H WORTH OF WOMEN ONOR to Woman! To her it is given To garden the earth with the roses of Heaven! All blessed, she linketh the Loves in their choir, In the veil of her Graces her beauty concealing, From the bounds of Truth careering, Down to Passion's troubled deeps. Greeds to grapple with the far, On through many a distant Star! But Woman, with looks that can charm and enchain, By the spell of her presence beguiled; Bruised and worn, but fiercely breasting, Wish to withered wish succeeds. But Woman at peace with all being reposes, Ah! richer than he, though his soul reigneth o'er Strong and proud and self-depending, In the love that Gods have known, Soul's sweet interchange of feeling, Melting tears, he never knows; Alive as the wind-harp, how lightly soever If wooed by the Zephyr, to music will quiver, Is Woman to Hope and to Fear; Ah, tender one! still at the shadow of grieving, Man's dominion, war and labor, Might to right the Statute gave; Laws are in the Scythian's sabre; Where the Mede reigned, see the Slave! Peace and Meekness grimly routing, Prowls the War lust, rude and wild; Eris rages, hoarsely shouting, Where the vanished Graces smiled. But Woman, the Soft One, persuasively prayeth; The Discord whose hell for its victims is gaping, Whispers Hate to the Image of Love. A THE POWER OF SONG RAIN-FLOOD from the mountain riven, It leaps in thunder forth to-day; Knit with the threads of life forever, By those dread powers that weave the woof,— Whose art the singer's spell can sever? Whose breast has mail to music proof? The herald of the gods has given; Behold how this world's great ones bow; Mean joys their idle clamor smother, The mask is vanished from the brow: So Song-like Fate itself—is given To scare the idler thoughts away, To lift the earthly up to heaven, To wake the spirit from the clay! One with the gods the bard: before him Even as a child, that after pining For the sweet absent mother, hears So by harsh custom far estranged, Along the glad and guileless track, To childhood's happy home unchanged The swift song wafts the wanderer back,— Snatched from the cold and formal world, and prest By the great mother to her glowing breast! Bulwer's Translation. Chorus HYMN TO JOY PARK from the fire that gods have fed Joy-thou elysian child divine. Fire-drunk, our airy footsteps tread, O Holy One! thy holy shrine. Embrace, ye millions-let this kiss, He who this lot from fate can grasp,— Chorus Homage to holy Sympathy, Ye dwellers in our mighty ring; All being drinks the mother dew Of joy from Nature's holy bosom; Of Wine and Love; beneath the sod, In heaven the Cherub looks on God! Chorus Why bow ye down-why down-ye millions? |