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Ah, cruel little Tamerlane,

Who, with thy dreadful reign,

Dost persecute and overwhelm

These hapless Troglodytes of thy realm!

What! tired already! with those suppliant looks,
And voice more beautiful than a poet's books,
Or murmuring sound of water as it flows,
Thou comest back to parley with repose!
This rustic seat in the old apple-tree,
With its o'erhanging golden canopy

Of leaves illuminate with autumnal hues,
And shining with the argent light of dews,
Shall for a season be our place of rest.
Beneath us, like an oriole's pendent nest,
From which the laughing birds have taken wing,
By thee abandoned, hangs thy vacant swing.
Dream-like the waters of the rivers gleam;
A sailless vessel drops adown the stream,
And like it, to a sea as wide and deep,
Thou driftest gently down the tides of sleep.

O child! O new-born denizen

Of life's great city! on thy head

The glory of the morn is shed,

Like a celestial benison !

Here at the portal thou dost stand,

And with thy little hand

Thou openest the mysterious gate

Into the future's undiscovered land.

I see its valves expand,

As at the touch of Fate!

Into those realms of love and hate,
Into that darkness blank and drear,
By some prophetic feeling taught,
I launch the bold, adventurous thought,
Freighted with hope and fear;

TO A CHILD.

As upon subterranean streams,

In caverns unexplored and dark,

Men sometimes launch a fragile bark,
Laden with flickering fire,

And watch its swift-receding beams,
Until at length they disappear,

And in the distant dark expire.

By what astrology of fear or hope
Dare I to cast thy horoscope!
Like the new moon thy life appears;

A little strip of silver light,
And widening outward into night
The shadowy disk of future years;
And yet upon its outer rim,

A luminous circle, faint and dim,

And scarcely visible to us here,

Rounds and completes the perfect sphere,

A prophecy and intimation,

A pale and feeble adumbration,

Of the great world of light, that lies

Behind all human destinies.

Ah! if thy fate, with anguish fraught,

Should be to wet the dusty soil
With the hot tears and sweat of toil,-
To struggle with imperious thought,
Until the overburdened brain,
Weary with labor, faint with pain,
Like a jarred pendulum, retain
Only its motion, not its power,—
Remember, in that perilous hour,
When most afflicted and oppressed,
From labor there shall come forth rest.

And if a more auspicious fate
On thy advancing steps await,
Still let it ever be thy pride

To linger by the laborer's side;
With words of sympathy or song
To cheer the dreary march along
Of the great army of the poor,

O'er desert sand, o'er dangerous moor.
Nor to thyself the task shall be
Without reward; for thou shalt learn

The wisdom early to discern
True beauty in utility;

As great Pythagoras of yore,

Standing beside the blacksmith's door, And hearing the hammers, as they smote The anvils with a different note,

Stole from the varying tones, that hung
Vibrant on every iron tongue,

The secret of the sounding wire,
And formed the seven-chorded lyre.

Enough! I will not play the Seer;
I will no longer strive to ope
The mystic volume, where appear
The herald Hope, forerunning Fear,
And Fear, the pursuivant of Hope.
Thy destiny remains untold;
For, like Acestes' shaft of old,
The swift thought kindles as it flies,
And burns to ashes in the skies.

THE OCCULTATION OF ORION.

I SAW, as in a dream sublime,
The balance in the hand of Time.
O'er East and West its beam impended;
And day, with all its hours of light,
Was slowly sinking out of sight,
While, opposite, the scale of night
Silently with the stars ascended.

Like the astrologers of eld,
In that bright vision I beheld
Greater and deeper mysteries.
I saw, with its celestial keys,
Its chords of air, its frets of fire,
The Samian's great Æolian lyre,
Rising through all its sevenfold bars,
From earth unto the fixéd stars.
And through the dewy atmosphere,
Not only could I see, but hear,
Its wondrous and harmonious strings,
In sweet vibration, sphere by sphere,
From Dian's circle light and near,
Onward to vaster and wider rings,

Where, chanting through his beard of snows,

Majestic, mournful, Saturn goes,

And down the sunless realms of space

Reverberates the thunder of his bass.

Beneath the sky's triumphal arch
This music sounded like a march,
And with its chorus seemed to be
Preluding some great tragedy.
Sirius was rising in the east ;
And, slow ascending one by one,
The kindling constellations shone.
Begirt with many a blazing star,
Stood the great giant Algebar,
Orion, hunter of the beast!
His sword hung gleaming by his side,
And, on his arm, the lion's hide
Scattered across the midnight air
The golden radiance of its hair.

The moon was pallid, but not faint
And beautiful as some fair saint,
Serenely moving on her way
In hours of trial and dismay.

As if she heard the voice of God,
Unharmed with naked feet she trod
Upon the hot and burning stars,
As on the glowing coals and bars

That were to prove her strength, and try
Her holiness and her purity.

Thus moving on, with silent pace,
And triumph in her sweet, pale face,
She reached the station of Orion.

Aghast he stood in strange alarm!
And suddenly from his outstretched arm
Down fell the red skin of the lion
Into the river at his feet.

His mighty club no longer beat
The forehead of the bull; but he
Recled as of yore beside the sea,
When, blinded by Enopion,

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