Or linger'd mid the falling dew,
When looks were fond and words were few.
Though I see smiling at thy feet
Five sons and one fair daughter sweet;
And time, and care, and birth-time woes
Have dimm'd thine eye and touched thy rose:
To thee, and thoughts of thee, belong
All that charms me of tale or song;
When words come down like dews unsought,
With gleams of deep enthusiast thought;
And fancy in her heaven flies free,
They come, my love, they come from thee.
Oh, when more thought we gave of old
To silver than some give to gold,
"Twas sweet to sit and ponder o'er
What things should deck our humble bower!
"Twas sweet to pull, in hope, with thee,
The golden fruit from fortune's tree;
And sweeter still to choose and twine
A garland for these locks of thine;
A song-wreath which might grace my Jcan,
While rivers flow and woods are green.
At times there come, as come there ought,
Grave moments of sedater thought;
When fortune frowns, nor lends our night
One gleam of her inconstant light;
And hope, that decks the peasant's bower,
Shines like the rainbow through the shower:
Oh then I see, while seated nigh,
A mother's heart shine in thine eye;
And proud resolve, and purpose meek,
Speak of thee more than words can speak:
I think the wedded wife of mine
The best of all that's not divine!
WITH blackest moss the flower-plots
Were thickly crusted, one and all;
The rusted nails fell from the knots
That held the peach to the garden-wall.
The broken sheds looked sad and strange,
Unlifted was the clinking latch,
Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated grange.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
Her tears fell with the dews at even,
Her tears fell ere the dews were dried; She could not look on the sweet heaven, Either at morn or eventide.
After the flitting of the bats,
When thickest dark did trance the sky,
She drew her casement curtain by,
And glanced athwart the glooming flats.
She only said, "The night is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
Upon the middle of the night,
Waking, she heard the nightfowl crow: The cock sung out an hour ere light; From the dark fen the oxen's low Came to her without hope of change, In sleep she seem'd to walk forlorn, Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn About the lonely moated grange.
She only said, "The day is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
About a stone-cast from the wall,
A sluice with blacken'd waters slept,
And o'er it many, round and small,
The cluster'd marishmosses crept.
Hard by a poplar shook alway,
All silver green with gnarled bark,
For leagues no other tree did dark
The level waste, the rounding gray.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
And ever, when the moon was low,
And the shrill winds were up an' away,
In the white curtain, to and fro,
She saw the gusty shadow sway.
But when the moon was very low,
And wild winds bound within their cell,
The shadow of the poplar fell
Upon her bed, across her brow.
She only said, "The night is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
All day, within the dreamy house,
The doors upon their hinges creak'd; The blue fly sung i' the pane; the mouse Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek'd, Or from the crevice peer'd about.
Old faces glimmer'd through the doors, Old footsteps trod the upper floors, Old voices called her from without. VOL. II.-Z
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
The sparrow's chirrup on the roof,
The slow clock ticking, and the sound
Which to the wooing wind aloof
The poplar made, did all confound
Her sense; but most she loathed the hour
When the thick moted sunbeam lay
Athwart the chambers, and the day
Down-sloped was westering in his bower.
Then, said she, "I am very dreary,
He will not come," she said;
She wept, "I am aweary, aweary,
Oh, God, that I were dead!"
TO JOSEPH ATKINSON, ESQ., FROM BERMUDA.
"THE daylight is gone; but, before we depart,
One cup shall go round to the friend of my heart,
To the kindest, the dearest-oh! judge by the tear
That I shed while I name him, how kind and how
dear!"
'Twas thus, by the shade of a calabash-tree,
With a few who could feel and remember like me,
The charm, that to sweeten my goblet I threw,
Was a tear to the past and a blessing on you!
Oh! say, do you thus, in the luminous hour
Of wine and of wit, when the heart is in flower,
And shoots from the lip, under Bacchus's dew,
In blossoms of thought ever springing and new!
Do you sometimes remember, and hallow the brim
Of your cup with a sigh, as you crown it to him,
Who is lonely and sad in these valleys so fair,
And would pine in elysium if friends were not there.
Last night, when we came from the calabash-tree,
When my limbs were at rest and my spirit was free,
The glow of the grape and the dreams of the day
Put the magical springs of my fancy in play;
And oh! such a vision as haunted me then,
I could slumber for ages to witness again!
The many I like, and the few I adore,
The friends who were dear and beloved before,
But never till now so beloved and dear,
At the call of my fancy surrounded me here!
Soon, soon did the flattering spell of their smile
To a paradise brighten the bless'd little isle;
Serenely the wave, as they look'd on it, flow'd,
And warmer the rose, as they gather'd it, glow'd!
Not the vallyes Heræan (though water'd by rills
Of the pearliest flow, from those pastoral hills,
Where the song of the shepherd, primæval and wild,
Was taught to the nymphs by their mystical child)
Could display such a bloom of delight, as was given
By the magic of love to this miniature heaven!
Oh, magic of love! unembellish'd by you,
Has the garden a blush or the herbage a hue?
Or blooms there a prospect in nature or art, [heart?
Like the vista that shines through the eye to the
Alas! that a vision so happy should fade!
That, when morning around me in brilliancy play'd,
The rose and the stream I had thought of at night
Should still be before me, unfadingly bright;
While the friends, who had seem'd to hang over the
And to gather the roses, had fled with my dream!
But see, through the harbour, in floating array,
The bark that must carry these pages away,
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