A GARDEN lies in solemn peace,
Where shadows fall from cypress-trees;
Within its bounds life's noises cease;
The drowsy here may sleep at ease :
Morn, noon, and night, incessantly
The Gardener toils, whom none can spy!
“ A pensive, yet a happy place"
The turf is green, the walks are still ;
Here weed and flower with equal grace,
Rest on each little hill ;
And, when with life's long road oppress’d,
How sweet is this fair Garden's rest!
Vast are this Garden's planted grou_ds,
So it hath been, and so it must;
And countless are its mossy mounds,
Where precious seed lies deep in dust;
When they have ceased more seed to bring,
Then from the mounds the flowers shall spring !
FROM THE GERMAN OF BINDEMANN.
As thus the snows arise, and foul, and fierce,
All winter drives along the darken'd air ;
In his own loose revolving fields, the swain
Disaster'd stands ; sees other hills ascend,
Of unknown, joyless brow; and other scenes,
Of horrid prospect, shag the trackless plain :
Nor finds the river, nor the forest, hid
Beneath the formless wild ; but wanders on
From hill to dale, still more and more astray,
Impatient flouncing through the drifted heaps,
Stung with the thoughts of home; the thoughts of home
Rush on his nerves, and call their vigour forth
In many a vain attempt. How sinks his soul !
What black despair, what horror fills his heart !
When for the dusky spot, which fancy feign'd
His tufted cottage rising through the snow,
He meets the roughness of the middle waste,
Far from the track and bless'd abode of man!
While round him night resistless closes fast,
And every tempest, howling o'er his head,
Renders the savage wilderness more wild.
Then throng the busy shapes into his mind,
Of cover'd pits, unfathomably deep,
A dire descent! beyond the power of frost ;
Of faithless bogs ; of precipices huge
Smooth'd up with snow; and what is land, unknown,
What water, of the still unfrozen spring,
In the loose marsh or solitary lake,
Where the fresh fountain from the bottom boils.
These check his fearful steps ; and down he sinks
Beneath the shelter of the shapeless drift
Thinking o'er all the bitterness of death,
Mix'd with the tender anguish nature shoots
Through the wrung bosom of the dying man,
His wife, his children, and his friends unseen.
In vain for him th' officious wife prepares
The fire fair blazing, and the vestment warm ;
In vain his little children, peeping out
Into the mingling storm, demand their sire,
With tears of artless innocence. Alas !
Nor wife, nor children, more shall he behold,
Nor friends, nor sacred home. On every nerve
The deadly winter seizes ; shuts up sense ;
And, o'er his inmost vitals creeping cold,
Lays him along the snows, a stiffen'd corse,
Stretch'd out, and bleaching in the northern blast.
THOMSON.
WHEN I survey the bright
Celestial sphere,
So rich with jewels hung, that night
Doth like an Ethiop bride appear,
My soul her wings doth spread,
And heavenward flies,
The Almighty's mysteries to read
In the large volumes of the skies.
For the bright firmament
Shoots forth no flame
So silent, but is eloquent
In speaking the Creator's name.
No unregarded star
Contracts its light
Into so small a character
Removed far from our human sight,
But, if we steadfast look,
We shall discern
In it, as in some holy book,
How man may heavenly knowledge learn.
HABINGTON.
CHILD, amidst the flowers at play,
While the red light fades away;
Mother, with thine earnest eye,
Ever following silently ;
Father, by the breeze of eve,
Calld thy harvest work to leave-
Pray : ere yet the dark hours be,
Lift the heart and bend the knee !
Traveller, in the stranger's land,
Far from thine own household band;
Mourner, haunted by the tone
Of a voice from this world gone;
Captive, in whose narrow cell
Sunshine hath not leave to dwell;
Sailor, on the darkening sea,
Lift the heart and bend the knee.
Warrior, that from battle won,
Breathest now at set of sun;
Woman, o'er the lowly slain
Weeping on his burial plain :
Ye that triumph, ye that sigh,
Kindred by one holy tie,
Heaven's first star alike ye see-
Lift the heart and bend the knee.
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