Thy springs are in the cloud, thy stream
Begins to move and murmur first
Where ice-peaks feel the noonday beam,
Or rain storms on the glacier burst,

Born where the thunder and the blas',

And morning's earliest light are born, Thou rushest swoln, and loud, and fast, By these low homes, as if in scorn: Yet humbler springs yield purer waves; And brighter, glassier streams than thine, Sent up from earth's unlighted caves,

With heaven's own beam and image shine.

Yet stay; for here are flowers and trees;
Warm rays on cottage roofs are here,
And laugh of girls, and hum of bees-
Here linger till thy waves are clear.
Thou heedest not-thou hastest on ;
From steep to steep thy torrent falls,
Till, mingling with the mighty Rhone,
It rests beneath Geneva's walls.

Rush on

-but were there one with me That loved me, I would light my hearth Here, where with God's own majesty

Are touched the features of the earth.
By these old peaks, white, high, and vast,
Still rising as the tempests beat,
Here would I dwell, and sleep, at last,
Among the blossoms at their feet.

TO COLE, THE PAINTER.

129

TO COLE, THE PAINTER, DEPARTING FOR EUROPE.

A SONNET.

THINE eyes shall see the light of distant skies: Yet COLE! thy heart shall bear to Europe's strand

A living image of thy native land,

Such as on thine own glorious canvas lies 8;
Lone lakes-savannas where the bison roves-

Rocks rich with summer garlands—solemn
streams-

Skies, where the desert eagle wheels and

screams

Spring bloom and autumn blaze of boundless groves.

Fair scenes shall greet thee where thou goestfair,

But different-everywhere the trace of men, Paths, homes, graves, ruins, from the lowest glen

To where life shrinks from the fierce Alpine air, Gaze on them, till the tears shall dim thy sight,

But keep that earlier, wilder image bright.

TO THE FRINGED GENTIAN.

THOU blossom bright with autumn dew,
And coloured with the heaven's own blue,
That openest when the quiet light
Succeeds the keen and frosty night.

Thou comest not when violets lean

O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen,

Or columbines, in purple dressed.
Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest,

Thou waitest late and com'st alone,
When woods are bare and birds are flown,
And frosts and shortening days portend
The aged year is near his end.

Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye
Look through its fringes to the sky,
Blue-blue-as if that sky let fall
A flower from its cerulean wall.

I would that thus, when I shall see
The hour of death draw near to me,
Hope, blossoming within my heart,
May look to heaven as I depart.

THE TWENTY-SECOND OF DECEMBER.

WILD was the day; the wintry sea

Moaned sadly on New-England's strand, When first the thoughtful and the free, Our fathers, trod the desert land.

They little thought how pure a light,

With years, should gather round that day; How love should keep their memories bright, How wide a realm their sons should sway.

Green are their bays; but greener still

Shall round their spreading fame be wreathed, And regions, now untrod, shall thrill

With reverence when their names are breathed.

Till where the sun, with softer fires,
Looks on the vast Pacific's sleep,
The children of the pilgrim sires
This hallowed day like us shall keep.

HYMN OF THE CITY.

131

HYMN OF THE CITY.

Not in the solitude

Alone may man commune with Heaven, or see Only in savage wood

And sunny vale, the present Deity;

Or only hear his voice

Where the winds whisper and the waves rejoice.

Even here do I behold

Thy steps, Almighty!-here, amidst the crowd,
Through the great city rolled,

With everlasting murmur deep and loud—
Choking the ways that wind

'Mongst the proud piles, the work of human kind.

Thy golden sunshine comes

From the round heaven, and on their dwelling lies,

And lights their inner homes:

For them thou fill'st with air the unbounded

skies,

And givest them the stores

Of ocean, and the harvest of its shores.

Thy Spirit is around,

Quickening the restless mass that sweeps along ;
And this eternal sound-

Voices and footfalls of the numberless throng
Like the resounding sea,
Or like the rainy tempest, speaks of thee.

And when the hours of rest,
Come, like a calm upon the mid-sea brine
Hushing its billowy breast-

The quiet of that moment too is thine,
It breathes of Him who keeps

The vast and helpless city while it sleeps.

THE PRAIRIES.

THESE are the gardens of the Desert, these
The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful,
For which the speech of England has no name-
The Prairies. I behold them for the first,
And my heart swells, while the dilated sight
Takes in the encircling vastness.
Lo! they
In airy undulations, far away,

As if the ocean, in his gentlest swell,

Stood still, with all his rounded billows fixed,
And motionless for ever.-Motionless ?—
No-they are all unchained again. The clouds
Sweep over with their shadows, and, beneath,
The surface rolls and fluctuates to the eye;
Dark hollows seem to glide along and chase
The sunny ridges. Breezes of the South!
Who toss the golden and the flame-like flowers,
And pass the prairie-hawk that, poised on high,
Flaps his broad wings, yet moves not―ye have
Among the palms of Mexico and vines

Of Texas, and have crisped the limpid brooks
That from the fountains of Sonora glide
Into the calm Pacific-have

ye fanned A nobler or a lovelier scene than this ? Man hath no part in all this glorious work: The hand that built the firmament hath heaved And smoothed these verdant swells, and sown their slopes

With herbage, planted them with island groves,
And hedged them round with forests. Fitting
For this magnificent temple of the sky- [floor
With flowers whose glory and whose multitude
Rival the constellations! The great heavens
Seem to stoop down upon the scene in love,-
A nearer vault, and of a tenderer blue,

Than that which bends above the eastern hills.