Love only on the couch was hovering,
A couch that gods had deigned to bless,
Where each had given some gift of happiness;
Love only staid, he kissed each forehead fair,
And Aung narcotic odours from his wing
(Sweet beyond man's imagining);
Then took his flight upon the morning air:
Yet every night returned and blessed that happy pair!
WHAT see'st thou, silver crescent of the sky,
When, in thy growing beauty, thou dost sail
Bright, through yon blue unclouded canopy,
And when, ere twilight gathers in the vale,
Or sunny radiance leaves the mountain's brow,
Thy gentler beams their loveliest light bestow?
Thou see'st the village-dance, where light hearts meet
Upon the village green, and where the lute
Breathes forth in merry tunes its accents sweet,
Nor stops until the tabor's voice is mute,
And till the dancers in their mirth forget
The jingling music of the castanet.
Thou see'st the lover in the twilight bower,
When vow is poured on vow, and eye meets eye,
And when the bliss of that enraptured hour
Is uttered only in the burning sigh;
Ah! tell them not that youth is on the wing,
Blight not the hopes of their delicious spring.
Thou see'st the fisher loitering by the shore;
Thou see'st the school-boy wandering through the
Thou see'st the peasant by his cottage door;
Thou see'st the poet in his solitude,
Musing, perchance, some high heroic lay-
Soft fall thy light where'er his footsteps stray!
But other scenes are thine, sweet star of night,
When, in thy wane, the too victorious morn
Steals from thee all thy radiance, and with light
From orb more dazzling hastens to adorn
This lower world: Ah! then, fair planet, say,
What see'st thou, as thou hold'st thy heavenly way ?
Thou see'st the traveller, haply doomed to roam
In foreign lands, unfriended and alone,
An exile from his country and his home,
The sweets of friendship and of love unknown;
Now round his bark the whitening billows rise,
And now his path through Afric's desert lies.
Thou see'st pale genius watching from afar
The first faint traces of the wakening day,
Or gazing sadly on yon fading star,
Whose little light fades not more fast away:
Ah! 'tis the vigil of the broken heart,
That fain would live, though treacherous hope depart.
Thou see'st the mother, wife, or sister stand,
By the lorn sick-bed, where disease has found
Another victim, and with icy hand
The joyful current of the blood has bound,
And from the brow plucked off the festive wreath,
Triumphant of the thorns that lurked beneath.
Thou see'st the soldier on the tented field
Snatching short slumber ere he wakes to die;
Thou see'st the wretch whose senses never yield
To gentle sleep, and in whose dim, sunk eye
Thou read'st remorse and terror;-this is he
Who finds, too late, that guilt is misery.
Thou see'st, fair orb, the truth of human life,
Things, which will be, and which have ever been;
A motley stage, that shows a constant strife
Betwixt the tragic and the comic scene;
Where now a sage, and now a fool appears;
To-day delight and smiles, to-morrow care and tears.
BY. T. K. HERVEY, ESQ.
ACROSS the waves-away and far,
My spirit turns to thee;
I love thee as men love a star,
The brightest where a thousand are,
Sadly and silently;
With love unstained by hopes or fears,
Too deep for words, too pure for tears!
My heart is tutored not to weep;
Calm, like the calm of even,
Where grief lies hushed, but not asleep,
Hallows the hours I love to keep
For only thee and heaven;
Too far and fair to aid the birth
Of thoughts that have a taint of earth!
And yet the days forever gone,
When thou wert as a bird,
Living 'mid flowers and leaves alone,
And singing in so soft a tone
As I never since have heard,
Will make me grieve that birds, and things
So beautiful, have ever wings!
And there are hours in the lonely night,
When I seem to hear thy calls,
Faint as the echoes of far delight,
And dreamy and sad as the sighing flight
Of distant waterfalls;
And then my vow is hard to keep,
For it were a joy, indeed, to weep!
For I feel, as men feel when moonlight falls
Amid old cathedral aisles;
Or the wind plays, sadly, along the walls
Of lonely and forsaken halls,
That we knew in their day of smiles;
Or as one who hears, amid foreign flowers,
A tune he had learned in his mother's bowers.
But I may not, and I dare not weep,
Lest the vision pass away,
And the vigils that I love to keep
Be broken up, by the fevered sleep
That leaves me-with the day—
Like one who has travelled far to the spot
Where his home should be-and finds it not!
Yet then, like the incense of many flowers,
Rise pleasant thoughts to me;
For I know, from thy dwelling in eastern bowers,
That thy spirit has come, in those silent hours,
To meet me over the sea;
And I feel, in my soul, the fadeless truth
Of her whom I loved in early youth.
Like hidden streams,-whose quiet tone
Is unheard in the garish day,
That utter a music all their own,
When the night-dew falls, and the lady moon
Looks out to hear them play,-
I knew not half thy gentle worth,
Till grief drew all its music forth.
We shall not meet on earth again!-
And I would have it so;
For, they tell me that the cloud of pain
Has flung its shadow o'er thy brain,
And touched thy looks with wo;
And I have heard that storm and shower
Have dimmed thy loveliness, my flower!
I would not look upon thy tears,—
For I have thee in my heart,
Just as thou wert, in those blessed years
When we were, both, too young for fears
That we should ever part;
And I would not aught should mar the spell,
The picture nursed so long and well!
I love to think on thee, as one
With whom the strife is o'er;
And feel that I am journeying on,
Wasted, and weary, and alone,
To join thee on that shore
Where thou-I know-wilt look for me,
And 1, for ever, be with thee !
When memory paints with pencil true
The scenes where youth delighted roved,
She throws o'er none so sweet a hue
As robes the home of her I loved.
Each tree, each flower, that flourished there,
In former beauty seems to wave;
I seem to breathe iny native air,
'Mid friends who're sleeping in the grave.
But soon these shades of joy depart
And present sorrows start to view-
Memory, like Hope, still mocks the heart
With visions sweet-but fleeting too!
But Faith points out your radiant heaven,
And bids the mourner not despair;
Whispering, "afflictions are but given,
"Like angel-wings to waft you there!"
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