Twilight shades above thee,
And when early morning glows, —
Think on those that love thee!
For an interval of years 45
We ere long must sever,
But the hearts that love endears
Shall be parted never.
Thanksgiving
WHEN first ancient time, from Jubal’s tongue
The tuneful anthem filled the morning air,
To sacred hymnings and elysian song
His music-breathing shell the minstrel woke.
Devotion breathed aloud from every chord: 5
The voice of praise was heard in every tone,
And prayer and thanks to Him, the Eternal One,
To Him, that with bright inspiration touched
The high and gifted lyre of heavenly song,
And warmed the soul with new vitality. 10
A stirring energy through Nature breathed:
The voice of adoration from her broke,
Swelling aloud in every breeze, and heard
Long in the sullen waterfall, what time
Soft Spring or hoary Autumn threw on earth 15
Its bloom or blighting; when the summer smiled;
Or Winter o’er the year’s sepulchre mourned.
The Deity was there; a nameless spirit
Moved in the breasts of men to do him homage;
And when the morning smiled, or evening pale 20
Hung weeping o’er the melancholy urn,
They came beneath the broad, o’erarching trees,
And in their tremulous shadow worshipped oft,
Where pale the vine clung round their simple altars,
And gray moss mantling hung. Above was heard 25
The melody of winds, breathed out as the green trees
Bowed to their quivering touch in living beauty;
And birds sang forth their cheerful hymns. Below,
The bright and widely wandering rivulet
Struggled and gushed amongst the tangled roots 30
That choked its reedy fountain, and dark rocks
Worn smooth by the constant current. Even there
The listless wave, that stole with mellow voice
Where reeds grew rank on the rushy-fringed brink,
And the green sedge bent to the wandering wind, 35
Sang with a cheerful song of sweet tranquillity.
Men felt the heavenly influence; and it stole
Like balm into their hearts, till all was peace:
And even the air they breathed, the light they saw,
Became religion; for the ethereal spirit 40
That to soft music wakes the chords of feeling,
And mellows everything to beauty, moved
With cheering energy within their breasts
And made all holy there, for all was love.
The morning stars, that sweetly sang together; 45
The moon, that hung at night in the mid-sky;
Dayspring and eventide; and all the fair
And beautiful forms of nature, had a voice
Of eloquent worship. Ocean, with its tides
Swelling and deep, where low the infant storm 50
Hung on his dun, dark cloud, and heavily beat
The pulses of the sea, sent forth a voice
Of awful adoration to the spirit
That, wrapt in darkness, moved upon its face.
And when the bow of evening arched the east, 55
Or, in the moonlight pale, the curling wave
Kissed with a sweet embrace the sea-worn beach,
And soft the song of winds came o’er the waters,
The mingled melody of wind and wave
Touched like a heavenly anthem on the ear; 60
For it arose a tuneful hymn of worship.
And have our hearts grown cold? Are there on earth
No pure reflections caught from heavenly light?
Have our mute lips no hymn, our souls no song?
Let him that in the summer-day of youth 65
Keeps pure the holy fount of youthful feeling,
And him that in the nightfall of his years
Lies down in his last sleep, and shuts in peace
His dim, pale eyes on life’s short wayfaring,
Praise Him that rules the destiny of man. 70
Autumnal Nightfall
ROUND Autumn’s mouldering urn
Loud mourns the chill and cheerless gale,
When nightfall shades the quiet vale
And stars in beauty burn.
‘T is the year’s eventide. 5
The wind, like one that sighs in pain
O’er joys that ne’er will bloom again
Mourns on the far hillside.
And yet my pensive eye
Rests on the faint blue mountain long; 10
And for the fairy-land of song,
That lies beyond, I sigh.
The moon unveils her brow;
In the mid-sky her urn glows bright,
And in her sad and mellowing light 15
The valley sleeps below.
Upon the hazel gray
The lyre of Autumn hangs unstrung
And o’er its tremulous chords are flung
The fringes of decay. 20
I stand deep musing here,
Beneath the dark and motionless beech,
Whilst wandering winds of nightfall reach
My melancholy ear.
The air breathes chill and free: 25
A spirit in soft music calls
From Autumn’s gray and moss-grown halls,
And round her withered tree.
The hoar and mantled oak,
With moss and twisted ivy brown, 30
Bends in its lifeless beauty down
Where weeds the fountain choke.
That fountain’s hollow voice
Echoes the sound of precious things;
Of early feeling’s tuneful springs 35
Choked with our blighted joys.
Leaves, that the night-wind bears
To earth’s cold bosom with a sigh,
Are types of our mortality,
And of our fading years. 40
The tree that shades the plain,
Wasting and hoar as time decays,
Spring shall renew with cheerful days, —
But not my joys again.
Italian Scenery
NIGHT rests in beauty on Mont Alto.
Beneath its shade the beauteous Arno sleeps
In Vallombrosa’s bosom, and dark trees
Bend with a calm and quiet shadow down
Upon the beauty of that silent river. 5
Still the west a melancholy smile
Mantles the lips of day, and twilight pale
Moves like a spectre in the dusky sky,
While eve’s sweet star on the fast-fading year
Smiles calmly. Music steals at intervals 10
Across the water, with a tremulous swell,
From out the upland dingle of tall firs;
And a faint footfall sounds, where, dim and dark,
Hangs the gray willow from the river’s brink,
O’ershadowing its current. Slowly there 15
The lover’s gondola drops down the stream,
Silent, save when its dipping oar is heard,
Or in its eddy sighs the rippling wave.
Mouldering and moss-grown through the lapse of years
In motionless beauty stands the giant oak; 20
Whilst those that saw its green and flourishing youth
Are gone and are forgotten. Soft the fount,
Whose secret springs the star-light pale discloses,
Gushes in hollow music; and beyond
The broader river sweeps its silent way, 25
Mingling a silver current with that sea,
Whose waters have not tides, coming nor going.
On noiseless wing along that fair blue sea
The halcyon flits; and, where the wearied storm
Left a loud moaning, all is peace again. 30
A calm is on the deep. The winds that came
O’er the dark sea-surge with a tremulous breathing,
And mourned on the dark cliff where weeds grew rank,
And to the autumnal death-dirge the deep sea
Heaved its long billows, with a cheerless song 35
Have passed away to the cold earth again,
Like a wayfaring mourner. Silently
Up from the calm sea’s dim and distant verge,
Full and unveiled, the moon’s broad disk emerges.
On Tivoli, and where the fairy hues 40
Of autumn glow upon Abruzzi’s woods,
The silver light is spreading. Far above,
Encompassed with their thin, cold atmosphere,
The Apennines uplift their snowy brows,
Glowing with colder beauty, where unheard 45
The eagle screams in the fathomless ether,
And stays his wearied wing. Here let us pause.
The spirit of these solitudes — the soul
That dwells within these steep and difficult places —
Speaks a mysterious language to mine own, 50
And brings unutterable musings. Earth
Sleeps in the shades of nightfall, and the sea
Spreads like a thin blue haze beneath my feet;
Whilst the gray columns and the mouldering tombs
Of the Imperial City, hidden deep 55
Beneath the mantle of their shadows, rest.
My spirit looks on earth. A heavenly voice
Comes silently: “Dreamer, is earth thy dwelling?
Lo! nursed within that fair and fruitful bosom,
Which has sustained thy being, and within 60
The colder breast of Ocean, lie the germs
Of thine own dissolution! E’en the air,
That fans the clear blue sky, and gives thee strength,
Up from the sullen lake of mouldering reeds,
And the wide waste of forest, where the osier 65
Thrives in the damp and motionless atmosphere,
Shall bring the dire and wasting pestilence,
And blight thy cheek. Dream thou of higher things:
This world is not thy home!” And yet my eye
Rests upon earth again. How beautiful, 70
Where wild Velino heaves its sullen waves
Down the high cliff of gray and shapeless granite,
Hung on the curling mist, the moonlight bow
Arches the perilous river! A soft light
Silvers the Albanian mountains, and the haze 75
That rests upon their summits mellows down
The austerer features of their beauty. Faint
And dim-discovered glow the Sabine hills;
And, listening to the sea’s monotonous shell,
High on the cliffs of Terracina stands 80
The castle of the royal Goth in ruins.
But night is in her wane: day’s early flush
Glows like a hectic on her fading cheek,
Wasting its beauty. And the opening dawn
With cheerful lustre lights the royal city, 85
Where, with its proud tiara of dark towers,
It sleeps upon its own romantic bay.
The Lunatic Girl
MOST beautiful, most gentle! Yet how lost
To all that gladdens the fair earth; the eye
That watched her being; the maternal care
That kept and nourished her; and the calm light
That steals from our own thoughts, and softly rests 5
On youth’s green valleys and smooth-sliding waters.
Alas! few suns of life, and fewer winds,
Had withered or had wasted the fresh rose
That bloomed upon her cheek: but one chill frost
Came in that early autumn, when ripe thought 10
Is rich and beautiful, and blighted it;
And the fair stalk grew languid day by day,
And drooped — and drooped, and shed its many leaves,
‘T is said that some have died of love; and some,
That once from beauty’s high romance had caught 15
Love’s passionate feelings and heart-wasting cares,
Have spurned life’s threshold with a desperate foot;
And others have gone mad, — and she was one!
Her lover died at sea; and they had felt
A coldness for each other when they parted, 20
But love returned again: and to her ear
Came tidings that the ship which bore her lover
Had sullenly gone down at sea, and all were lost.
I saw her in her native vale, when high
The aspiring lark up from the reedy river 25
Mounted on cheerful pinion; and she sat
Casting smooth pebbles into a clear fountain,
And marking how they sunk; and oft she sighed
For him that perished thus in the vast deep.
She had a sea-shell, that her lover brought 30
From the far-distant ocean; and she pressed
Its smooth, cold lips unto her ear, and thought
It whispered tidings of the dark blue sea;
And sad, she cried, “The tides are out! — and now
I see his corse upon the stormy beach!” 35
Around her neck a string of rose-lipped shells,
And coral, and white pearl, was loosely hung;
And close beside her lay a delicate fan,
Made of the halcyon’s blue wing; and when
She looked upon it, it would calm her thoughts 40
As that bird calms the ocean, — for it gave
Mournful, yet pleasant, memory. Once I marked,
When through the mountain hollows and green woods
That bent beneath its footsteps, the loud wind
Came with a voice as of the restless deep, 45
She raised her head, and on her pale, cold cheek
A beauty of diviner seeming came;
And then she spread her hands, and smiled, as if
She welcomed a long-absent friend, — and then
Shrunk timorously back again, and wept. 50
I turned away: a multitude of thoughts,
Mournful and dark, were crowding on my mind;
And as I left that lost and ruined one, —
A living monument that still on earth
There is warm love and deep sincerity, — 55
She gazed upon the west, where the blue sky
Held, like an ocean, in its wide embrace
Those fairy islands of bright cloud, that lay
So calm and quietly in the thin ether.
And then she pointed where, alone and high, 60
One little cloud sailed onward, like a lost
And wandering bark, and fainter grew, and fainter,
And soon was swallowed up in the blue depths;
And, when it sunk away, she turned again
With sad despondency and tears to earth. 65
Three long and weary months — yet not a whisper
Of stern reproach for that cold parting! Then
She sat no longer by her favorite fountain:
She was at rest forever.
The Venetian Gondolier
HERE rest the weary oar! — soft airs
Breathe out in the o’erarching sky;
And Night-sweet Night — serenely wears
A smile of peace: her noon is nigh.
Where the tall fir in quiet stands, 5
And waves, embracing the chaste shores,
Move over sea-shells and bright sands,
Is heard the sound of dipping oars.
Swift o’er the wave the light bark springs,
Love’s midnight hour draws lingering near; 10
And list! — his tuneful viol strings
The young Venetian Gondolier.
&nbs
p; Lo! on the silver-mirrored deep,
On earth, and her embosomed lakes,
And where the silent rivers sweep, 15
From the thin cloud fair moonlight breaks
Soft music breathes around, and dies
On the calm bosom of the sea;
Whilst in her cell the novice sighs
Her vespers to her rosary. 20
At their dim altars bow fair forms,
In tender charity for those,
That, helpless left to life’s rude storms,
Have never found this calm repose.
The bell swings to its midnight chime, 25
Relieved against the deep blue sky.
Haste! — dip the oar again— ‘t is time
To seek Genevra’s balcony.
The Angler’s Song
FROM the river’s plashy bank,
Where the sedge grows green and rank,
And the twisted woodbine springs,
Upward speeds the morning lark
To its silver cloud-and hark! 5
On his way the woodman sings.
On the dim and misty lakes
Gloriously the morning breaks,
And the eagle’s on his cloud: —
Whilst the wind, with sighing, wooes 10
To its arms the chaste cold ooze,
And the rustling reeds pipe loud.
Where the embracing ivy holds
Close the hoar elm in its folds,
In the meadow’s fenny land, 15
And the winding river sweeps
Through its shallows and still deeps, —
Silent with my rod I stand.
But when sultry suns are high
Underneath the oak I lie 20
As it shades the water’s edge,
And I mark my line, away
In the wheeling eddy, play,
Tangling with the river sedge.
When the eye of evening looks 25
On green woods and winding brooks,
And the wind sighs o’er the lea, —
Woods and streams, — I leave you then,
While the shadow in the glen
Lengthens by the greenwood tree. 30
Lover’s Rock
They showed us, near the outlet of Sebago, the Lover’s Rock, from which an Indian maid threw herself down into the lake, when the guests were coming together to the marriage festival of her false-hearted lover.” — Leaf from a Traveller’s Journal.
Delphi Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Delphi Poets Series Book 13) Page 3