MUTE Minstrel of the Eve, pale, mystical,
When one by one comes forth the pensive train
Of things not born for worldly strife and pain,
That cannot fade, though doomed perchance to fall;
Fond Cherisher of passions, fancies, all
Whose essence fills a poet's flower-like home.
I saw but now, within yon distant dome,
A cloud that passed its transitory pall
Across the quivering light, and I did think
That moment on the cold and shadowing shame
With which thy starry spirit hath been crowned.
How vain their torturings were! for thou didst sink
With the first stone cast at thy martyred fame;
How like the snow that's ruined by a sound!
AROUND man's hearth his dearest blessings meet.
Why look we for a fruit that grows afar
Planted in peril, when free pastures are,
Like promises, spread round our calm retreat!
Man flies the land to range where billows beat;
Forsakes his hut to track the conqueror's car:
Yet he whose eyes but watch some wandering star,
May crush the steadier glowworm at his feet.
And thus who idly grasp a doubtful good,
In thoughts obscure and passions wild and vain,
Neglect the native pleasures of the blood,
And turn its health and hopes to present pain;
Missing, for gems deep fixed within the flood,
The readier riches of the fragrant plain.
NOTHING in the earth or sea
Ever lent itself to me,
As an agency to give
Shape to thought that it might live ;
As an implement to stay
Fancy on her hidden way,
Turning every tone of hers
Into sparkling characters.
Whence I drew the pliant quill
That hath compassed my will ?
Flying fondly here and there
As a feather on the air,
Sealing each unfinished spell,
Poesy's own Ariel.
Not from light and loving wing
Fresh from the perfumed Spring,
Fanning the red cheek of Morn,
Plumed trophy have I torn.
Not from eagle or from lark,
Milky dove or raven dark;
Not from swallow, that forsakes
Heaven when adverse Winter wakes;
Not from song-souled nightingale,
With whose rich and raptured tale,
Since the evening stole above,
Poet's ears have fallen in love.
Seas have offered up to men,
Trustingly, a diamond pen;
Point of crystal, fine and hard,
Many a window-pane hath marr'd,—
And 'tis oft the poet's curse
To mar his little light with verse.
But the light from heaven's halls floor unbroken falls,
Narrow though my lattice seem
To admit the boundless beam ;
And my fingers would despond
Guiding the rich diamond,
That with invincible incision
Mocks the thin and thought-like vision.
Some a glassy pen have found
In the revel's wizard round,
Tracing every word in wine
With a relic half divine-
Fragment of a cup let slip
From a foul and lying lip.
Others in the sapless stem
Of a blighted, bloomless flower,
Ministrant have won to them
Of a deep and moral power.
But the glass may pierce a vein, And the stem a thorn retain; Thus may gushing blood imbue Things baptized in wine and dew.
Yet though soon the glow may sink
From that warm and crimson ink,
Richer though it fade to-day,
Glittering tint by tint away,
Is such blood from martyred veins
Than a sea of golden grains :
Or the ink which traitors find-
Traitors to the heart and mind-
Which, like water that begets
Toads and aspics where it wets,
Wakes a spirit to disturb
Fragrant bud and healing herb.
Not a sunbeam in my quill,
Nor a tear-hung icicle ;
Nor an arrow's instant light,
Sharp and fatal in its flight;
Not a trophy won from man,
Nor a splinter from a lady's fan
Steeped in fragrance. 'Tis indeed
But a frail and bending reed,
Plucked by a most listless hand
In a waste and flowerless land,
By the margin of a stream
Where the idle eddies gleam,
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