Page images
PDF
EPUB

Of new-sprung leaves their modulations mix | Others apart far in the grassy dale
Mellifluous. The jay, the rook, the daw,
And each harsh pipe discordant heard alone,
Aid the full concert; while the stock-dove
breathes

Or roughening waste their humble texture

A melancholy murmur through the whole.

'Tis love creates their melody, and all
This waste of music is the voice of Love,
That even to birds and beasts the tender

arts

Of pleasing teaches; hence the glossy kind
Try every winning way inventive Love
Can dictate, and in courtship to their mates
Pour forth their little souls. First wide
around

With distant awe in airy rings they rove,
Endeavoring by a thousand tricks to catch
The cunning, conscious, half-averted glance
Of their regardless charmer. Should she

seem

Softening the least approvance to bestow,
Their colors burnish, and, by hope inspired,
They brisk advance; then, on a sudden

struck,

Retire disordered; then again approach,
In fond rotation spread the spotted wing
And shiver every feather with desire.

Connubial leagues agreed, to the deep woods
They haste away, all as their fancy leads,
Pleasure or food or secret safety prompts,
That Nature's great command may be obeyed,
Nor all the sweet sensations they perceive
Indulged in vain. Some to the holly-hedge,
Nestling, repair, and to the thicket some;
Some to the rude protection of the thorn
Commit their feeble offspring; the cleft tree
Offers its kind concealment to a few,

weave;

But most in woodland solitudes delight,
In unfrequented glooms or shaggy banks,
Steep, and divided by a babbling brook
Whose murmurs soothe them all the livelong
day

When by kind duty fixed. Among the roots
Of hazel pendent o'er the plaintive stream
They frame the first foundation of their
domes-

Dry sprigs of trees in artful fabric laid
And bound with clay together. Now 'tis
naught

But restless hurry through the busy air,
Beat by unnumbered wings. The swallow

sweeps

The slimy pool, to build his hanging house
Intent, and often from the careless back
Of herds and flocks a thousand tugging bills
Pluck hair and wool, and oft, when unob-
served,

Steal from the barn a straw, till soft and

warm,

Clean and complete, their habitation grows.

As thus the patient dam assiduous sits,
Not to be tempted from her tender task
Or by sharp hunger or by smooth delight,
Though the whole loosened spring around

her blows,

Her sympathizing lover takes his stand
High on the opponent bank and ceaseless
sings

The tedious time away, or else supplies
Her place a moment while she sudden flits
To pick the scanty meal. The appointed

time

Their food its insects and its moss their nests; With pious toil fulfilled, the callow young,

Warmed and expanded into perfect life,
Their brittle bondage break and come to light
A helpless family demanding food
With constant clamor. Oh what passions
Oh what passions
then,

young;

What melting sentiments of kindly care,
On the new parents seize! Away they fly,
Affectionate, and, undesiring, bear
The most delicious morsel to their
Which equally distributed, again
The search begins. Even so a gentle pair
By fortune sunk, but formed of generous
mould

Be not the Muse ashamed here to bemoan
Her brothers of the grove by tyrant man
Inhuman caught and in the narrow cage
From liberty confined, and boundless air.
Dull are the pretty slaves, their plumage dull,
Ragged and all its brightening lustre lost;
Nor is that sprightly wildness in their notes
Which clear and vigorous warbles from the
beech.

Oh, then, ye friends of love and love-taught
song,

Spare the soft tribes, this barbarous art forbear,

And charmed with cares beyond the vulgar If on your bosom Innocence can win,

[blocks in formation]

Of wandering swain the white-winged plover And yet whose tongue, when all is done,

wheels

Her sounding flight, and then directly on
In long excursions skims the level lawn,

To tempt him from her nest. The wild

duck, hence,

Will tell thy worth?

The poet's! He alone doth still
Uphold all worth.

Then love the poet-love his themes,

O'er the rough moss, and o'er the trackless His thoughts, half hid in golden dreams,

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

And later joys, like autumn flowers,
Have bloomed for us once more;
But never canst thou be again
What once thou wert to me:
I glory in another's chain,
And thou'rt no longer free.

Thy stream of life glides calmly on,
A prosperous lot is thine-
The brighter that it did not join

The turbid waves of mine;
Yet oh, could fondest love relume

Joy's sunshine on my brow, Thine scarce can be a happier doom Than I might boast of now.

ALARIC A. WATTS.

AN IDEAL WOMAN.

SHE was my peer

No weakling girl who would surrender will
And life and reason, with her loving heart,
To her possessor; no soft, clinging thing
Who would find breath alone within the arms
Of a strong master and obediently
Wait on his whims in slavish carefulness;
No fawning, cringing spaniel to attend
His royal pleasure and account herself
Rewarded by his pats and pretty words;
But a sound woman who with insight keen
Had wrought a scheme of life and measured
well

Her womanhood; had spread before her feet
A fine philosophy to guide her steps;

Had won a faith to which her life was brought In strict adjustment, brain and heart mean

while

Working in conscious harmony and rhythm With the great scheme of God's great universe On toward her being's end.

DR. J. G. HOLLAND.

THE DREAM OF PETRARCA.

HEN I was younger, I was fond of wandering in solitary places, and never was afraid of slumbering in woods and grottoes. Among the chief pleasures of my life, and among the commonest of my occupations, was the bringing before me such heroes and heroines of antiquity, such poets and sages, such of the prosperous and of the unfortunate, as most interested me by their courage, their wisdom, their eloquence or their adventures. Engaging them in the conversation best suited to their characters, I knew perfectly their manners, their steps, their voices; and often did I moisten with my tears the models I had been forming of the less happy. Great is the privilege of entering into the studies of the intellectual; great is that of conversing with the guides of nations, the movers of the mass, the regulators of the unruly will, stiff in its impurity and rash against the finger of the Almighty Power that formed it; but give me rather the creature to sympathize with, apportion me the sufferings to assuage. sufferings to assuage. Allegory had few attractions for me, believing it to be the delight, in general, of idle, frivolous, inexcursive minds in whose mansions there is neither hall nor portal to receive the loftier of the passions. A stranger to the affections, she holds a low station among the handmaidens of Poetry, being fit for little but an apparition in a mask.

I had reflected for some time on this subject, when, wearied with the length of my walk over the mountains and finding a soft old molehill covered with gray grass by the wayside, I laid my head upon it and slept. I cannot tell how long it was before a species of dream, or vision, came over me.

Two beautiful youths appeared beside me. Each was winged, but the wings were hanging down and seemed ill-adapted to flight. One of them, whose voice was the softest I ever heard, looking at me frequently, said to the other,

"He is under my guardianship for the present: do not awaken him with that feather."

Methought, on hearing the whisper, I saw something like the feather of an arrow, and then the arrow itself, the whole of it, even to the point, although he carried it in such a manner that it was difficult at first to discover more than a palm's length of it; the rest of the shaft (and the whole of the barb) was behind his ankles.

"This feather never awakens any one," replied he, rather petulantly, "but it brings more of confident security and more of cherished dreams than you, without me, are capable of imparting."

"Be it so," answered the gentler; "none is less inclined to quarrel or dispute than I am. Many whom you have wounded grievously call upon me for succor; but so little am I disposed to thwart you it is seldom I venture to do more for them than to whisper a few words of comfort in passing.

[merged small][ocr errors]

"Odd enough that we, O Sleep, should be thought so alike!" said Love, contemptuously. "Yonder is he who bears a nearer resemblance to you; the dullest have observed it." I fancied I turned my eyes to where he was pointing, and saw at a distance the figure he designated.

Meanwhile, the contention went on uninterruptedly. Sleep was slow in asserting his power or his benefits. Love recapitulated them, but only that he might assert his own above them. Suddenly he called on me to decide and to choose my patron. Under the influence, first of the one, then of the other, I sprang from repose to rapture, I alighted from rapture on repose, and knew not which was sweetest. Love was very angry with me, and declared he would cross me throughout the whole of my existence. Whatever I might on other occasions have thought of his veracity, I now felt too surely the conviction that he would keep his word.

At last, before the close of the altercation, the third genius had advanced, and stood near us. I cannot tell how I knew him, but I knew him to be the genius of Death. Breathless as I was at beholding him, I soon became familiar with his features. First they seemed only calm, presently they grew contemplative, and lastly beautiful: those of the Graces themselves are less regular, less harmonious, less composed. Love glanced at him unsteadily, with a countenance in which there was somewhat of anxiety, somewhat of disdain, and cried,

"Go away! go away! Nothing that thou touchest lives."

66

'Say rather, child," replied the advancing form, and, advancing, grew loftier and statelier-" say rather that nothing of beautiful or of glorious lives its own true life until my wing hath passed over it."

Love pouted and rumpled and bent down with his forefinger the stiff, short feathers on his arrow-head, but replied not. Although he frowned worse than ever, and at me, I dreaded him less and less, and scarcely looked toward him.

The milder and calmer genius, the third, in proportion as I took courage to contemplate him, regarded me with more and more complacency. He held neither flower nor arrow, as the others did, but, throwing back the clusters of dark curls that overshadowed his countenance, he presented to me his hand openly and benignly. I shrank on looking at him so near, and yet I sighed to love him. He smiled, not without an expression of pity, at perceiving my diffidence, my timidity; for I remembered how soft was the hand of Sleep, how warm and entrancing was Love's. By degrees I grew ashamed of my ingratitude, and, turning my face away, I held out my arms and felt my neck within his. Composure allayed all the throbbings of my bosom, the coolness of freshest morning breathed around, the heavens seemed to open above me, while the beautiful cheek of my deliverer rested on my head.

I would now have looked for those others, but, knowing my intention by my gesture, he said consolatorily,

"Sleep is on his way to the earth, where many are calling him; but it is not to them he hastens, for every call only makes him fly

« PreviousContinue »