And who has marked the rainbow's smile,
That emblem of our Maker's love,
And did not burn with love the while
To join the adoring train above?
But there's a beauty far more bright,
Than Ocean's gems of fairest hue-
Than starry hosts of heavenly light,
When beaming from that sky of blue.
The glorious sky shall pass away,
The mighty deep must cease to flow,
Created things shall all decay,-
This is our sentence, this our woe.
Yet earth, with Heaven can boast alone,
A brighter beauty, more refined,
Its centre is the Eternal's throne-
It is the beauty of the mind.
I KNEW they would perish!
Those beautiful flowers-
As the hopes that we cherish
In youth's sunny bowers :-
I knew they'd be faded !
Though with fond, gentle care
Their bright leaves were shaded,
Decay still was there.
So all that is brightest
Ever first fades away,
And the joys that leap lightest
The earliest decay.
The heart that was nearest,
The widest will rove,
And the friend that was dearest
The first cease to love.
And the purest, the noblest,
The loveliest-we know
Are ever the surest,
The soonest to go.
The birds that sing sweetest,
The flowers most pure,
In their beauty are fleetest,
In their fate the most sure.
Yet still though thy flowers
Are withered and gone,
They will live like some hours
In memory alone.
In that hallowed shrine only
Sleep things we would cherish,
Pure, priceless, loved, lonely,
They never can perish.
Then I'll mourn ye no more,
Ye pale leaves that are shed,
Though your brightness is o'er,
Your perfume is not fled ;
And like thine aroma
The spirit of flowersRemembrance will hover
O'er the grave of past hours.
WELL do I love those various harmonies
That ring so gaily in Spring's budding woods,
And in the thickets, and green, quiet haunts,
And lonely copses of the Summer-time,
And in red Autumn's ancient solitudes.
If thou art pained with the World's noisy stir,
Or crazed with its mad tumults, and weighed down
With any of the ills of human life;
If thou art sick and weak, or mournest at the loss
Of brethren gone to that far-distant land
To which we all do pass, gentle and poor,
The gayest and the gravest, all alike—
Then turn into the peaceful woods, and hear
The thrilling music of the forest birds.
How rich the varied choir. The unquiet Finch
Calls from the distant hollows, and the Wren
Uttereth her sweet and mellow plaint at times,
And the thrush mourneth where the kalmia hangs
Its crimson-spotted cups, or chirps half hid
Amid the lowly dog-wood's snowy flowers,
And the Blue-jay flits by, from tree to tree;
And spreading its rich pinions, fills the ear
With its shrill-sounding and unsteady cry.
With the sweet airs of Spring the Robin comes,
And in her simple song there seems to gush
A strain of sorrow, when she visiteth
Her last year's withered nest. But when the gloom
Of the deep twilight falls, she takes her perch
Upon the red-stemmed hazel's slender twig
That overhangs the brook, and suits her song
To the slow rivulet's inconstant chime.
In the last days of Autumn, when the corn
Lies sweet and yellow in the harvest field,
And the gay company of reapers bind
The bearded wheat in sheaves, then peals abroad
The Blackbird's merry chant. I love to hear,
Bold plunderer, thy mellow burst of song
Float from thy watch-place on the mossy tree
Close at the corn-field edge.
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