By one as young, as thoughtless as Ginevra, 'Why not remove it from its lurking-place?' 'Twas done as soon as said; but on the way It burst, it fell; and lo, a skeleton,
With here and there a pearl, an emerald-stone,
A golden clasp, clasping a shred of gold!
All else had perished—save a nuptial-ring,
And a small seal, her mother's legacy,
Engraven with a namo
Expand and shut with silent ecstasy!
Yet wert thou once a worm, a thing that crept
On the bare earth, then wrought a tomb and slept.
And such is man; soon from his cell of clay
To burst a seraph in the blaze of day.
THEY stand between the mountains and the sea;
Awful memorials, but of whom we know not.
The seaman passing, gazes from the deck,
The buffalo-driver, in his shaggy cloak,
Points to the work of magic, and moves on.
Time was they stood along the crowded street,
Temples of gods, and on their ample steps
What various habits, various tongues beset
The brazen gates for prayer and sacrifice!
Time was perhaps the third was sought for justice;
And here the accuser stood, and there the accused,
And here the judges sat, and heard, and judged.
All silent now, as in the ages past,
Trodden under foot, and mingled dust with dust.
How many centuries did the sun go round
From Mount Alburnus to the Tyrrhene sea,
While, by some spell rendered invisible,
Or, if approached, approached by him alone
Who saw as though he saw not, they remained
As in the darkness of a sepulchre,
Waiting the appointed time! All, all within
Proclaims that Nature had resumed her right,
And taken to herself what man renounced;
No cornice, triglyph, or worn abacus,
But with thick ivy hung, or branching fern,
This iron-brown o'erspread with brightest verdure!
From my youth upward have I longed to tread
That classic ground; and am I here at last?
Wandering at will through the long porticoes,
And catching, as through some majestic grove,
Now the blue ocean, and now, chaos-like,
Mountains and mountain-gulfs, and, half-way up,
Towns like the living rock from which they grew?
A cloudy region, black and desolate,
Where once a slave withstood a world in arms.
THE author of "The Sabbath" was born in Glasgow, on 22d April 1765. His father was connected with the law, and educated his son for the Scottish Bar. This not proving congenial to the tastes of Grahame, he took orders in the Church of England, and obtained a curacy in Gloucestershire, and afterwards in Durham. Besides "The Sabbath," he also wrote "Mary Queen of Scotland," "The Birds of Scotland," and "British Georgics" in blank verse. He died 14th September 1811.
FROM "THE SABBATH."
How still the morning of the hallowed day!
Mute is the voice of rural labour, hushed
The ploughboy's whistle and the milkmaid's song.
The scythe lies glittering in the dewy wreath
Of tedded grass, mingled with fading flowers,
That yestermorn bloomed waving in the breeze.
Sounds the most faint attract the ear--the hum
Of early bee, the trickling of the dew,
The distant bleating midway up the hill.
Calmness seems throned on yon unmoving cloud.
To him who wanders o'er the upland leas,
The blackbird's note comes mellower from the dale;
And sweeter from the sky the gladsome lark
Warbles his heaven-tuned song; the lulling brook
Murmurs more gently down the deep-sunk glen;
While from yon lowly roof, whose curling smoke
O'ermounts the mist, is heard at intervals
The voice of psalms, the simple song of praise.
With dove-like wings Peace o'er yon village broods:
The dizzying mill-wheel rests; the anvil's din
Hath ceased; all, all around is quietness.
Less fearful on this day, the limping hare
Stops, and looks back, and stops, and looks on man,
IIer deadliest foe. The toil-worn horse, set free,
Unheedful of the pasture, roams at large ;
And, as his stiff unwieldy bulk he rolls,
His iron-armed hoofs gleam in the morning ray.
But chiefly man the day of rest enjoys.
Hail, Sabbath! thee I hail, the poor man's day.
On other days, the man of toil is doomed
To eat his joyless bread, lonely, the ground
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