A pale youth,* mingling in the throng! With light
And airy step, and mien of such a grace
As breathes thro' marble from the sculptor's dream,
He pass'd, and after him the stranger's eye
Turn'd with inquiring wonder. Dumb no more
Were the invisible dwellers in the trees;
For, as he went, the feathery branches seem'd
To "syllable his name ;" and to the ears
Of them who met him, whispering music flew,
Stealing their hearts away to link to his.
"Love him!" the old man heard as if the leaves
Of his own roof-tree murmur'd it; "Love well
The poet who may sow your grave with flowers,
The traveller to the far land of the Past,
Lost to your feet forever!" Sadly lean'd
The mourner at her window as he came,
And the far-drooping elm-leaf touch'd her brow,
And whisper'd, "He has counted all thy tears!
The breaking chord was audible to him!
The agony for which thou, weeping, saidst
There was no pity, for its throbs were dumb-
He look'd but in thine eyes, and read it all!
Love him, for sorrowing with thee!" The sad child,
Sitting alone with his unheeded grief,
Look'd at him through his tears, and smiled to hear
The same strange voice that talk'd to him in dreams
Speak from the low tree softly; and it said-
"The stranger who looks on thee loves the child!
* JAMES HILLHOUSE, who had died at New Haven a few months before.
He has seen angels like thee; and thy sorrow
Touches his own, as he goes silent by.
Love him, fair child!" The poor man, from his door,
Look'd forth with cheerful face, and as the eye,
The soft eye of the poet, turn'd to his,
A whisper from the tree said, "This is he
Who knows thy heart is human as his own,
Who, with inspired numbers, tells the world
That love dwells with the lowly. He has made
The humble roof a burthen in sweet song-
Interpreted thy heart to happier men !
Love him! oh, love him, therefore!" The stern man,
Who, with the tender spirit of a child,
Walks in some thorny path, unloved and lone;
The maiden with her secret; the sad mother,
Speaking no more of her dishonor'd boy,
But bound to him with all her heart-strings yet,—
These heard the trees say, as the poet pass'd,
"Yours is the mournful poetry of life,
And in the sad lines of your silent lips,
Reads he with tenderest pity! Knit to him
The hearts he opens like a clasped book,
And, in the honey'd music of his verse,
Hear your dumb griefs made eloquent!" With eye
Watchful and moist, the poet kept his way,
Unconscious of the love around him springing;
And when from its bent path the evening star
Stepp'd silently, and left the lesser fires
Lonely in heaven, the poet had gone in,
Mute with the many sorrows he had seen;
And, with the constancy of starry eyes,
The hearts he touch'd drew to him.
A Waking and Sleeping Dream.
NIGHT is the sick man's day,
For the soul wakens as the body fails.
I had told weary hours; but, with the hush
Of midnight, my last memory of pain
Had still'd before a thought of sudden brightness,
And, like one rising upon spirit-limbs,
Rose I, and wander'd with that thought, away.
Oh, the blest truants that we are, when sense,
The master, is too weak to call us in,
And, loosed as if the school-time of a life
Were over, with its spirit-checking toils,
We to the fields stray-following where'er
Fancy, the vagrant, calls us!
Went by the hours, that with such heavy heel
Come last in the slow vigils of the strong,
And the dawn broke. Call'd in from spirit-straying,
I knew again that I was weak and ill,
Beginning on another day of pain;
But, with a blessing on my Thought—(whose track, Far through a wilderness untrod before,
It seem'd that I might tell of with a pen
Wing'd with illuminated words)-I slept.
And presently I dream'd. In conscious sleep, I knew that what I saw was but a dream. The curtains of my bed, I knew, the while, Tented me round; and on a couch beyond Lay a loved watcher by a dimming lamp; And I remember'd her-and where I layAnd that the hour was morning—yet I saw, As if my dim room were dissolved in air, The vision I shall paint you.
The Thought that I had follow'd in rapt waking, And, of whose sweet revealings unto me,
I long'd, in glowing words, to tell the world-
That Thought I saw-clad in a breathing shape,
And, like a sylph upon an errand sped,
Prone for an arrowy flight, and through the air
Cleaving its way resistless. The cleft wind,
Revealingly, to that symmetric Thought
Press'd its transparent dress; and beautiful-
Oh, beautiful as are the shapes divine
Which woman's form makes possible to dream-
Lay its impulsive outline on the air.
I kindled with the pride that it was mine,
The glory of its beauty-of my soul.
The easy effluence, moulded with a breath,
And given, a rich gift, idly to the world!
And carelessly I sped it on its way—
But-turn'd to look on it once more.
A cloud, now, lay aback between its wings,
Drawn by its motion onward-a small cloud
That, from the night-enveloped world below,
Seem'd lighted by the half-arisen moon.
I saw it, not as one upon the earth,
But as they see from Heaven. And as, again,
I watch'd that Thought-(irrevocably sped,
Without a fear that it might turn to ill,
Without a prayer that it might bless in fleeing)—
Behold, all calmly with it, on the cloud,
Rode a wing'd angel with an open book;
And-of the hearts it moved-and of the dreams,
Passions, and hopes it call'd on as it flew
Of all it gave a voice to, that had else
Slumber'd unutter'd in the Thought-ruled world—
That angel kept a record.
Said a voice near me, "shalt that record hear;
For, in thy using of that gift of power,
SPEEDING WHAT THOUGHT THOU WILT ACROSS THE WORLD,
Thou speak'st with the pervading voice of God,
And, as thy sway of the world's heart, will be
The reckoning with thy Maker. Human Thought,
Oh poet, lightly may take wondrous wings.
Thy careless link binds words to travel far.
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