ON THE DEATH OF A FRIEND. GONE in the flush of youth! Gone ere thy heart had felt earth's withering care; Fled like a dream away! But yesterday mid life's auroral bloom- Sighs round thy lonely tomb. Fond hearts were beating high, Fond eyes were watching for the loved one gone, And gentle voices, deeming thou wert nigh, Talk'd of thy glad return. They watch'd--not all in vain-- Thy form once more the wonted threshold pass'd; But choking sobs, and tears like summer-rain, Welcom'd thee home at last. Friend of my youth, farewell! To thee, we trust, a happier life is given; OUR COUNTRY. OUR country!-'t is a glorious land! With broad arms stretch'd from shore to shore, The proud Pacific chafes her strand, She hears the dark Atlantic roar; And, nurtured on her ample breast, How many a goodly prospect lies In Nature's wildest grandeur drest, Enamell'd with her loveliest dyes. Rich prairies, deck'd with flowers of gold, Go sweeping onward, dark and deep, Sweet vales in dreamlike beauty hide, In rich profusion o'er the land, I HEAR THY VOICE, O SPRING! I HEAR thy voice, O Spring! Divinely sweet thy song- But yet, methinks, as near the groves I pass, For where are they, the young, Thou seek'st for them in vainNo more they'll greet thee in thy joyous round; Calmly they sleep beneath the murmuring main, Or moulder in the ground. I STOOD beside the grave of him, The stars stole trembling into sight, Still flush'd the heavens with rosy light. As faintly toll'd the evening-bell. O Death! had then thy summons come, And night itself grew wild and drear,- And winds sigh'd mournful on the ear: And yet I linger'd mid the fern, And leave him to his loneliness! LOUIS LEGRAND NOBLE. [Born, 1812.] THE Reverend LOUIS LEGRAND NOBLE was born in the valley of the Butternut Creek, in Otsego While he was a youth his county, in New York. father removed to the banks of the Wacamutquiock, now called the Huron, a small river in Michigan, and there, among scenes of remarkable wildness and beauty, he passed most of his time until the commencement of his college-life. In a letter to me, he says: "I was ever under a strong impulse to imbody in language my thoughts, feelings, fancies, as they sprung up in the presence of the rude but beautiful things around me: the prairies on fire, the sparkling lakes, the park-like forests, Indians on the hunt, guiding their frail canoes amid the festival fires. I breathed the air of poetry." In rapids, or standing at night in the red light of their the same letter he remarks that he is "indebted, for his intellectual and moral culture, to SAMUEL W. DEXTER, of Boston." He was admitted to holy orders in the Protestant Episcopal Church, in 1840, and now, I believe, resides in South Carolina. THE CRIPPLE-BOY. I. Upon an Indian rush-mat, spread Where burr-oak boughs a coolness shed, They calm'd his pain,--they cheer'd his loneliness- 11. Upon a prairie wide and wild Look'd off that suffering cripple-child: The hour was breezy, the hour was bright;O, 't was a lively, a lovely sight! An eagle sailing to and fro Around a flitting cloud so whiteAcross the billowy grass below Darting swift their shadows' light :And mingled noises sweet and clear, Noises out of the ringing wood, Were pleasing trouble in his ear, A shock how pleasant to his blood: O, happy world!--Beauty and Blessing slept On everything but him—he felt, and wept. And yonder see the quiet sheep ;-- A sailor on the breezy sea!" "A sailor on the stormy sea, my son!— IV. "I do!-I wish that I could be A sailor on the rolling sea: In the shadow of the sails I would ride and rock all day, Going whither blow the gales, As I have heard a seaman say: I would, I guess, come back again For my mother now and then; And the curling fire so bright, When the prairie burns at night; And tell the wonders I had seen Away upon the ocean green;" "Hush! hush! talk not about the ocean so; Better at home a hunter hale to go." Between a tear and sigh he smiled; And thus spake on the cripple-child :"I would I were a hunter hale, Nimbler than the nimble doe, Bounding lightly down the dale, But that will never be, I know! Behind the house the woodlands lie; A prairie wide and green before; And I have seen them with my eye A thousand times or more; Yet in the woods I never stray'd, Or on the prairie-border play'd ;— O, mother dear, that I could only be A sailor-boy upon the rocking sea!" 409 Child! I pray, it be thy lot, THERE is a lake in the Huron-Land, And when she doth her matins sing, It coos with the doves and leaps with fawns; II. Child! I trow there's many a bower Hearts do help such blooms to find. He found by the brook a wondrous flower. In the sweet water its sweeter lip. Though close around there were fragrant gems Or, hath the genius of every place A castle of might,—a throne of grace, Or, it were the form of the fay itself, A poet such union of grace had caught, It would have awaken'd, at sight, the thought Of the blessed Triune Mystery, The Beauty-the Light of Eternity. It was pure as the brow of Innocence, Low bent in the smile of Omnipotence; And yet, from a warmth in its snow, I guess, Ah, no,-I trow, of its delicate heart But whether it bore to aught beside I know not, save to the listening air It whisper'd ever a spicy prayer. And penitence seem'd the crowning grace As ever a dying infant wept. III. Child! there's Beauty and there's Love ;- Both do wander here below. O, come we hither or cold or blind? Sweet music, bright visions do follow the mind Did follow us in from a world of bliss, Nor is it a poet's airy dream, That things are deeper than what they seem: He feels they are, if his soul can see Now what in that being of vernal birth, In truth, it was love in its purest feature, One balmy dawn, as its bright eyelash There were the pink and the columbine, Now, what that pitiless deed had wrought A moment:-all but this, I forget- And passionate love-'t was a dear surprise!- IV. Child! our love is constant ever; Part they may, when forms do die ;- Now, whether that was indeed the queen, I dare not cavil, but this may be: Beauty--the breath and life of light, And, if it vanish and flit away, And so, it is an immortal sprite, When the doors of an after-world unfold, A LITTLE GREEN ISLE. A LITTLE green isle in a lonely lake O, the loveliest isle in the month of May! How I loved it the while I was wild and as merry as they! I was tuneful and roving as they! A rocking canoe, of the white-wood tree, O, that dear little isle! I was young and light-hearted as they! O, little lone isle of the silent lake, Far off in the cool north-west, My spirit is thine in the month of May! Thou art beautiful yet, though billows break O'er my light canoe, and the willows shake Their locks where the lovely rest: O, thou sweet, blessed isle! I will cherish thee while There are tears for such dear ones as they. C. P. CRANCH. [Born, 1813.] THE Reverend C. P. CRANCH is a son of Chief Justice CRANCH, of Washington, and was born on the eighth of March, 1813, in Alexandria, District of Columbia. He was graduated at the Columbian College, Washington, in the summer of 1831, and afterward studied three years in the Divinity School at Cambridge, Massachusetts. I believe he is now pastor of a church near Boston. THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES. AND is the harmony of heaven gone? Hath it all died away, ere human ears Caught the faint closing hymn, far-off, and lone,The music of the spheres? Have the stars hush'd that glorious song of old, When the night shrunk to the far Occident, And morning gush'd in streaks of burning gold Up the grey firmament? Yon orbs that watch so fixedly above, Yon planets claiming with our own their birth, Are they all mute as through the abyss they move, Like our dim, silent earth? And hath the sky, the deep, mysterious sky, No voices from amid yon circling throng? Are there no thundering echoes where the high Procession rolls along? Hath heaven rare changing tints, and doth it glow And all that makes the love of beauty grow, No music there, where music's font hath been- The choral stream of song? Is it a fable all of early time, That the young stars, as they leap'd by our earth, Rang sweet and loud a deep and voice-like chime, Ere the first soul had birth? And was the sage's thought a fiction too, That the crystalline spheres that closed us round, Murmur'd from all their moving arches blue A never-ceasing sound? Too fine and too sublime for mortal ears In our dull orb of clay-and this is why *It was the notion of PYTHAGORAS, I think, that the heavens were composed of a series of crystal spheres, transparent and enclosed one within another, and that these moving against each other produced the most divine harmony conceivable, but that the reason it was not heard by mortals was, that it was too loud and sublime to be heard, and the ear too small to take cognisance of it. Did they not come to them who talk'd with God, Did they not fall in choral symphony On the rapt wonder of the Nomad swain, As, stretch'd beside his flock, he raised his eye At midnight from the plain? Did all the wise and holy men of old Watch by yon burning stars in vain, to claim If, O ye orbs, ye never yet have spoken And let me trace in all things beautiful A natural harmony, that soothes, upraises ;- THE BLIND SEER. FROM morn till night the old man sitteth still; A pure, deep realm of praise and lowly prayer, Where faith from sight no pension e'er receiveth, But groweth only from the All-True and Fair. That Universal Soul, who is the being, The reason and the heart of men on earth, Shineth so broad o'er him, that, though not seeing, He walketh where the morning hath its birth. He travelleth where the upper springs flow on; He heareth harmonies from angel-choirs; He seeth Uriel standing in the sun; He dwelleth up among the heavenly fires. And yet he loveth, as we all do love, To hear the restless hum of common life; Though planted in the spirit-soil above, His leaves and flowers do bud amid the strife Of all this weary world, and shine more fair Than sympathies which have no inward root, Which open fast, but shrink in bleaker air, And, dropping, leave behind no winter-fruit. |