T

ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH.

I.

EXPRESSIONLESS.

HE thoughts which in this aching bosom dwell,
And weigh it with a sad, desponding weight,
Like ship unbuoyant with her heavy freight,
Whose ploughing hull retards the pressing swell

Of homeward-urging sail,- within their cell,

Nameless and wordless, struggle with their fate

And yield but one deep plain, too late! too late! Then falter into silence. It is well!

Ah, could our lips embody all the grace

And garnered beauty of the inmost soul, Earth were no more a blank, impeding place,

But, loosed from bonds perpetual, hymns would roll. Thou God! most good, in each our lips to bind ;For what were earth, did all our woe expression find!

II.

REGRETS.

MESEEMED as I did walk a crystal wall
Translucent in the hue of rosy morn,
And saw Eurydice, from Orpheus torn,
Lift her white brow from out its heavy pall,
With sweet lips echoing his melodious call,

And following him, love-led and music-borne, -
A sharp and broken cry, and she was gone!
Thou fairest grief, thou saddest type of all
Our sorrowing kind! O lost Eurydice!

Thy deathful cry thrilled in mine

every vein,

When Orpheus turned him back, thus losing thee.

His broken lute and melancholy plain

All time prolongs, - the still unceasing flow

Of unavailing grief, and a regretful woe.

III.

POESY.

WITH no fond, sickly thirst for fame I kneel,
O goddess of the high-born art, to thee;
Not unto thee with semblance of a zeal
I come, O pure and heaven-eyed Poesy!
Thou art to me a spirit and a love,

Felt ever from the time when first the earth
In its green beauty, and the sky above,
Informed my soul with joy too deep for mirth.
I was a child of thine before my tongue
Could lisp its infant utterance unto thee;
And now, albeit from my harp are flung
Discordant numbers, and the song may be

That which I would not, yet I know that thou

The offering wilt not spurn, while thus to thee I bow.

IV.

AN INCIDENT.

A SIMPLE thing, yet chancing as it did,
When life was bright with its illusive dreams,
A pledge and promise seemed beneath it hid.
The ocean lay before me, tinged with beams
That lingering draped the west, a wavering stir;
And at my feet down fell a worn, gray quill:
An eagle, high above the darkling fir,

With steady flight, seemed there to take his fill
Of that pure ether breathed by him alone.
O noble bird! why didst thou loose for me
Thy eagle plume? still unessayed, unknown,
Must be that pathway fearless winged by thee:
I ask it not, no lofty flight be mine;

I would not soar like thee, in loneliness to pine!