SELECTIONS IN POETRY. I. THE CORAL GROVE. DEEP in the wave is a coral grove, Where the purple mullet and gold-fish rove, Their boughs where the tides and billows flow. The water is calm and still below, For the winds and waves are absent there, And the sands are bright as the stars that glow In the motionless fields of upper air; There, with its waving blade of green, The sea-flag streams through the silent water, And the crimson leaf of the dulse is seen To blush like a banner bathed in slaughter.. There, with a light and easy motion, The fan-coral sweeps through the clear deep sea; And the yellow and scarlet tufts of ocean Are bending like corn on the upland lea. And life, in rare and beautiful forms, Is sporting amid those bowers of stone, Where the myriad voices of ocean roar, The purple mullet and gold-fish rove: There the waters murmur tranquilly Through the bending twigs of the coral grove. J. G. PERCIVAL. II. INFELICISSIME. I STAND upon the hoary mountains of old Time, Through bending clouds of glory and of gloom. Of Nature's own contriving; and soft bowers Into my soul, like music without words; I stand in Paradise! And lo! two beings, young, and beautiful With swelling anthems to the Great Supreme, The charm is broken! from a distant hill, They do the deed of sin, and hide themselves in shame. I read, in holy verse, Their everlasting curse! "Thou shalt bring forth in pain, And live in sorrow, and toil in vain, And thistles reap, and thorns, instead of grain, And down thy brow shall sweat-drops roll like rain." That curse has had no death; we are brought forth in pain, And all the pathway of our checkered years Is strewn with ashes and remorseful tears, Till, in the midst of grief, we yield our breath again. Yes! the world is full of sorrow And dismay; Joy lives always in to-morrow! Sweet phantoms rise, to cheer our bleak existence, What boots it, that the earth makes show of joy? And though the leaves be musical, And, alas! they have no souls, Those little birds, whose melody so rolls. What boots it, that we ring the merry laugh, That we seek love, deem kisses more than chaff, And what boots it, that some glide And what boots it, that the bride The pleasures that we follow, Like our laugh, is hollow, hollow As a bell That now rings us to a wedding, with a chime; And now buries us in sorrow for a time, With a knell ! And the jest seldom slips, But it strikes a tender chord! Of the wretch who sold his Lord! UPON a rock that, high and sheer, A weary hunter of the deer Had sat him down to rest, And bared, to the soft, summer air, |