TO AN ENGLISH FRIEND. THE seed that wasteful autumn cast So, parted by the rolling flood, The love that springs from common blood Needs but a single sunlit hour Of mingling smiles to bud and flower; Unharmed its slumbering life has flown, From shore to shore, from zone to zone, Where summer's falling roses stain The tepid waves of Pontchartrain, 1852. Or where the lichen creeps below Though fiery sun and stiffening cold The love that with its fountain rose, Unchanged by space, unwronged by time, VIGNETTES. 1853. AFTER A LECTURE ON WORDSWORTH. COME, spread your wings, as I spread mine, And leave the crowded hall For where the eyes of twilight shine O'er evening's western wall. These are the pleasant Berkshire hills, Hark! from their sides a thousand rills A thousand rills; they leap and shine, A hundred brooks, and still they run A bracelet spun from mountain mist, A silvery sash unwound, With ox-bow curve and sinuous twist This is my bark, a pigmy's ship; Beneath a child it rolls; Fear not, one body makes it dip, But not a thousand souls. Float we the grassy banks between ; The meadows, drest in living green, Unroll on either side. Come, take the book we love so well, And let us read and dream We see whate'er its pages tell, And sail an English stream. Up to the clouds the lark has sprung, The linnet sings as there he sung; The unseen cuckoo cries, And daisies strew the banks along, With cowslips, and a primrose throng, And humble celandine. Ah foolish dream! when Nature nursed Her daughter in the West, The fount was drained that opened first; She bared her other breast. On the young planet's orient shore Her morning hand she tried; Then turned the broad medallion o'er And stamped the sunset side. Take what she gives, her pine's tall stem, Her elm with hanging spray; She wears her mountain diadem Still in her own proud way. |