BENEDICITE. 145 A slumberous stretch of mountain-land, far seen The wooded vales, and melts among the hills; With earthly flowers and heavenly stars impressed, Such are the pictures which the thought of thee, Ofriend, awakeneth,-charming the keen pain Of thy departure, and our sense of loss Requiting with the fulness of thy gain. Lo! on the quiet grave thy life-borne cross, No sob of grief, no wild lament, be there, But, in their stead, the silent-breathing prayer We keep thy pleasant memory freshly green, Of love's inheritance a priceless part, Which Fancy's self, in reverent awe, is seen To paint, forgetful of the tricks of art, With pencil dipped alone in colors of the heart BENEDICITE. GOD's love and peace be with thee, where Lifts the dark tresses of thy hair! Whether through city casements comes It freshens o'er thy thoughtful face, Fair Nature's book together read, The hills we climbed, the river seen Where'er I look, where'er I stray, O'er lapse of time and change of scene, Thou lack'st not Friendship's spell-word, nor With these good gifts of God is cast If, then, a fervent wish for thee The gracious heavens will heed from me, The sighing of a shaken reed— God's love-unchanging, pure, and true--- PICTURES. With such a prayer, on this sweet day, 147 PICTURES. I. LIGHT, warmth, and sprouting greenness, and o'er all Blue, stainless, steel-bright ether, raining down Tranquillity upon the deep-hushed town, The freshening meadows, and the hill-sides brown; Voice of the west wind from the hills of pine, And the brimmed river from its distant fall, Low hum of bees, and joyous interlude Of bird-songs in the streamlet-skirting wood,Heralds and prophecies of sound and sight, Blessed forerunners of the warmth and light, Attendant angels to the house of prayer, With reverent footsteps keeping pace with mine, Once more, through God's great love, with you I share A morn of resurrection sweet and fair As that which saw, of old, in Palestine, Immortal Love uprising in fresh bloom II. White with its sun-bleached dust, the pathway winds Before me; dust is on the shrunken grass, Who, glaring on me with his lidless eye, While mounting with his dog-star high and higher, Ambushed in light intolerable, unbinds The burnished quiver of his shafts of fire. Broke as they fell, and shattered into light. And mountains rising blue and cool behind, Where in moist dells the purple orchis gleams, And starred with white the virgin's bower is twined So the o'erwearied pilgrim, as he fares Along life's summer waste, at times is fanned, Even at noontide, by the cool, sweet airs Of a serener and a holier land, Fresh as the morn, and as the dewfall bland. Breath of the blessed Heaven for which we pray, Blow from the eternal hills !-make glad our earthly way! Eighth month, 1852. DERNE.16 NIGHT on the city of the Moor! On mosque and tomb, and white-walled shore, On corsair's galley, carack tall, And plundered Christian caraval! DERNE. The sounds of Moslem life are still; Stretched in the broad court of the khan, Lies heaped in slumber, beast and man; 149 But where yon prison long and low A bitter cup each life must drain, |