Wherefore do the breezes wail?
Wherefore do the stars grow pale ?
Why, like sorrowing human ghosts,
More their dim and silent hosts.
Upward from the earth there flow
Discords strange of human woe;
From earth's fairness can they never
Human sin and sorrow sever.
How can I sing true songs who have not seen
Beauty, which is the source of song?
Up no tall mountains have I been,
And seen them cast their shadows long
Across the lakes, that, silvery pale,
Lie dreaming in the quiet vale.
How can I sing true songs who have not trod Along the consecrated ways
Of singing lands, where sky, where sod,
Have loveliest hues through loveliest days? Have never seen Lake Como gleam, Nor Tempè, lovelier than a dream.
How can I sing true songs who, silently,
On deck when land was far from view,
Ne'er saw the sun sink in the sea;
Nor 'neath white stars, and skies of blue, Saw tides of fire the vessel lave,
And phosphor stars that light the wave?
How can I sing true songs who have not stood By rainbow-spannèd cataract;
Nor any fairy-haunted wood;
Nor wild far-reaching prairie tract; Nor castled margins of the Rhine;
Nor olive shades of Palestine ?
Yet are not those true songs which I have sung,
Of beauty granted to my gaze;
Of gardens where sweet flowerets sprung,
Of evening views through purple haze;
Of shadowy copse, and sunny glen,
And what was fair in haunts of men?
BEAUTY is not of form alone;
Thought, feeling, action, have their own.
Fair is the thought that soars above;
And fair the unselfishness of love.
Lovely is an act of duty;
Rectitude is moral beauty.
(PUBLISHED OCTOBER, 1858.)
BEAUTIFUL stranger of the sky
That, passing many a silver star,
And seeing many meteors fly,
Hast brought thy glory from afar ;
Performing in the nightly plan
Thy lovely part by lovely law,
A welcome comes to thee from man,
Thou thing of beauty and of awe.
Forth looking from his lonely tower,
The sage delights to track thy way;
Enraptured with thy beauty's power,
The poet breaks into a lay;
And children, at the cottage door,
Their mother call to see the sight;
And hear thy story o'er and o'er,
With newer wonder and delight.
Smiles on Urania's face are seen,
To hear the sister muses sing,
That she, within her bright domain,
Can claim so wondrous fair a thing ;-
Thy mighty range, thy gleaming ball,
Thy perfect curve along the sky,
Thy tremulous shades that rise and fall,
Thy lights that all so softly die.
Sure never angel, floating down,
Fanned ether with such streaming hair
Escaping from her starry crown,
So lovely pale, so silvery fair.
But Fancy, in the silent night,
Up-looking to her altered skies,
Thinks God has sent a child of light
To teach us in a sweet disguise.
An awful flag by God unfurled,
Amid His countless starry hosts,
With messages for every world
Flaming from heaven's uttermosts;
Thither returning, to increase
The praise of Him who rules above ;
No portent dire, but sign of peace ;-
A thing of beauty, hence of love.
AN angel flew from star to star,
And he sang a song to a golden lyre; But when he came where mortals are, He burnt with ire.
But when he saw their weight of woe,
How toilsomely towards God they crept,
Beneath their crosses bending low,
The angel wept.
THE walls of heaven are built of gold,
And from afar its glories glow;
Its portals blaze with gems untold,
Yet narrow is the door, and low.
In vain we strive to enter in,
With all our boastful bravery on ;
The angels' glance it cannot win ;
Our glory must be all foregone.
Our kingly garments will be torn
In entering by that painful way;
Happy is he who long hath worn
The sackcloth robe, and bent to pray ;
For only humbly, on our knees,
Can we pass through that lowly door; Hard trials to the great are these,
(PUBLISHED IN THE "CAMB. TERMINAL MAGAZINE,” FEBRUARY, 1859.)
IDA is fair, yet not as those who gleam
With grace unearthly, in a poet's dream;
Her beauty is too human, and more dear
And truer beauty, being so.
Her clear
Dilating eyes are purple as a pair
Of dewy violets; her wealthy hair
Is dark as midnight; her complexion wins
The sight, as roses hid in jessamines.
The little simple children in the meads,
Plucking the daisies, or the feathery reeds
By river-side, if ever she came near,
Looked with large eyes that had a touch of fear.
"It is the Virgin," they or thought, or cried.
And, till the distance did her beauty hide,
Gazed after with wild eyes. One dared to vow
He saw "the halo round about her brow,
As in the picture."
To loveliness, where Arno in its blue
Mirrors fair Florence; on a gentle hill,
Where sunlight brooded at its radiant will,
In sight of mountains. Vallombrosa heights,
Glowing all daytime with ineffable lights;
And views of cypress darkness, olive-grays,
And green or purpling vineyards met her gaze.
Such beauty, through the inlets of her eyes,
Fed soul and body, till a great surprise
up the faces that beheld her grow In grace, whose perfectness she did not know,
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