Thou hast flung the wealth away, But when wilt thou return ?- O'er the image of the sky, Which the lake's clear bosom wore, Darkly may shadows lie But not for evermore. Give back thy heart again To the freedom of the woods, To the birds' triumphant strain, To the mountain solitudes ! But when wilt thou return? Along thine own pure air There are young sweet voices borneOh! should not thine be there? Still at thy father's board There is kept a place for thee; And, by thy smile restored, Joy round the hearth shall be. Still hath thy mother's eye, Thy coming step to greet, A look of days gone by, Still, when the prayer is said, THE WAKENING. How many thousands are wakening now! And some, far out on the deep mid-sea, And some-oh, well may their hearts rejoice!— And some, in the camp, to the bugle's breath, And the tramp of the steed on the echoing heath, And the sudden roar of the hostile gun, Which tells that a field must ere night be won. And some, in the gloomy convict cell, To the dull deep note of the warning bell, When the bright sun mounts in the laughing sky. And some to the peal of the hunter's horn, So are we roused on this chequer'd earth: But one must the sound be, and one the call, THE BREEZE FROM SHORE. ["Poetry reveals to us the loveliness of nature, brings back the freshness of youthful feeling, revives the relish of simple pleasures, keeps unquenched the enthusiasm which warmed the spring-time of our being, refines youthful love, strengthens our interest in human nature, by vivid delineations of its tenderest and loftiest feelings; and, through the brightness of its prophetic visions, helps faith to lay hold on the future life."-CHANNING. Joy is upon the lonely seas, Forth, to the billow and the breeze, Oh! welcome are the winds that tell Where, far away, the jasmines dwell, The sailor at the helm they meet, That woo him, from the moaning main, They woo him, whispering lovely tales And fount's bright gleam, in island vales Across his lone ship's wake they bring And, O ye masters of the lay! Their power is from the brighter clime Their tones are of the world, which time They tell us of the living light They call us, with a voice divine, Our vows of youth at many a shrine, THE DYING IMPROVISATORE.* "My heart shall be pour'd over thee-and break. THE spirit of my land, Prophecy of Dante. It visits me once more!-though I must die Far from the myrtles which thy breeze hath fann'd, My own bright Italy! It is, it is thy breath, Which stirs my soul e'en yet, as wavering flame * Still trembling, yet the same! Sestini, the Roman Improvisatore, when on his deathbed at Paris, is said to have poured forth a Farewell to Italy, in his most impassioned poetry. |