THE NEW EDEN. Yes, by our own unstoried stream The pink-white apple-blossoms burst That saw the young Euphrates gleam, That Gihon's circling waters nursed. For us the ambrosial pear displays The wealth its arching branches hold, And here, where beauty's cheek of flame What though in some unmoistened vale Say, shall our star of promise fail That circles half the rolling sphere, From beaches salt with bitter spray, O'er prairies green with softest rain, And ridges bright with evening's ray, To rocks that shade the stormless main? 121 If by our slender-threaded streams The blade and leaf and blossom die, See, with her swelling bosom bare, We saw the August sun descend, Day after day, with blood-red stain, And the blue mountains dimly blend With smoke-wreaths from the burning plain; Beneath the hot Sirocco's wings We sat and told the withering hours, Till Heaven unsealed its hoarded springs, And bade them leap in flashing showers. Yet in our Ishmael's thirst we knew THE NEW EDEN. No flaming swords of wrath surround God keep the tempter from its gate! Till Ocean is its only wall! 123 A SENTIMENT. A TRIPLE health to Friendship, Science, Art, Friendship's blind service, in the hour of need, Wipes the pale face- and lets the victim bleed. Science must stop to reason and explain; But Art's brief memory fails the hand at last; Then SCIENCE lifts the flambeau of the past. When both their equal impotence deplore, — When Learning sighs, and Skill can do no more, The tear of FRIENDSHIP pours its heavenly balm, And soothes the pang no anodyne may calm! May 1st, 1855. SEMICENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY, NEW YORK, DEC. 22, 1855. NEW England, we love thee; no time can erase His bride may be fresher in beauty's young flower; You have left the dear land of the lake and the hill, But its winds and its waters will talk with you still. "Forget not," they whisper, "your love is our debt," And echo breathes softly, "We never forget." |