Indian Legends and Other Poems | Page 8

solemn lesson glean;
Beware, lest, when ye cross that stream

Whose breaking surges farthest gleam,
No mortal eye hath seen,
Discordant voices wake the shore
The
struggling spirit would explore,
And to the trembling soul deny
Its
latest resting-place on high;
Our acts are Judges, that must meet us
there
With seraph smiles of light, or fiendish glare.
THE HIGHLAND GIRL'S LAMENT.
The ancient Highlanders believed the spirits of their departed friends
continually present, and that their imagined appearances and voices
communicated warnings of approaching death.
Oh! set the bridal feast aside,
And bear the harp away;
The
coronach must sound instead,
From solemn kirk-yard gray.
I heard last eve, at set of sun,
The death-bell on the gale.
It was no
earthly melody:--
The eglantine grew pale;
And leaf and blossom seemed to thrill
With an unuttered prayer,
As,
fraught with desolateness wild,
The strange notes stirred the air.
And on the rugged mountain height,
Where snow and sunbeam meet,

That never yet in storm or shine
Was trod by human feet,
A weird and spectral presence came
Between me and the light;
The

waving of a shadowy hand
That faded into night.
I felt it was the first who left
Our little household band,--
The child,
with waving locks of gold,
Now in the silent land.
And when the mist at morn arose
From Katrine's silvery wave,
A
form of aspect ominous,
With pensive look and grave,
Moved from the waters towards the glen
Where stands the holly-tree;

'T was the brother who is sleeping low
Beneath the stormy sea.
And while to-night the curfew bell
Rang out with solemn chime,
As
soundeth o'er the buried year,
The organ peal of time,
And, near the fragrant jessamine,
I mused in garden glade,
A
phantom form appeared to me
Beneath the hawthorn shade.
The dews had wept their silent tears,
The moon was up on high,

And every star was sphered with calm,
Like an archangel's eye;
And melancholy music swept
With cadence low and sweet,
Such as
ascends when spirit-wings
Around a death-bed meet.
O was it not a mother's heart
That gave that warning sign;
The
loving heart that used to thrill
To every grief of mine?
I oft have deemed, in sunny hours,
When life with love was fraught,

The nearness of the dead to us
A fantasy of thought.
But, standing on the barrier
I used to view with pain,
I feel the
chains of severed love
Are linking close again.
Another hand must smooth and bless
My father's silver hair;

Another voice must read to him
At morn and evening prayer.
The flowers that I have trained will bloom,
But at another's side;


And he I love will seek perchance,
A gentler, fairer bride.
And soon another shade will haunt
The echo and the gloom,
With
pining heart of restless love,
And omens of the tomb.
Then set the festal board aside,
And bear the harp away;
The
coronach must sound instead
From solemn kirk-yard gray.
TO MY SISTER.
ON HER BIRTHDAY.
'T is said that each succeeding year
Another circlet weaves
Within
each living, waving tree;
Yet not in buds or leaves,--
But far within
the silent core,
The tiny shuttles ply,
At Nature's ever-working loom,

Unseen by human eye.
And thus, within my "heart of hearts,"
Doth this returning day,

Another golden zone complete,
Another circle lay;
And when unto
the shadowy past
In retrospect I flee,
I numerate the fleeting years

By deepening love for thee.
Since last we met this sunny day
How bright the hours have flown!

Youth, Love, and Hope, with fadeless light,
Around our way have
shone;
And if a shadow from the past
Has floated o'er the dream,

'T was softened, like a violet cloud
Reflected in a stream.
Yet if an hour of bitter grief,
Should e'er thy spirit claim,
May it the
trying ordeal pass,
As gold the fiery flame;
And may the years that
bind our hearts
In love that cannot die,
Still draw us hourly nearer
God,
And nearer to the sky.
THE POET'S LESSON.
"He who would write heroic poems, must make his whole life a heroic
poem."--MILTON.

There came a voice from the realm of thought,
And my spirit bowed
to hear,--
A voice with majestic sadness fraught,
By the grace of
God most clear.
A mighty tone from the solemn Past,
Outliving the Poet-lyre,
Borne
down on the rush of Time's fitful blast.
Like the cloven tongues of
fire.
Wouldst thou fashion the song, O! Poet-heart,
For a mission high and
free?
The drama of Life, in its every part,
Must a living poem be.
Wouldst thou speed the knight to the battle-field,
In a proven suit of
mail?
On the world's highway, with Faith's broad shield,
The peril
go forth to hail.
For the noble soul, there is noble strife,
And the sons of earth attain,

Through the wild turmoil and storm of Life,
To discipline, through
pain.
Think not that Poesy liveth alone,
In the flow of measured rhyme;

The noble deed with a mightier tone
Shall sound through latest time.
Then poems two, at each upward flight,
In glorious measure fill;
Be
the Poem in words, one of beauty and might,
But the Life one, loftier
still.
MADELINE.
A LEGEND OF THE MOHAWK.
Where the waters of the Mohawk
Through a quiet valley glide,

From the brown church to her dwelling
She that morning passed a
bride.
In the mild light of October
Beautiful the forest stood,
As