276 AUTUMN FLOWERS. Pale flowers!-Pale perishing flowers! Last hours with parting dear ones Last words, half uttered, Last looks of dying friends! Who but would fain compress The last day spent with one, O, precious, precious moments! Pale flowers!-Pale perishing flowers! Tell me of change and death! STANZAS WRITTEN AT NAPLES. THE sun is warm, the sky is clear, The waves are dancing fast and bright, Blue isles and snowy mountains wear The purple noon's transparent light Around its unexpanded buds; Like many a voice of one delight— The winds, the birds, the ocean floods: The city's voice itself is soft, like solitude's. I see the Deep's untrampled floor With green and purple seaweed strown ; I see the waves upon the shore, Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown: I sit upon the sands alone, The lightning of the noontide ocean Is flashing round me, and a tone Arises from its measured motion, How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion. Alas! I have nor hope nor health, And walked with inward glory crowned- Smiling they live, and call life pleasure; To me that cup has been dealt in another measure. LYRE. A a 278 STANZAS WRITTEN AT NAPLES. Yet now despair itself is mild, Even as the winds and waters are: My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea Some might lament that I were cold, Whom men love not :-and yet regret, Shall on its stainless glory set, Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet. WRITTEN IN A LADY'S ALBUM. BY JOHN MALCOLM. As sweeps the bark before the breeze, But the pure page may still impart E'en when that heart is cold: I ask not for the meed of fame, Calm sleeps the sea when storms are o'er, THE CHURCHYARD. BY MISS BOWLES. THE thought of early death was in my heart, An overwhelming dread And forth I roamed in that distressful mood, That like a sable shroud On Nature's deep sepulchral stillness lay. Black fell the shadows of the churchyard elms (Instinctively my feet had wandered there), And through that awful gloom, Headstone and altar tomb Among the dark heaps gleamed with ghastlier glare. Death-death was in my heart, as there I stood; Death, death was in my heart-Methought I felt Made me, in that dark hour, Half long be, where I abhorred to go. |