-One nymph slumbering lay,
A sweet dream 'neath her eyelids, her white limbs
Sinking full softly in the violets dim;
When timbrelled troops rushed past with branches green.
One in each fountain, riched with golden sands,
With her delicious face a moment seen,
And limbs faint gleaming through their watery veil.
Whose blood leapt madly when the trumpets brayed
To joyous battle 'mid a storm of steeds,
Won a rich kingdom on a battle-day;
But in the sunset he was ebbing fast,
Ringed by his weeping lords. His left hand held.
His white steed, to the belly splashed with blood,
That seemed to mourn him with his drooping head;
His right, his broken brand; and in his ear
His old victorious banners flap the winds.
He called his faithful herald to his side-
"Go! tell the dead I come!" With a proud smile,
The warrior with a stab let out his soul,
Which fled, and shrieked through all the other world, "Ye dead! My master comes!" And there was pause Till the great Shade should enter.
THE last high upward slant of sun on the trees,
Like a dead soldier's sword upon his pall,
Seems to console earth for the glory gone.
Oh! I could weep to see the day die thus;
The death-bed of a day, how beautiful!
Linger, ye clouds, one moment longer there;
Fan it to slumber with your golden wings!
Like pious prayers, ye seem to soothe its end.
It will wake no more till the all-revealing day;
When, like a drop of water, greatened bright
Into a shadow, it shall show itself
With all its little tyrannous things and deeds,
Unhomed and clear. The day hath gone to God,-
Straight-like an infant's spirit, or a mocked
And mourning messenger of Grace to man.
Would it had taken me too on its wing!
My end is nigh. Would I might die outright,-
So o'er the sunset clouds of red mortality
The emerald hues of deathlessness diffuse
Their glory, heightening to the starry blue
Of all embosoming eternity.
Who that hath lain lonely on a high hill,
In the imperious silence of full noon,
With nothing but the clear dark sky about him,
Like GOD'S HAND laid upon the head of earth,——
But hath expected that some natural spirit
Should start out of the universal air,
And, gathering his cloudy robe around him,
As one in act to teach mysterious things,
Explain that he must die?
THE poet in his work reflects his soul,
As some lone nymph, beside a woodland well,
Whose clear white limbs, like animated light,
Make glad the heart and sanctify the sight,
The soft and shadowy miracle of her form.
The bard's aim is to give us thoughts; his art
Lieth in giving them as bright as may be.
Words are the motes of thought, and nothing more.
Words are like sea-shells on the shore; they show
Where the mind ends, and not how far it has been.
Let every thought, too, soldier-like, be stripped,
And roughly looked over. The dress of words,
Like to the Roman girl's enticing garb,
Should let the play of limb be seen through it,
And the round rising form. A mist of words,
Like halos round the moon, though they enlarge
The seeming size of thoughts, make the light less
Doubly. It is the thought writ down we want,
Not its effect,-not likenesses of likenesses.
And such descriptions are not, more than gloves
Instead of hands to shake, enough for us.
As in the good the fair; simplicity
Is Nature's first step, and the last of Art.
HER form was all humanity,
Her soul all God's; in spirit and in form,
Like fair. Her cheek had the pale pearly pink
Of sea-shells, the world's sweetest tint, as though
She lived, one half might deem, on roses sopped
In silver dew; she spake as with the voice
Of spheral harmony, which greets the soul
When at the hour of death the saved one knows
His sister angels near; her eye was as
The golden fane the setting sun doth just
Imblaze; which shows, till Heaven comes down again,
All other lights but grades of gloom; her dark,
Long rolling locks were as a stream the slave
Might search for gold, and, searching, find.
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