Songs In Many Keys | Page 6

trampling strife has torn,
Waves the
green plumage of thy tasselled corn;
Our maddening conflicts sear
thy fairest plain,
Still thy soft answer is the growing grain.
Yet, O
our Mother, while uncounted charms

Steal round our hearts in thine

embracing arms,
Let not our virtues in thy love decay,
And thy fond
sweetness waste our strength away.
No! by these hills, whose banners now displayed
In blazing cohorts
Autumn has arrayed;
By yon twin summits, on whose splintery crests

The tossing hemlocks hold the eagles' nests;
By these fair plains
the mountain circle screens,
And feeds with streamlets from its dark
ravines,
True to their home, these faithful arms shall toil
To crown
with peace their own untainted soil;
And, true to God, to freedom, to
mankind,
If her chained bandogs Faction shall unbind,
These
stately forms, that bending even now
Bowed their strong manhood to
the humble plough,
Shall rise erect, the guardians of the land,
The
same stern iron in the same right hand,
Till o'er their hills the shouts
of triumph run,
The sword has rescued what the ploughshare won!
SPRING
WINTER is past; the heart of Nature warms
Beneath the wrecks of
unresisted storms;
Doubtful at first, suspected more than seen,
The
southern slopes are fringed with tender green;
On sheltered banks,
beneath the dripping eaves,
Spring's earliest nurslings spread their
glowing leaves,
Bright with the hues from wider pictures won,

White, azure, golden,--drift, or sky, or sun,--
The snowdrop, bearing
on her patient breast
The frozen trophy torn from Winter's crest;

The violet, gazing on the arch of blue
Till her own iris wears its
deepened hue;
The spendthrift crocus, bursting through the mould

Naked and shivering with his cup of gold.
Swelled with new life, the
darkening elm on high
Prints her thick buds against the spotted sky

On all her boughs the stately chestnut cleaves
The gummy shroud
that wraps her embryo leaves;
The house-fly, stealing from his
narrow grave,
Drugged with the opiate that November gave,
Beats
with faint wing against the sunny pane,
Or crawls, tenacious, o'er its
lucid plain;
From shaded chinks of lichen-crusted walls,
In languid
curves, the gliding serpent crawls;
The bog's green harper, thawing

from his sleep,
Twangs a hoarse note and tries a shortened leap;
On
floating rails that face the softening noons
The still shy turtles range
their dark platoons,
Or, toiling aimless o'er the mellowing fields,

Trail through the grass their tessellated shields.
At last young April, ever frail and fair,
Wooed by her playmate with
the golden hair,
Chased to the margin of receding floods
O'er the
soft meadows starred with opening buds,
In tears and blushes sighs
herself away,
And hides her cheek beneath the flowers of May.
Then the proud tulip lights her beacon blaze,
Her clustering curls the
hyacinth displays;
O'er her tall blades the crested fleur-de-lis,
Like
blue-eyed Pallas, towers erect and free;
With yellower flames the
lengthened sunshine glows,
And love lays bare the passion-breathing
rose;
Queen of the lake, along its reedy verge
The rival lily hastens
to emerge,
Her snowy shoulders glistening as she strips,
Till morn
is sultan of her parted lips.
Then bursts the song from every leafy glade,
The yielding season's
bridal serenade;
Then flash the wings returning Summer calls

Through the deep arches of her forest halls,--
The bluebird, breathing
from his azure plumes
The fragrance borrowed where the myrtle
blooms;
The thrush, poor wanderer, dropping meekly down,
Clad in
his remnant of autumnal brown;
The oriole, drifting like a flake of
fire
Rent by a whirlwind from a blazing spire.
The robin, jerking his
spasmodic throat,
Repeats, imperious, his staccato note;
The
crack-brained bobolink courts his crazy mate,
Poised on a bulrush
tipsy with his weight;
Nay, in his cage the lone canary sings,
Feels
the soft air, and spreads his idle wings.
Why dream I here within these caging walls,
Deaf to her voice, while
blooming Nature calls;
Peering and gazing with insatiate looks

Through blinding lenses, or in wearying books?

Off, gloomy spectres
of the shrivelled past!
Fly with the leaves that fill the autumn blast


Ye imps of Science, whose relentless chains
Lock the warm tides
within these living veins,
Close your dim cavern, while its captive
strays
Dazzled and giddy in the morning's blaze!
THE STUDY
YET in the darksome crypt I left so late,
Whose only altar is its rusted
grate,--
Sepulchral, rayless, joyless as it seems,
Shamed by the glare
of May's refulgent beams,--
While the dim seasons dragged their
shrouded train,
Its paler splendors were not quite in vain.
From
these dull bars the cheerful firelight's glow
Streamed through the
casement o'er the spectral snow;
Here, while the night-wind wreaked
its frantic will
On the loose ocean and the rock-bound hill,
Rent the
cracked topsail from its quivering yard,
And rived the oak a thousand
storms had scarred,
Fenced by these walls the peaceful taper shone,

Nor felt a breath to slant its trembling cone.
Not all unblest the mild interior scene
When the red curtain spread its
falling screen;
O'er some light task the lonely hours were past,
And
the long evening only flew too fast;
Or the wide chair its leathern
arms would lend
In genial welcome to some easy friend,
Stretched
on its bosom with relaxing nerves,
Slow moulding, plastic, to its
hollow curves;
Perchance indulging, if of generous creed,
In brave
Sir Walter's dream-compelling weed.
Or, happier still, the evening
hour would bring
To