THOMAS PARNELL. HYMN TO CONTENTMENT. LOVELY, lasting Peace of mind! Sweet delight of human kind! Heavenly-born, and bred on high, To crown the favorites of the sky With more of happiness below, Than victors in a triumph know! Whither, O whither art thou fled, To lay thy meek, contented head? What happy region dost thou please To make the seat of calms and ease? Ambition searches all its sphere Of pomp and state, to meet thee there. Increasing avarice would find Thy presence in its gold enshrined. The bold adventurer ploughs his way Through rocks amidst the foaming sea To gain thy love; and then perceives Thou wert not in the rocks and waves. The silent heart, which grief assails, Treads soft and lonesome o'er the vales, Sees daisies open, rivers run, And seeks (as I have vainly done) Lovely, lasting Peace, appear! The branches whisper as they waved; It seemed as all the quiet place Confessed the presence of her grace. When thus she spoke-"Go rule thy will, Bid thy wild passions all be still, Know God-and bring thy heart to know The joys which from religion flow: Then every grace shall prove its guest, And I'll be there to crown the rest." Oh! by yonder mossy seat, In my hours of sweet retreat, Might I thus my soul employ With sense of gratitude and joy: Raised as ancient prophets were, In heavenly vision, praise, and prayer; Pleasing all men, hurting none, With all the colors of delight; The sun that walks his airy way, To light the world, and give the day: The moon that shines with borrowed light; The stars that gild the gloomy night; The seas that roll unnumbered waves; The wood that spreads its shady leaves; The field whose ears conceal the grain, The yellow treasure of the plain; Should be sung, and sung by me: Go search among your idle dreams, Your busy or your vain extremes; And find a life of equal bliss, Or own the next begun in this. THOMAS WILLIAM PARSONS. HUDSON RIVER. RIVERS that roll most musical in song When, to give substance to his boyish dreams, He leaves his own, far countries to survey, Oft must he think, in greeting foreign streams, "Their names alone are beautiful, not they." If chance he mark the dwindled Arno pour A tide more meagre than his native Charles; Or views the Rhone when summer's heat is o'er, Subdued and stagnant in the fen of Arles: Or when he sees the slimy Tiber fling Now let him climb the Catskill, to behold Had such a river to inspire his strain. Along the Rhine gray battlements and towers No storied castle overawes these heights; No Gothic buttress, or decaying shaft - But cliffs, unaltered from their primal form Farms, rich not more in meadows than in men Then, where the reign of cultivation ends, And these deep groves forever have remained - Touched by no axe, by no proud owner nursed; As now they stand they stood when Pharaoh reigned, Lineal descendants of creation's first. No tales, we know, are chronicled of thee In ancient scrolls; no deeds of doubtful claim Have hung a history on every tree, And given each rock its fable and a fame. But neither here hath any conqueror trod, Pollute thy stillness with recorded crimes. Here never yet have happy fields laid waste, "Yet, O Antiquity!" the stranger sighs; False thought! is age to crumbling walls confined? Call not this new which is the only land That wears unchanged the same primeval face Which, when just dawning from its Maker's hand, Gladdened the first great grandsire of our race. Nor did Euphrates with an earlier birth Glide past green Eden towards the unknown south, Than Hudson broke upon the infant earth. And kissed the ocean with his nameless mouth. Twin-born with Jordan, Ganges, and the Nile! THE GROOMSMAN TO HIS EVERY wedding, says the proverb, Entered in the book of Fate, Blessings then upon the morning When my friend with fondest look, By the solemn rites' permission, To himself his mistress took, And the Destinies recorded Other two within their book. While the priest fulfilled his office, Aimed their glances at the bride; But the groomsmen eyed the virgins Who were waiting at her side. Three there were that stood beside her; One was dark, and one was fair; But nor fair nor dark the other, Where the bride were such as she!" Then I mused upon the adage, Till my wisdom was perplexed, And I wondered, as the churchinan Dwelt upon his holy text, Which of all who heard his lesson Should require the service next. Whose will be the next occasion For the flowers, the feast, the wine? Thine, perchance, my dearest lady; Or, who knows?-it may be mine: What if 't were-forgive the fancy — What if 't were both mine and thine ? It was as if a harp with wires Was traversed by the breath I drew; And oh, sweet meeting of desires! She, answering, owned that she loved too. WOULD WISDOM For herseLF BE WOOED. WOULD Wisdom for herself be wooed, And wake the foolish from his dream, She must be glad as well as good, And must not only be, but seem. Beauty and joy are hers by right; And, knowing this, I wonder less That she's so scorned, when falsely dight In misery and ugliness. Than the heart says, with floods of tears, "Ah! that's the thing which I would be?" Not childhood, full of fears and frets: Not youth, impatient to disown Those visions high, which to forget Were worse than never to have known. Not these; but souls found here and here, Oases in our waste of sin, When everything is well and fair, And God remits his discipline; Whose sweet subdual of the world The worldling scarce can recognize; And ridicule, against it hurled, Drops with a broken sting and dies. They live by law, not like the fool, But like the bard who freely sings What's that which Heaven to man In strictest bonds of rhyme and rule, endears, And that which eyes no sooner see And finds in them not bonds but wings. |