Poems

In our God-blessed free school.

Forth from this fount the streamlets flow,
That widen in their course.
Hero and sage arise to show
Science the mighty source,
And laud the land whose talents rock
The cradle of her power,
And wreaths are twined round Plymouth Rock,
From erudition's bower.

Farther than feet of chamois fall,
Free as the generous air,
Strains nobler far than clarion call
Wake freedom's welcome, where
Minerva's silver sandals still
Are loosed, and not effete;
Where echoes still my day-dreams thrill,
Woke by her fancied feet.

THE COUNTRY-SEAT

Wild spirit of song, – midst the zephyrs at play
In bowers of beauty, – I bend to thy lay,
And woo, while I worship in deep sylvan spot,
The Muses' soft echoes to kindle the grot.
Wake chords of my lyre, with musical kiss,
To vibrate and tremble with accents of bliss.

Here morning peers out, from her crimson repose,
On proud Prairie Queen and the modest Moss-rose;
And vesper reclines – when the dewdrop is shed
On the heart of the pink – in its odorous bed;
But Flora has stolen the rainbow and sky,
To sprinkle the flowers with exquisite dye.

Here fame-honored hickory rears his bold form,
And bares a brave breast to the lightning and storm,
While palm, bay, and laurel, in classical glee,
Chase tulip, magnolia, and fragrant fringe-tree;
And sturdy horse-chestnut for centuries hath given
Its feathery blossom and branches to heaven.

Here is life! Here is youth! Here the poet's world-wish, —
Cool waters at play with the gold-gleaming fish;
While cactus a mellower glory receives
From light colored softly by blossom and leaves;
And nestling alder is whispering low,
In lap of the pear-tree, with musical flow.[1 - An alder growing from the bent branch of a pear-tree.]

Dark sentinel hedgerow is guarding repose,
Midst grotto and songlet and streamlet that flows
Where beauty and perfume from buds burst away,
And ope their closed cells to the bright, laughing day;
Yet, dwellers in Eden, earth yields you her tear, —
Oft plucked for the banquet, but laid on the bier.

Earth's beauty and glory delude as the shrine
Or fount of real joy and of visions divine;
But hope, as the eaglet that spurneth the sod,
May soar above matter, to fasten on God,
And freely adore all His spirit hath made,
Where rapture and radiance and glory ne'er fade.

Oh, give me the spot where affection may dwell
In sacred communion with home's magic spell!
Where flowers of feeling are fragrant and fair,
And those we most love find a happiness rare;
But clouds are a presage, – they darken my lay:
This life is a shadow, and hastens away.

TO ELLEN. "SING ME THAT SONG!"

O Sing me that song! My spirit is sad,
Life's pulses move fitful and slow;
A meeting with loved ones in dreams I have had,
Whose robes were as spotless as snow:
A phantom of joy, it fled with the light,
And left but a parting in air.
My soul is enchained to life's dreary night,
O sing me "Sweet hour of prayer"!

Ah, sleep, twin sister of death and of night!
My thoughts 'neath thy drap'ry still lie.
Alas! that from dreams so boundless and bright
We waken to life's dreary sigh.
Those moments most sweet are fleetest alway,
For love claspeth earth's raptures not long,
Till darkness and death like mist melt away,
To rise to a seraph's new song.

O'er ocean or Alps, the stranger who roams
But gathers a wreath for his bier;
For life hath its music in low minor tones,
And man is the cause of its tear.
But drops of pure nectar our brimming cup fill,
When we walk by that murmuring stream;
Or when, like the thrill of that mountain rill,
Your songs float in memory's dream.