How like a mounting devil in the heart
Rules the unreined ambition! Let it once
But play the monarch, and its haughty brow
Glows with a beauty that bewilders thought,
And unthrones peace for ever. Putting on
The very pomp of Lucifer, it turns
The heart to ashes, and with not a spring
Left in the bosom for the spirit's life,
We look upon our splendor, and forget
The thirst of which we perish!
Oh, if earth be all, and heaven nothing,
What thrice mocked fools are we!
UNFADING hope! when life's last embers burn,
When soul to soul, and dust to dust return,
Heaven to thy charge resigns the awful hour!
Oh! then thy kingdom comes! Immortal Power!
What though each spark of earth-born rapture fly
The quivering lip, pale cheek, and closing eye!
Bright to the soul thy seraph hands convey
The morning dream of life's eternal day:
Then, then the triumph and the trance begin!
And all the phoenix spirit burns within!
Oh! deep-enchanting prelude to repose,
The dawn of bliss, the twilight of our woes-
Yet half I hear the parting spirit sigh,
It is a dread, an awful thing to die!
Mysterious worlds, untraveled by the sun!
Where time's far-wandering tide has never run,
From your unfathomed shades, and viewless spheres,
A warning comes, unheard by other ears.
'Tis Heaven's commanding trumpet long and loud,
Like Sinai's thunder, pealing from the cloud!
While nature hears with terror-mingled trust,
The shock that hurls her fabric to the dust;
And, like the trembling Hebrew, when he trod
The roaring waves, and called upon his God,
With mortal terrors clouds immortal bliss,
And shrieks, and hovers o'er the dark abyss!
Daughter of faith, awake, arise, illume
The dread unknown, the chaos of the tomb!
Melt and dispel, ye specter doubts, that roll
Cimmerian darkness on the parting soul!
Fly, like the moon-eyed herald of dismay,
Chased on his night-steed by the star of day!
The strife is o'er-the pangs of nature close,
And life's last rapture triumphs o'er her woes.
Hark! as the spirit eyes, with eagle gaze,
The noon of heaven, undazzled by the blaze,
On heavenly winds that waft her to the sky,
Float the sweet tones of star-born melody;
Wild as that hallowed anthem sent to hail
Bethlehem's shepherds in the lonely vale,
When Jordan hushed his waves, and midnight still
Watched on the holy towers of Zion's hill!
Soul of the just! companion of the dead!
Where is thy home, and whither art thou fled ?
Back to its heavenly source thy being goes,
Swift as the comet wheels to whence he rose;
Doomed on his airy path awhile to burn,
And doomed, like thee, to travel, and return.
Hark! from the world's exploding center driven,
With sounds that shock the firmament of heaven,
Careers the fiery giant, fast and far,
On bickering wheels, and adamantine car.
From planet whirled to planet more remote,
He visits realms beyond the reach of thought;
But wheeling homeward, when his course is run,
Curbs the red yoke, and mingles with the sun!
So hath the traveler of earth unfurled
Her trembling wings, emerging from the world;
And, o'er the path by mortal never trod,
Sprung to her source, the bosom of her God!
My aunt! my dear unmarried aunt!
Long years have o'er her flown;
Yet still she strains the aching clasp
That binds her virgin zone:
I know it hurts her,—though she looks
As cheerful as she can:
Her waist is ampler than her life,
For life is but a span.
My aunt! my poor deluded aunt!
Her hair is almost gray:
Why will she train that winter curl
In such a spring-like way?
How can she lay her glasses down,
And say she reads as well,
When through a double convex lens
She just makes out to spell
Her father-grandpapa!-forgive
This erring lip its smiles-
Vowed she would make the finest girl
Within a hundred miles.
He sent her to a stylish school-
'Twas in her thirteenth June;
And with her, as the rules required,
"Two towels and a spoon.”
They braced my aunt against a board,
To make her straight and tall;
They laced her up, they starved her down,
To make her light and small;
They pinched her feet, they singed her hair They screwed it up with pins;
Oh! never mortal suffered more
In penance for her sins!
So, when my precious aunt was done,
My grandsire brought her back;
By daylight, lest some sober youth
Might follow on her track.
"Ah!" said my grandsire, as he shook
Some powder in his pan,
"What could this lovely creature do
Against a desperate man ?"
Alas! nor chariot, nor barouche,
Nor bandit cavalcade,
Tore from the father's trembling arms
His all-accomplished maid.
For her, how happy had it been
And heaven had spared to me
To see one sad, ungathered rose
On my ancestral tree.
Ex. CXII-THE ISLES OF GREECE.
THE isles of Greece, the isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,
Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
And all, except their sun, is set.
The Scian and the Teian muse,
The hero's harp, the lover's lute,
Have found the fame your shores refuse;
Their place of birth alone is mute
To sounds which echo further west
Than your sires' "Islands of the Blest."
The mountains look on Marathon-
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And, musing there an hour alone,
I dreamed that Greece might still be free:
For, standing on the Persian's grave,
I could not deem myself a slave.
A king sat on the rocky brow
Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis; And ships by thousands lay below,
And men in nations;—all were his! He counted them at break of day
And when the sun set, where were they?
And where are they? and where art thou,
My country? On thy voiceless shore
The heroic lay is tuneless now-
The heroic bosom beats no more!
And must thy lyre, so long divine,
Degenerate into hands like mine?
'Tis something in the dearth of fame, Though linked among a fettered race, To feel at least a patriot's shame,
Even as I sing, suffuse my face;
For what is left the poet here?
For Greeks a blush-for Greece a tear.
Must we but weep o'er days more blest?
Must we but blush ?—Our fathers bled.
Earth, render back from out thy breast
A remnant of our Spartan dead!
Of the three hundred grant but three,
To make a new Thermopyla!
What, silent still! and silent all?
Ah, no; the voices of the dead
Sound like a distant torrent's fall,
And answer, "Let one living head,
But one, arise-we come, we come!"
'Tis but the living who are dumb.
In vain-in vain: strike other chords;
Fill high the cup with Samian wine!
Leave battles to the Turkish hordes,
And shed the blood of Scio's vine!
Hark! rising to the ignoble call-
How answers each bold bacchanal!
You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet-
Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone?
Of two such lessons, why forget
The nobler and the manlier one?
You have the letters Cadmus gave-
Think ye he meant them for a slave ?
The tyrant of the Chersonese
Was freedom's best and bravest friend; That tyrant was Miltiades!
O that the present hour would lend Another despot of the kind!
Such chains as his were sure to bind.
Trust not for freedom to the FranksThey have a king who buys and sells
In native swords and native ranks
The only hope of courage dwells;
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