Then o'er the vale, with gentle swell, The music of the village bell Came sweetly to the echo-giving hills; And the wild horn, whose voice the woodland fills, Was ringing to the merry shout, That faint and far the glen sent out, Where, answering to the sudden shot, thin smoke, Through thick-leaved branches, from the dingle broke. If thou art worn and hard beset With sorrows, that thou wouldst forget, If thou wouldst read a lesson, that will keep Thy heart from fainting and thy soul from sleep, Go to the woods and hills! No tears Dim the sweet look that Nature wears. THE SPIRIT OF POETRY HERE is a quiet spirit in these woods, blows; south wind Where, underneath the white-thorn, in the glade, The wild flowers blocm, or, kissing the soft air, The leaves above their sunny palms outspread. With what a tender and impassioned voice It fills the nice and delicate ear of thought, And frequent, on the everlasting hills, In all the dark embroidery of the storm, And shouts the stern, strong wind. And here, amid Its presence shall uplift thy thoughts from earth, Groves, through whose broken roof the sky looks in, The distant lake, fountains, and mighty trees, In many a lazy syllable, repeating Their old poetic legends to the wind. And this is the sweet spirit, that doth fill As a bright image of the light and beauty We worship in our dreams, and the soft hues The heaven of April, with its changing light, Her hair Is like the summer tresses of the trees, When twilight makes them brown, and on her cheek Blushes the richness of an autumn sky, With ever-shifting beauty. Then her breath, It is so like the gentle air of Spring, As, from the morning's dewy flowers, it comes Full of their fragrance, that it is a joy To have it round us, and her silver voice Is the rich music of a summer bird, Heard in the still night, with its passionate cadence. BURIAL OF THE MINNISINK N sunny slope and beechen swell, The shadowed light of evening fell; And, where the maple's leaf was brown, With soft and silent lapse came down, The glory, that the wood receives, At sunset, in its golden leaves. Far upward in the mellow light Rose the blue hills. One cloud of white, Around a far uplifted cone, In the warm blush of evening shone; An image of the silver lakes, By which the Indian's soul awakes. But soon a funeral hymn was heard They sang, that by his native bowers He stood, in the last moon of flowers, And thirty snows had not yet shed A dark cloak of the roebuck's skin Before, a dark-haired virgin train Stripped of his proud and martial dress, Uncurbed, unreined, and riderless, With darting eye, and nostril spread, And heavy and impatient tread, He came; and oft that eye so proud Asked for his rider in the crowd. They buried the dark chief; they freed Beside the grave his battle steed; |