Poems | Page 6

by the pilgrim's side--?Oh for a draught of Hope's crystal tide?To cheer the parch'd and fainting one,?Until his toilsome race be run,?And the bright mirage fall from the sky,?Displaced by a sweet reality.?Brim up Life's chalice--pour in! pour in!
Pour in Hope!
Life's chalice is empty--pour in! pour in!
What?--Pour in Faith!?What is Life's fabric, so nobly plann'd,?Its stately dome, and its ramparts grand,?If their foundation rest on the sand,?Ready to shift with Time's ebbing stream,?And melt away like a gorgeous dream??God! let us trust Thee in very sooth,?Feel that the visions, the dreams of youth,?Its glorious hopes are all based on Truth;--?Thus shall the purpose of Life grow clear;?Love shall be freed from the bondage of fear;?And the soul calmly await the morrow?Untroubled by visions of coming sorrow.?Brim up Life's chalice--pour in! pour in!
Pour in Faith!
SPRING.
On, like a giant, stalketh the strong Wind,?Wrapping the clouds about him, close and dark,?Rifting Creation's soul, for rage is blind,--?No pity hath he for the Earth all stark,?Shivering beneath the loose and drifting snow,?A scanty shroud to hide the dead below.
Dead? There is life within the mother's breast--?So claspeth she her young ones to her heart;--?"The time will come--the time will come--rest! rest!?Let the mad greybeard to his North depart;?Earth shall arise and mock him in his grave--?Patience a little, let the dotard rave!"
The palsied boughs grew still--there came a pause,?And Nature's heart scarce beat for listening,?Gazing abroad from all the tempest-flaws,?With prayerful longing for the saviour Spring;?And when she heard Spring coming up the sky,?Earth rose and threw her shroud off joyfully.
Then she who once had wept like Niobe,?Beheld her children springing round her feet,?Raising young voices in the early day,?That never to her ear had seem'd so sweet;?And the soft murmur of a thousand rills?Proclaim'd how Spring had loosed them on the hills.
The bright Evangel came, girt round with mirth,?And garlanded with youth, and crown'd with flowers?"Awake! arise! ye sons of the new birth,?And move to the quick measure of the hours!?Summer is coming--go ye forth to meet her,?With sweetest hymeneal songs to greet her."
So there arose straightway a joyous train,?Gather'd by every nook and hedgerow shade,?That in its passage o'er the verdant plain,?'Still in the heart a thrilling music made--?Sweet pilgrims they of Love in youth's gay time,?Leading the year on to its golden prime.
The birds sang homage to her evermore;?And myriad wingèd things, whose radiant dyes?Made sunshine beautiful, still hover'd o'er,?And bore her witness in the sunlit skies;?And rising from the tomb in glad amaze,?Came many a sainted flower to hymn her praise.
Thus from the streams, and rivers, from the sea,?From the stirr'd bosom of the mighty hills,?From every glade there rose continually?A blessing for her, till with joyous thrills?Earth's bosom heaved, and in man's heart a voice?Echoed the anthem--"Spring is come! Rejoice!"
THE BITTERN.
The reeds are idly waving o'er the marshy ground,?The rank and ragged herbage rots on many a mound,?And desolate pools and marshes deadly lie around.
There is no life nor motion, save the winds that fly?With the close-muffled clouds in silence through the sky,?There is no sound to stir it, save the Bittern's cry;
The Bittern, sitting sadly on the fluted edges?Of pillars once the prop and pride of palace ledges,?Now smear'd with damp decay and sunk in slimy sedges;
Shatter'd and sunken, with the sculptured architrave?Peering above the surface of the sluggish wave,?Like a gaunt limb thrust fleshless from a shallow grave.
The Bittern sitteth sadly on the time-worn stone,?Upon life's mouldering relics, fearfully alone,?Searing the silence ofttimes with his solemn tone.
The Bittern--monarch of the sad and dreary place,?Mocking the pride and pageant of a ruin'd race,?Whose very name's forgotten, and whose deeds have left no trace.
The pleasant songs of peace, the lute, the lover's sigh,?The statesman's eloquence, the warrior's battle-cry?Have pass'd,--and like their echo from the heedless sky,?The lonely Bittern's note comes sadly floating by.
Oh, melancholy sound! Shall thus for ever end?The glory and the greatness whither all hopes tend,?And as the Past comes booming shall the Present wend?
No ear to listen to the old and hard-earn'd glory,?That wore the heart out, made the locks grow scant and hoary, No ear to listen, and no tongue to tell the story!
The Bittern sitteth 'midst the marshes of the Past,?Sitteth amidst the ruins, whilst the hours fleet fast,?And at his own hoarse cry he looketh round aghast.
The hours fleet fast unnoted, and the time is nigh,?When even he on noiseless wings shall soar on high,?Till his deep note is lost amid the azure sky.
GONE.
The night is dark, and evermore?The thick drops patter on the pane?The wind is weary of the rain,?And round the thatches moaneth sore;?Dark is the night, and cold the air;?And all the trees stand stark and bare,?With leaves spread dank and sere below,?Slow rotting on the plashy clay,?In the God's-acre far away,?Where she, O God! lies cold below--
Cold, cold below!
And