Hail, Virgin-born! transcendent child!
Of mortal semblance, undefiled,
By ages visioned, doomed to be
The Star of Immortality!
Hail! Prince of Peace, and Lord of Light!
Around Thy path the world is bright;
Where'er Thou treadst, an Eden blooms,
And earth forgets her myriad tombs!
Thy voice is heard-and anguish dies,
The dead awake and greet the skies!
Lo! blindness melts in healing rays,
And mute lips ope in hymns of praise;
The famished on Thy bounty feed,
While myriads at Thy summons speed,
To live upon Salvation's strain,
And see the lost restored again!
Peace on earth! to Man good-will!
Let the skies our anthem fill!
Is a very amiable, but not a very powerful writer; he is tender, easy, and graceful; he always pleases but never astonishes; and he addresses the affections rather than the passions of his readers. In private life he is worthy of the highest praise for the zeal and fidelity with which he discharges the arduous duties of a Christian minister.
I CLIMB the highest cliff: I hear the sound
Of dashing waves: I gaze intent around:
I mark the sun that orient lifts his head!
I mark the sea's lone rule beneath him spread:
But not a speck can my long-straining eye,
A shadow o'er the tossing waste descry,
That I might weep tears of delight and say,
“It is the bark that bore my child away!'
Thou sun that beamest bright, beneath whose eye
The worlds unknown, and out-stretched waters lie,
Dost thou behold him now? On some rude shore,
Around whose crags the cheerless billows roar,
Watching th' unwearied surges doth he stand,
And think upon his father's distant land?
Or has his heart forgot, so far away,
These native scenes, these rocks and torrents gray,
The tall bananas whispering to the breeze,
The shores; the sound of these encircling seas,
Heard from his infant days, and the piled heap
Of holy stones where his forefathers sleep?
Ah me! till sunk by sorrow I shall dwell
With them forgetful in the narrow cell,
Never shall time from my fond heart efface
His image; oft his shadow I shall trace
Upon the glimmering waters, when on high
The white moon wanders through the cloudless sky.
Oft in my silent cave (when to its fire
From the night's rushing tempest we retire)
I shall behold his form, his aspect bland;
I shall retrace his footsteps in the sand;
And when the hollow-sounding surges swell,
Still think I listen to his echoing shell.
Would I had perished ere that hapless day,
When the tall vessel in its trim array,
First rushed upon the sounding surge, and bore
My age's comfort from the sheltering shore!
I saw it spread its white wings to the wind-
Too soon it left these hills and woods behind-
Gazing, its course I followed, till mine eye
No longer could its distant track descry;
Till on the confines of the billows hoar
Awhile it hung, and then was seen no more;
And only the blue hollow heaven I spied,
And the long waste of waters tossing wide.
More mournful, then, each falling surge I heard;
Then dropped the stagnant tear upon my beard.
Methought the wild waves said, amidst their roar
At midnight, "Thou shalt see thy son no more!"
Now thrice twelve moons through the mid-heavens have rolled,
And many a dawn, and slow night, have I told;
And still, as every weary day goes by,
A knot recording on my line I tie;
But never more emerging from the main,
I see the stranger's bark approach again.
Has the fell storm o'erwhelmed him? Has its sweep
Buried the bounding vessel in the deep?
Is he cast bleeding on some desert plain?
Upon his father did he call in vain?
Have pitiless and bloody tribes defiled
The cold limbs of my brave, my beauteous child?
Oh! I shall never, never hear his voice:
The spring-time shall return, the isles rejoice;
But faint and weary I shall meet the morn,
And 'mid the cheering sunshine droop forlorn!
The joyous conch sounds in the high wood loud,
O'er all the beach now stream the busy crowd;
Fresh breezes stir the waving plantain grove;
The fisher carols in the winding cove;
And light canoes along the lucid tide,
With painted shells and sparkling paddles glide,
I linger on the desert rock alone,
Heartless, and cry for thee, my Son! my Son!
SUN-DIAL IN A CHURCH-YARD.
So passes, silent o'er the dead, thy shade,
Brief time! and hour by hour, and day by day,
The pleasing pictures of the present fade,
And like a summer-vapour steal away.
And have not they, who here forgotten lie
(Say, hoary chronicler of ages past),
Once marked thy shadow with delighted eye,
Nor thought it fled-how certain, and how fast?
Since thou hast stood, and thus thy vigil kept,
Noting each hour o'er mouldering stones beneath;
The pastor and his flock alike have slept,
And "dust to dust" proclaimed the stride of death.
Another race succeeds, and counts the hour,
Careless alike; the hour still seems to smile,
As hope, and youth, and life, were in our power;
So smiling and so perishing the while.
I heard the village-bells, with gladsome sound
(When to these scenes a stranger I drew near)
Proclaim the tidings to the village round,
While memory wept upon the good man's bier.
Even so, when I am dead, shall the same bells
Ring merrily, when my brief days are gone;
While still the lapse of time thy shadow tells,
And strangers gaze upon my humble stone!
Enough, if we may wait in calm content
The hour that bears us to the silent sod; Blameless improve the time that heaven has lent, And leave the issue to Thy will, O God.
THE GREENWICH PENSIONERS.
WHEN evening listened to the dripping oar,
Forgetting the loud city's ceaseless roar,
By the green banks, where Thames, with conscious pride,
Reflects that stately structure on his side,
Within whose walls, as their long labours close,
The wanderers of the ocean find repose,
We wore in social ease the hours away,
The passing visit of a summer's day.
Whilst some to range the breezy hill are gone,
I lingered on the river's marge alone,
Mingled with groups of ancient sailors gray,
And watched the last bright sunshine steal away.
As thus I mused amidst the various train
Of toil-worn wanderers of the perilous main,
Two sailors-well I marked them (as the beam
Of parting day yet lingered on the stream
And the sun sunk behind the shady reach)—
Hastened with tottering footsteps to the beach.
The one had lost a limb in Nile's dread fight;
Total eclipse had veiled the other's sight
For ever! As I drew more anxious near,
I stood intent, if they should speak, to hear!
But neither said a word! He who was blind
Stood as to feel the comfortable wind
That gently lifted his gray hair: his face
Seemed then of a faint smile to wear the trace.
The other fixed his gaze upon the light
Parting; and when the sun had vanished quite
Methought a starting tear that Heaven might bless,
Unfelt, or felt with transient tenderness,
Came to his aged eyes, and touched his cheek!
And then as meek and silent as before,
Back hand-in-hand they went, and left the shore.
As they departed through the unheeding crowd,
A caged bird sung from the casement loud:
And then I heard alone that blind man say,
"The music of the bird is sweet to-day!"
I said, "O Heavenly Father! none may know
The cause these have for silence or for woe!"
Here they appear heart-stricken or resigned,
Amidst the unheeding tumult of mankind.
There is a world, a pure, unclouded clime,
Where there is neither grief, nor death, nor time!
Nor loss of friends! Perhaps, when yonder bell
Beat slow, and bade the dying day farewell,
Ere yet the glimmering landscape sunk to-night,
They thought upon that world of distant light!
And when the blind man, lifting light his hair,
Felt the faint wind, he raised a warmer prayer;
Then sighed, as the blithe bird sung o'er his head,
"No morn will shine on me till I am dead!"
Was born in London, October 29, 1796, and at an early age exhibited considerable poetic power. His first productions were, however, treated with such severe criticism that his spirits were broken; the sensitiveness of his feelings worked fatally on his feeble body, and he died prematurely at Rome, in the beginning of 1821.
Keats' poems contain the germs of excellence, rather than finished beauties; they lead us rather to regret the loss of what he might have done, than to admire what we possess.
ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE.
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thy happiness,-
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
Oh! for a draught of vintage, that hath been
Cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sun-burnt mirth!
Oh! for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purpled-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim;
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