Come, for the soft, low sunlight calls; The God who gave to thee and me WILLIAM C. BRYANT. If Thou wert by my side. F thou wert by my side, my love, IF How fast would evening fail In green Bengala's palmy grove, If thou, my love, wert by my side, How gayly would our pinnace glide I miss thee at the dawning gray, I miss thee when by Gunga's stream But most beneath the lamp's pale beam I spread my books, my pencil try, THE SOLDIER'S DREAM. But when of morn or eve the star I feel, though thou art distant far, Then on then on! where duty leads, O'er broad Hindostan's sultry meads, O'er bleak Almorah's hill. That course, nor Delhi's kingly gates, For sweet the bliss us both awaits Thy towers, Bombay, gleam bright, they say, But ne'er were hearts so light and gay As then shall meet in thee! BISHOP HEBER. 199 O The Soldier's Dream. UR bugles sang truce; for the night-cloud had lowered, And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky; And thousands had sunk on the ground overpoweredThe weary to sleep, and the wounded to die. When reposing that night on my pallet of straw, By the wolf-scaring fagot that guarded the slain, Methought from the battle-field's dreadful array To the home of my fathers, that welcomed me back. g* I flew to the pleasant fields traversed so oft In life's morning march, when my bosom was young; I heard my own mountain-goats bleating aloft, And knew the sweet strain that the corn-reapers sung. Then pledged we the wine-cup, and fondly I swore And my wife sobbed aloud in her fullness of heart. Stay, stay with us!-rest; thou art weary and worn!— But sorrow returned with the dawning of morn, Stanzas to Augusta. HOUGH the day of my destiny 's over, TH And the star of my fate hath declined, Thy soft heart refused to discover The faults which so many could find; And the love which my spirit hath painted Then when nature around me is smiling, I do not believe it beguiling, Because it reminds me of thine; And when winds are at war with the ocean, If their billows excite an emotion, STANZAS TO AUGUSTA. Though the rock of my last hope is shivered, They may crush, but they shall not contemn-. Though human, thou didst not deceive me, Though slandered, thou never couldst shake. Yet I blame not the world, nor despise it, From the wreck of the past which hath perished It hath taught me that what I most cherished In the desert a fountain is springing, In the wild waste there still is a tree, And a bird in the solitude singing, Which speaks to my spirit of thee. LORD BYRON. 201 The Golden Wedding. LOVE, whose patient pilgrim feet The sacred myrtle wreathes again And what was green with summer then, Not now, as then, the future's face Nor less the blinding shower; The bud of fifty years agone O memory, ope thy mystic door; And let the light that gleamed of yore Beside this altar burn. The past is plain; 'twas love designed And mercy's shining thread has twined So be it still. O Thou who hast Till the May-morn of love has passed DAVID GRAY. |