With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat, in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread-
Stitch stitch-stitch!
In poverty, hunger, and dirt,
And still with a voice of dolorous pitch,
Would that its tone could reach the rich!
She sang this "Song of the Shirt."
Lines written in a Highland Glen.
To whom belongs this valley fair,
That sleeps beneath the filmy air,
Even like a living Thing?
Silent-as infant at the breast-
Save a still sound that speaks of rest,
That streamlet's murmuring!
The heavens appear to love this vale;
Here clouds with scarce-seen motion sail,
Or, mid the silence lie!
By that blue arch, this beauteous earth
Mid evening's hour of dewy mirth,
Seems bound unto the sky.
O! that this lovely vale were mine,
Then, from glad youth to calm decline,
My years would gently glide;
Hope would rejoice in endless dreams,
And memory's oft returning gleams
By peace be sanctified.
There would unto my soul be given,
From presence of that gracious heaven,
A piety sublime!
And thoughts would come of mystic mood,
To make in this deep solitude
And did I ask to whom belonged
This vale? I feel that I have wronged
Nature's most gracious soul!
She spreads her glories o'er the earth,
And all her children, from their birth,
Are joint-heirs of the whole!
Yea, long as Nature's humblest child
Hath kept her temple undefiled
By sinful sacrifice;
Earth's fairest scenes are all his own,
He is a monarch, and his throne
Is built amid the skies!
"he sings of what the world will be
When the years have died away."
THE world's great age begins anew,
The golden years return,
The earth doth like a snake renew
Her winter weeds outworn:
Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam
Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.
A brighter Hellas rears its mountains
From waves serener far;
A new Peneus rolls its fountains
Against the morning-star.
Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep
Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.
A loftier Argo cleaves the main,
Fraught with a later prize;
Another Orpheus sings again,
And loves, and weeps, and dies.
A new Ulysses leaves once more
Calypso for his native shore.
O write no more the tale of Troy,
If earth Death's scroll must be!
Nor mix with Laian rage the joy
Which dawns upon the free:
Although a subtler sphinx renew
Riddles of death Thebes never knew.
Another Athens shall arise,
And to remoter time
Bequeath, like sunset to the skies,
The splendour of its prime;
And leave, if nought so bright may live,
All earth can take or heaven can give.
Saturn and Love their long repose
Shall burst, more bright and good
Than all who fell, than One who rose,
Than many unsubdued:
Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers,
But votive tears, and symbol flowers.
O cease! must hate and death return?
Cease! must men kill and die?
Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn
Of bitter prophecy.
The world is weary of the past,
O might it die or rest at last!
ONCE upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore;
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping-rapping at my chamber door.
"Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door;
Only this, and nothing more.”
Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow-sorrow for the lost Lenore-
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Nameless here for evermore.
And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me-1 -filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating, ""Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber doorSome late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;
This it is, and nothing more."
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