy air;
But, in their stead, the silent-breathing prayer
Of hearts still waiting for a rest like thine.
O spirit redeemed! Forgive us, if henceforth,
With sweet and pure similitudes of earth,

We keep thy pleasant memory freshly green,
Of love's inheritance a priceless part,

Which Fancy's self, in reverent awe, is seen To paint, forgetful of the tricks of art,

With pencil dipped alone in colors of the heart.

BENEDICITE.

GOD'S love and peace be with thee, where

Soe'er this soft autumnal air

Lifts the dark tresses of thy hair!

Whether through city casements comes
Its kiss to thee, in crowded rooms,
Or, out among the woodland blooms,

It freshens o'er thy thoughtful face,
Imparting, in its glad embrace,
Beauty to beauty, grace to grace!

Fair Nature's book together read,
The old wood-paths that knew our tread,
The maple shadows overhead,

The hills we climbed, the river seen
By gleams along its deep ravine, —
All keep thy memory fresh and green.

Where'er I look, where'er I stray,

Thy thought goes with me on my way,
And hence the prayer I breathe to-day;

O'er lapse of time and change of scene,
The weary waste which lies between
Thyself and me, my heart I lean.

Thou lack'st not Friendship's spell-word, nor
The half-unconscious power to draw
All hearts to thine by Love's sweet law.

With these good gifts of God is cast
Thy lot, and many a charm thou hast
To hold the blessed angels fast.

If, then, a fervent wish for thee

The gracious heavens will heed from me,
What should, dear heart, its burden be?

The sighing of a shaken reed, -
What can I more than meekly plead
The greatness of our common need?

God's love,

unchanging, pure, and true, The Paraclete white-shining through

His peace,

the fall of Hermon's dew!

With such a prayer, on this sweet day,
As thou mayst hear and I may say,
I greet thee, dearest, far away!

PICTURES.

I.

L'

IGHT, warmth, and sprouting greenness, and o'er
all

Blue, stainless, steel-bright ether, raining down
Tranquillity upon the deep-hushed town,

The freshening meadows, and the hillsides brown;
Voice of the west-wind from the hills of pine,

And the brimmed river from its distant fall,
Low hum of bees, and joyous interlude

Of bird-songs in the streamlet-skirting wood, ~

492

Heralds and prophecies of sound and sight, Blessed forerunners of the warmth and light, Attendant angels to the house of prayer,

With reverent footsteps keeping pace with mine, Once more, through God's great love, with you I share A morn of resurrection sweet and fair

As that which saw, of old, in Palestine,
Immortal Love uprising in fresh bloom
From the dark night and winter of the tomb !

5th mo., 2d, 1852.

II.

White with its sun-bleached dust, the pathway winds
Before me; dust is on the shrunken grass,
And on the trees beneath whose boughs I pass;
Frail screen against the Hunter of the sky,
Who, glaring on me with his lidless eye,

While mounting with his dog-star high and higher

Ambushed in light intolerable, unbinds

The burnished quiver of his shafts of fire.
Between me and the hot fields of his South
A tremulous glow, as from a furnace-mouth,
Glimmers and swims before my dazzled sight,
As if the burning arrows of his ire

Broke as they fell, and shattered into light;
Yet on my cheek I feel the western wind,

And hear it telling to the orchard trees,

And to the faint and flower-forsaken bees,

Tales of fair meadows, green with constant streams,

And mountains rising blue and cool behind,

Where in moist dells the purple orchis gleams, And starred with white the virgin's bower is twined. So the o'erwearied pilgrim, as he fares