Disturb (no longer pale and broken-hearted). A couch that gods had deigned to bless, Then took his flight upon the morning air : MOONLIGHT. WHAT See'st thou, silver crescent of the sky, And when, ere twilight gathers in the vale, Thou see'st the village-dance, where light hearts meet Thou see'st the lover in the twilight bower, When vow is poured on vow, and eye meets eye, Is uttered only in the burning sigh; Thou see'st the fisher loitering by the shore; Thou see'st the school-boy wandering through the wood; But other scenes are thine, sweet star of night, From orb more dazzling hastens to adorn This lower world: Ah! then, fair planet, say, The sweets of friendship and of love unknown; The first faint traces of the wakening day, Whose little light fades not more fast away : Ah! 'tis the vigil of the broken heart, That fain would live, though treacherous hope depart. Thou see'st the mother, wife, or sister stand, By the lorn sick-bed, where disease has found The joyful current of the blood has bound, Thou see'st the soldier on the tented field Snatching short slumber ere he wakes to die; Thou see'st the wretch whose senses never yield To gentle sleep, and in whose dim, sunk eye Thou see'st, fair orb, the truths of human life, STANZAS TO A LADY. BY T. K. HERVEY, ESQ. ACROSS the waves-away and far, I love thee as men love a star, The brightest where a thousand are, With love unstained by hopes or fears, My heart is tutored not to weep; Where grief lies hushed, but not asleep, For only thee and heaven; Too far and fair to aid the birth Of thoughts that have a taint of earth! And yet the days for ever gone, When thou wert as a bird, Living 'mid flowers and leaves alone, And singing in so soft a tone As I never since have heard, Will make me grieve that birds, and things So beautiful, have ever wings! And there are hours in the lonely night, When I seem to hear thy calls, Faint as the echoes of far delight, And dreamy and sad as the sighing flight Of distant waterfalls ; And then my vow is hard to keep, For it were a joy, indeed, to weep! For I feel, as men feel when moonlight falls Amid old cathedral aisles; Or the wind plays, sadly, along the walls Of lonely and forsaken halls, That we knew in their day of smiles; Or as one who hears, amid foreign flowers, A tune he had learned in his mother's bowers. But I may not, and I dare not weep, Lest the vision pass away, And the vigils that I love to keep Be broken up, by the fevered sleep That leaves me-with the day Like one who has travelled far to the spot Where his home should be-and finds it not! Yet then, like the incense of many flowers, For I know, from thy dwelling in eastern bowers, And I feel, in my soul, the fadeless truth Of her whom I loved in early youth. Like hidden streams,-whose quiet tone Is unheard in the garish day, That utter a music all their own, When the night-dew falls, and the lady moon I knew not half thy gentle worth, We shall not meet on earth again!— For, they tell me that the cloud of pain I would not look upon thy tears,— Just as thou wert, in those blessed years That we should ever part; And I would not aught should mar the spell, The picture nursed so long and well! I love to think on thee, as one And feel that I am journeying on, To join thee on that shore Where thou-I know-wilt look for me, And I, for ever, be with thee! NAPOLEON MORIBUNDUS. Sume superbiam Quesitam meritis. YES! bury me deep in the infinite sea, Let my heart have a limitless grave As far from the stretch of all earthly control Then my briny pall shall engirdle the world, And each mutinous billow that's sky-ward curled, That name shall be storied in records sublime, In the uttermost corners of earth: Now breathed as a curse, now a spell-word sublime, In the glorified land of my birth. My airy form on some lofty mast In fire-fraught clouds shall appear, And mix with the shriek of the hurricane blast My voice to the fancy of fear. Yes! plunge my dark heart in the infinite sea, Whose mandate to millions was doom? |