Palsied with terror, Brandan sate;
The moon was bright, the iceberg near.
He hears a voice sigh humbly: "Wait!
By high permission I am here.
"One moment wait, thou holy man!
On earth my crime, my death, they knew;
My name is under all men's ban;
Ah, tell them of my respite too!
"Tell them, one blessed Christmas night-
(It was the first after I came,
Breathing self-murder, frenzy, spite,
To rue my guilt in endless flame)—
"I felt, as I in torment lay
'Mid the souls plagued by heavenly power, An angel touch mine arm, and say:
Go hence, and cool thyself an hour!
"Ah, whence this mercy, Lord?' I said.
The Leper recollect, said he,
Who ask'd the passers-by for aid,
In Joppa, and thy charity.
"Then I remember'd how I went,
In Joppa, through the public street,
One morn, when the sirocco spent
Its storms of dust, with burning heat;
"And in the street a Leper sate,
Shivering with fever, naked, old;
Sand raked his sores from heel to pate,
The hot wind fever'd him five-fold.
"He gazed upon me as I pass'd,
And murmur'd: Help me, or I die!-
To the poor wretch my cloak I cast,
Saw him look eased, and hurried by.
“Oh, Brandan, think what grace divine,
What blessing must full goodness shower,
If fragment of it small, like mine,
Hath such inestimable power!
"Well-fed, well-clothed, well-friended, I
Did that chance act of good, that one!
Then went my way to kill and lie-
Forgot my good as soon as done.
"That germ of kindness, in the womb
Of mercy caught, did not expire;
Outlives my guilt, outlives my doom,
And friends me in the pit of fire.
"Once every year, when carols wake,
On earth, the Christmas night's repose,
Arising from the sinners' lake,
I journey to these healing snows.
"I stanch with ice my burning breast,
With silence balm my whirling brain.
O Brandan! to this hour of rest,
That Joppan leper's ease was pain!",
Tears started to Saint Brandan's eyes;
He bow'd his head; he breathed a prayer.
When he look'd up-tenantless lies
The iceberg in the frosty air!
ABOU BEN ADHEM AND THE ANGEL.
ABOU BEN ADHEM AND THE ANGEL.
ABOU BEN ADHEM (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel, writing in a book of gold:-
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the presence in the room he said,
"What writest thou?"-The vision raised its head,
And, with a look made of all sweet accord,
Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord." "And is mine one?" said Abou.
"Nay, not so,"
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerly still; and said, "I pray thee, then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow-men."
The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blessed, And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.
OH, for one hour of youthful joy!
Give back my twentieth spring!
I'd rather laugh a bright-haired boy
Than reign a gray-beard king!
Off with the wrinkled spoils of age!
Away with learning's crown!
Tear out life's wisdom-written page,
And dash its trophies down!
One moment let my life-blood stream
From boyhood's fount of flame!
Give me one giddy, reeling dream
Of life all love and fame!
-My listening angel heard the prayer, And, calmly smiling, said
"If I but touch thy silvered hair,
Thy hasty wish hath sped.
But is there nothing in thy track
To bid thee fondly stay,
While the swift seasons hurry back
To find the wished-for day?"
-Ah, truest soul of womankind!
Without thee, what were life?
One bliss I cannot leave behind:
I'll take-my-precious wife!
DEAR is my little native vale,
The ring-dove builds and murmurs there;
Close by my cot she tells her tale
To every passing villager.
The squirrel leaps from tree to tree
And shells his nuts at liberty.
In orange-groves and myrtle-bow'rs,
That breathe a gale of fragrance round,
I charm the fairy-footed hours
With my loved lute's romantic sound;
Or crowns of living laurel weave,
For those that win the race at eve.
The shepherd's horn at break of day,
The ballet danced in twilight glade,
The canzonet and roundelay
Sung in the silent green-wood shade;
These simple joys, that never fail,
Shall bind me to my native vale.
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