When he came from afar, his beads to tell,
And to chant his hymn at Our Lady's Well.
There is heard no Ave through thy bowers,
Thou art gleaming lone midst thy water-flowers!
But the herd may drink from thy gushing wave,
And there may the reaper his forehead lave,
And the woodman seeks thee not in vain-
Bright Fount! thou art nature's own again!
Fount of the Virgin's ruined shrine!
A voice that speaks of the past is thine,
It mingles the tone of a thoughtful sigh
With the notes that ring through the laughing sky;
Midst the mirthful song of the summer bird,
And the sound of the breeze, it will yet be heard!—
Why is it that thus we may gaze on thee,
To the brilliant sunshine sparkling free?
'Tis that all on earth is of Time's domain-
He hath made thee nature's own again!
Fount of the chapel with ages gray!
Thou art springing freshly amidst decay;
Thy rites are closed, and thy cross lies low,
And the changeful hours breathe o'er thee now.
Yet if at thine altar one holy thought
In man's deep spirit of old hath wrought;
If peace to the mourner hath here been given,
Or prayer, from a chastened heart, to heaven-
Be the spot still hallowed while Time shall reign,
Who hath made thee nature's own again!
THOU'RT bearing hence thy roses,
Glad summer, fare thee well!
Thou'rt singing thy last melodies
In every wood and dell.
But e'er the golden sunset
Of thy latest lingering day,
Oh! tell me, o'er this checkered earth,
How hast thou passed away?
Brightly, sweet Summer! brightly
Thine hours have floated by,
To the joyous birds of the woodland
boughs,
The rangers of the sky;
And brightly in the forests,
To the wild deer wandering free;
And brightly, midst the garden flowers,
To the happy murmuring bee:
But how to human bosoms,
With all their hopes and fears,
And thoughts that make them eagle-
wings,
To pierce the unborn years ?
Sweet Summer! to the captive
Thou hast flown in burning dreams Of the woods, with all their whispering leaves,
And the blue rejoicing streams;—
To the wasted and the weary
On the bed of sickness bound,
In swift delirious fantasies,
That changed with every sound;-
THE WORLD IN THE OPEN AIR.
COME, while in freshness and dew it lies,
To the world that is under the free blue skies!
Leave ye man's home, and forget his care-
There breathes no sigh on the dayspring's air.
Come to the woods, in whose mossy dells
A light all made for the poet dwells-
A light, colored softly by tender leaves,
Whence the primrose a mellower glow receives.
The stock-dove is there in the beechen tree,
And the lulling tone of the honey-bee;
And the voice of cool waters 'midst feathery fern,
Shedding sweet sounds from some hidden urn.
There is life, there is youth, there is tameless mirth,
Where the streams, with the lilies they wear, have birth
There is peace where the alders are whispering low:
Come from man's dwellings with all their woe!
Yes! we will come-we will leave behind
The homes and the sorrows of human kind.
It is well to rove where the river leads
Its bright blue vein along sunny meads:
It is well through the rich wild woods to go,
And to pierce the haunts of the fawn and doe;
And to hear the gushing of gentle springs,
When the heart has been fretted by worldly stings;
And to watch the colors that flit and pass,
With insect-wings, through the wavy grass;
And the silvery gleams o'er the ash-tree's bark,
Borne in with a breeze through the foliage dark.
Joyous and far shall our wanderings be,
As the flight of birds o'er the glittering sea:
To the woods, to the dingles where violets blow,
We will bear no memory of earthly woe.
But if by the forest-brook we meet
A line like the pathway of former feet
If, 'midst the hills, in some lonely spot,
We reach the gray ruins of tower or cot,
If the cell, where a hermit of old hath prayed,
Lift up its cross through the solemn shade;
Or if some nook, where the wild flowers wave,
Bear token sad of a mortal grave,—
Doubt not but there will our steps be stayed,
There our quick spirits awhile delayed;
There will thought fix our impatient eyes,
And win back our hearts to their sympathies.
For what though the mountains and skies be fair,
Steeped in soft hues of the summer air?
'Tis the soul of man, by its hopes and dreams,
That lights up all nature with living gleams.
Where it hath suffered and nobly striven,
Where it hath poured forth its vows to heaven
Where to repose it hath brightly passed,
O'er this green earth there is glory cast.
And by the soul, 'midst groves and rills,
And flocks that feed on a thousand hills,
Birds of the forest, and flowers of the sod,
We, only we, may be linked to God!
THE TRAVELLER AT THE SOURCE OF THE NILE.
IN sunset's light, o'er Afric thrown
A wanderer proudly stood
Beside the well-spring, deep and lone,
Of Egypt's awful flood-
The cradle of that mighty birth,
So long a hidden thing to earth!
He heard in life's first murmuring
sound,
A low mysterious tone-
A music sought, but never found
By kings and warriors gone.
He listened and his heart beat high:
That was the song of victory!
The rapture of a conqueror's mood
Rushed burning through his frame.
The depths of that green solitude
Its torrents could not tame;
Though stillness lay, with eve's last
smile,
Round those far fountains of the Nile.
Night came with stars. Across his
soul
There swept a sudden change: E'en at the pilgrim's glorious goal
A shadow dark and strange [fall Breathed from the thought, so swift to O'er triumph's hour-and is this all? No more than this! What seemed it
First by that spring to stand? A thousand streams of lovelier flow Bathed his own mountain-land! Whence, far o'er waste and ocean track, [back. Their wild, sweet voices, called him
They called him back to many a glade,
His childhood's haunt of play,
Where brightly through the beechen
Their waters glanced away;
They called him, with their sounding
Back to his father's hills and graves.
But, darkly mingling with the thought
Of each familiar scene,
Rose up a fearful vision, fraught
With all that lay between-
The Arab's lance, the desert's gloom,
The whirling sands, the red simoom!
Where was the glow of power and
pride?
The spirit born to roam ?
His altered heart within him died
With yearnings for his home!
All vainly struggling to repress
The gush of painful tenderness.
He wept! The stars of Afric's heaven
Beheld his bursting tears,
E'en on that spot where fate had given
The meed of toiling years!-
O Happiness! how far we flee [thee!
Thine own sweet paths in search of
THE boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but he had fled;
The flame that lit the battle's wreck
Shone round him o'er the dead.
1 A remarkable description of feelings thus fluctuating from triumph to despondency, is given in Bruce's Abyssinian Travels. The buoyant exultation of his spirits on arriving at the source of the Nile, was almost immediately succeeded by a gloom, which he thus portrays:-"I was, at that very moment, in possession of what had for many years been the principal object of my ambition and wishes: indifference, which, from the usual infirmity of human nature, follows, t least for a time, complete enjoyment, had taken place of it. The marsh and the fountains of the Nile, upon comparison with the rise of many of our rivers, became now a trifling object in y sight. I remember that magnificent scene in my own native country, where the Tweed, C'ye, and Annan, rise in one hill. I began, in my sorrow, to treat the inquiry about the source of the Nile as a violent effort of a distempered fancy."
2 Young Casabianca, a boy about thirteen years old, son to the Admiral of the Orient, remained at his post (in the Battle of the Nile) after the ship had taken fire, and all the guns had been abandoned; and perished in the explosion of the vessel, when the flames had reached the powder.
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