SONNET.

'THAT it should come to this!'-that I so gay
Ere Love beguiled me, now should sit and weep,
As though my heart would break; and hate the day,
And wish for night, that I awhile might steep

My aching senses in the balm of sleep:

Yet when the darkness shrouds me,

oft I say,

"How long these mournful vigils must I keep? Why lingers thus the sun's revolving ray?' Or if I chance to close my tear-swoln eyes,

And dream of peace and happiness again; Or should a visionary form arise,

Source of my fleeting bliss and endless pain; Ah! when I wake, how bitter are my sighs! What maddening fancies dart across my brain!

N. S. S. L.

SONNET.

FROM THE SPANISH OF LUPERCIO.

THE Sun has chas'd away the early shower,
And now upon the mountain's clearer height,
Pours o'er the clouds, aslant, his glowing light.
The hufbandman, lothing the idle hour,
Starts from his rest, and to his daily toil,

Light-hearted man, goes forth; and patient now
As the slow ox drags on the heavy plough,
With the young harvest fills the reeking soil.
Domestic love his due return awaits,

With the clean board bespread with country cates; And clustering round his knee his children press; His days are pleasant, and his nights secure. Oh, cities haunts of power and wretchedness, Who would your busy vanities endure?

T. YA

CHAMOUNY *.

THE HOUR BEFORE SUN-RISE.

A HYMN.

HAST thou a charm to stay the morning star
In his steep course-so long he seems to pause
On thy bald awful head, O Chamouny!
The Arvè and Arveiron at thy base

* Chamouny is one of the highest mountain valleys of the Barony of Faucigny in the Savoy Alps; and exhibits a kind of fairy world, in which the wildest appearances (I had almost said, horrors) of nature alternate with the softest, and most beautiful. The chain of Mont Blanc is its boundary; and, besides the Arvè, it is filled with sounds from the Arveiron, which rushes from the melted glaciers, like a giant, mad with joy, from a dungeon, and forms other torrents of snow-water, having their rise in the glaciers, which slope down into the valley. The beautiful gentiana major, or greater gentian, with blossoms of the brightest blue, grows in large companies, a few steps from the never-melted ice of the glaciers. I thought it an affecting emblem of the boldness of human hope, venturing near, and, as it were, leaning over the brink of the grave. Indeed, the whole vale, its every light, its every sound, must needs impress every mind, not utterly callous, with the thought-Who would be, who could be, an Atheist, in this valley of wonders! Those who have visited this vale in their journeys among the Alps, I am confident will not find the sentiments and feelings expressed, or attempted to be expressed, in the following poem, extravagant.

Rave ceaselessly; but thou, dread mountain form,
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines

How silently! Around thee, and above,
Deep is the sky, and black: transpicuous, deep,
An ebon mass! Methinks, thou piercest it
As with a wedge! But when I look again,
It seems thy own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity.

O dread and silent form! I gaz'd upon thee,
Till thou, still present to my bodily eye,

Didst vanish from my thought. Entranc'd in pray'r,
I worshipp'd the INVISIBLE alone.

Yet thou, meantime, wast working on my soul,

E'en like some deep enchanting melody,

So sweet, we know not, we are list❜ning to it.

But I awake, and with a busier mind,

And active will self-conscious, offer now
Not, as before, involuntary pray'r

And passive adoration !—

Hand and voice,

Awake, awake! and thou, my heart, awake!
Awake, ye rocks! Ye forest pines, awake!
Green fields, and icy cliffs! All join my hymn !
And thou, O silent mountain, sole and bare,
O blacker, than the darkness, all the night,
And visited, all night, by troops of stars,
Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink-
Companion of the morning star at dawn,
Thyself Earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
Co-herald! Wake, O wake, and utter praise!
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth?
Who fill'd thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee father of perpetual streams?
And you, ye five wild torrents, fiercely glad,
x 3

Who call'd you forth from Night and utter Death?
From darkness let you loose, and icy dens,
Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks
For ever shatter'd, and the same for ever!
Who gave you your invulnerable life,

Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,
Unceasing thunder, and eternal foam!

And who commanded, and the silence came—
"Here shall the billows stiffen, and have rest?"
Ye ice-falls! ye that from yon dizzy heights
Adown enormous ravines steeply slope,
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopp'd at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!

Who made you glorious, as the gates of Heav'n,
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who with lovely flow'rs
Of living blue spread garlands at your feet?
GOD! GOD! The torrents, like a shout of nations,
Utter! The ice-plain bursts, and answers God!
GOD, Sing the meadow-streams with gladsome voice,
And pine groves with their soft, and soul-like sound,
The silent snow-mass, loos'ning, thunders GOD!
Ye dreadless flow'rs! that fringe th' eternal frost!
Ye wild goats, bounding by the eagle's nest!
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain blast!
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
Ye signs and wonders of the element,
Utter forth, GOD! and fill the hills with praise !
And thou, O silent Form, alone and bare,
Whom, as I lift again my head bow'd low
In adoration, I again behold,

And to thy summit upward from thy base
Sweep slowly with dim eyes suffus'd by tears,