SIR JOHN HANMER.

I.

AMERICA.

GREAT people, whom across the Atlantic seas,

Our thoughts, expanding with the space, behold;
And know thy starry front, serene and bold,
E'en as Orion, when the winters freeze;

Thy distance fades by changing moon's degrees;
Peace hovers o'er the middle depths, to hold
On either side her scales of antique gold,
Spanning the depths: but not alone for these ;
But, that ye come from an ancestral line
That hence departed, keeping freedom's ways,
And speak the language that the band divine
And storied memories of great deeds did raise,
When the old world was wondrous; let the sign
Of love shine out betwixt us, in our days.

II.

PETRARCA.

NOT vainly didst thou sing thy lifetime long,
Petrarca, of a fair and gentle dame;

And with the winds fan love's enduring flame,
Wandering the hills and the quick streams among ;
For Time hath listened to thy passionate song;
Whose years like pilgrims to Valchiusa came.
Sighing thou wentest all thy days; but Fame
Filled her clear trump with thine imagined wrong;
Then from the banks of that Provençal river,
Soared loftier accents, 'neath the Alps' blue gleam;
And at thy voice rose one who would deliver
His Rome and thine; O noble poet-dream!
The Belisarian weeds did stir and shiver

On her old walls at that electric theme.

III.

THE STEAMBOAT.

WHITE wings, that o'er the hyacinthine sea
With joy or hope or sorrow long have sped;
Since first he voyaged whom the Colchian wed,
Bearing lone ships o'er many a salt degree;
A voice came thence, where ye were wont to be,
A strange and serpent utterance; high o'erhead
Trailed its dark breath; and with Ixion's tread
A keel passed by, mocking the stormy lee.
Into the rack, far lessening, on it went,

As once that antique lover of the cloud;

While ye to veering winds were bowed and bent;

And Ocean roared with his great voice aloud,

Lashing his waves 'gainst isle and continent,

Vexed with the wake that wheel-borne ship had ploughed.

IV.

THE PINE WOODS.

We stand upon the Moorish mountain-side,
From age to age, a solemn company;
There are no voices in our paths, but we
Hear the great whirlwinds roaring loud and wide,
And like the sea-waves have our boughs replied,
From the beginning, to their stormy glee;
The thunder rolls above us, and some tree
Smites with his bolt; yet doth the race abide,
Answering all times; but joyous, when the sun
Glints on the peaks that clouds no longer bear
And the young shoots to flourish have begun ;
And the quick seeds through the blue odorous air
From the expanding cones fall one by one;
And silence, as in temples, dwelleth there.

;

V.

SINGING-BIRDS.

SWEET is thy voice, embowered Nightingale,
But for thy praise would fail my weaker song;
Sweet all thy airy kindred, that belong
To Nature's happiest haunts, by field or vale;
And some there are, that, in the shadows pale
Of cavernous dim towns, make yearn the throng;
Prisoners are they, and blind, yet seems more strong
The melody of their lives' remembered tale.

Ye are the accepted poets: wheresoe'er

Your notes have sounded, joy hath thither come,
As flowers to forest wells, serene and clear :

Fame wears ye not, that eats the hearts of some:
Those unambitious accents man doth hear,

And straight the importunate voice of self is done.