Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

Adieu to Youth.

BY THOMAS HOPE.

DISTANT plans of daring pride,
Views remote of wild romance,
Whose perspective vast and wide,
Could my youthful soul entrance;
Trophies which I meant to raise,
Regions where I hoped to rove,
Schemes of pleasure and of praise,
Which my early fancy wove.
Where the Pole's resistless chill,
Bids the ocean's self stand still,
Or the tropic's fellest sun,
Man compels his shafts to shun,
You I cherished so before,
I must cherish you no more!
The Niagara's foaming fall,
China's everlasting wall;
Chimborazo's snowy top,

Which appears the sky to prop,
Hoary Hecla's watery spires;

Raging Etna's rolling fires;

Torneo's sun whose glimmering light,
Half a year still haunts the sight;
Towering Thibet's lofty plain,

Which conglomerate mounds sustain ;
Sacred Ganges' secret source;
Niger's unexplored course;
Hapless Park's unravelled dream,
Quenched forever in its stream;
Deep Ellora's sculptured caves,

[blocks in formation]

318

ADIEU TO YOUTH.

Desert Memphis's gorgeous graves,
Phile's Isle, whose ruins smile,
In the mirror of the Nile;
Peaceful Cashmere's flowery vale,
Hallowed scene of Eastern tale;
Georgia, where God's noblest creature,
Shows his noblest form and feature ;
Mecca's house, Medina's shrine,
Shiraz, flushed with rosy wine.
Bold achievements, noble feats,
Whose emprise man's wonder greets;
Whose success e'en glads his ghost,
You I ne'er must hope to boast.
By the foolish vulgar throng,
Both detained, and dragged along,
After things just born to die,
Made to join the vulgar cry.

In the toil of each dull day,
My best years have passed away;
Till, approaching fast my wane,
Winter claims my worn out brain.
Tales that used my soul t' inspire,
Now I hear with calmness told;
Sights that set my blood on fire,
Now that torpid blood leave cold ;
Slow and tedious is my pace,
And no longer dare I hope,
Vigour, while I run the race,
Pleasure, when I reach the scope.
Then adieu, once dazzling dreams,
Leave oh! leave my haunted mind,
Weary of its brilliant schemes,
To an humbler fate resigned;
Simpler tasks my toil demand,

ADIEU TO YOUTH.

Nearer objects claim my care,
Higher duties for my hand,
Humbler labours fast prepare.
These with honour to achieve,
And a virtuous race to leave,
When, in everlasting rest,
And, perchance among the blest,
I this globe's vain joys deride,
Henceforth by my only pride.

319

"Man shall not live by bread alone."

Yet evermore, through years renewed
In undisturbed vicissitude,

Of seasons balancing their flight
On the swift wings of day and night,
Kind nature keeps a heavenly door,
Wide open for the scattered poor,

Where flower-breathed incense, to the skies
Is wafted in mute harmonies :

And ground fresh cloven by the plough,
Is fragrant with a humbler vow:
Where birds and brooks from leafy dells
Chime forth unwearied canticles;
And vapours magnify and spread
The glory of the sun's bright head:
Still constant in her worship, still
Conforming to the Almighty's will,
Whether men sow or reap the fields,
Her admonitions nature yields:
That not by bread alone we five,
Or what a hand of flesh can give :
That every day should leave some part
Free, for a Sabbath of the heart:
So shall the Seventh be truly blest,
From morn to eve with hallowed rest!

The Angel of Patience.

To weary hearts, to mourning homes,
God's meekest Angel gently comes:
No power has he to banish pain,
Or give us back our lost again,
And yet, in tenderest love, our dear
And Heavenly Father sends him there.

There's quiet in that Angel's glance,
There's rest in his still countenance!
He mocks no grief, with idle cheer,
Nor wounds with words the mourner's ear,
But ills and woes he may not cure

He kindly learns us to endure.

Angel of Patience! sent to calm
Our feverish brows with cooling palm;
To lay the storms of hope and fear,
And reconcile life's smile and tear;
The throbs of wounded pride to still
And make our own our Father's will!

Oh! thou, who mournest on thy way,
With longings for the close of day,
He walks with thee, that Angel kind,
And gently whispers, "Be resigned!
Bear up, bear on, the end shall tell

The dear Lord ordereth all things well!"

JOHN G. WHITTIER.

If books are like the sea-sand, good and true books are but. as the rarer shells.

Of Water.

Of all inorganic substances, acting in their own proper nature, and without assistance or combination, water is the most wonderful. If we think of it as the source of all the changefulness and beauty which we have seen in clouds: then as the instrument by which the earth we have contemplated was modelled into symmetry, and its crags chiselled into grace; then as, in the form of snow, it robes the mountains it has made, with that transcendent light which we could not have conceived if we had not seen then as it exists in the foam of the torrent in the iris which spans it, in the morning mist which rises from it, in the deep crystalline pools which mirror its hanging shore, in the broad lake and glancing river; finally, in that which is to all human minds the best emblem of unvaried, unconquerable power, the wild, various, fantastic tameless unity of the sea; what shall we compare to this mighty, this universal element, for glory and for beauty? or how shall we follow its external changefulness of feeling? It is like trying to paint a soul.

[blocks in formation]

Stand for half an hour beside the fall of Schaffhausen on the north side where the rapids are long, and watch how the vault of water first bends, unbroken, in pure, polished velocity, over the arching rocks at the brow of the cataract, covering them. with a dome of crystal twenty feet, thick-so swift, that its motion is unseen except when a foam globe from above it, darts over it like a falling star; and how the trees are lighted above it under all their leaves, at the instant that it breaks into foam : and how all the hollows of that foam burn with green fire and how, ever and anon, startling you with its white flash, a jet of spray leaps hissing out of the fall, like a rocket, bursting in the wind and driven away in dust, filling the air with light: and

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »