SAND OF THE DESERT.

Or anchorites beneath Engaddi's palms

Pacing the Red Sea beach,

And singing slow their old Armenian psalms In half-articulate speech;

Or caravans, that from Bassora's gate
With westward steps depart;

Or Mecca's pilgrims, confident of Fate,

And resolute in heart!

65

These have passed over it, or may have passed!
Now in this crystal tower
Imprisoned by some curious hand at last,
It counts the passing hour.

And as I gaze, these narrow walls expand ;

Before my dreamy eye

Stretches the desert with its shifting sand,

Its unimpeded sky.

And borne aloft by the sustaining blast,
This little golden thread

Dilates into a column high and vast,

A form of fear and dread.

And onward, and across the setting sun,

Across the boundless plain,

The column and its broader shadow run,

Till thought pursues in vain.

J

The vision vanishes! These walls again

Shut out the lurid sun,

Shut out the hot, immeasurable plain ;

The half-hour's sand is run!

BIRDS OF PASSAGE.

BLACK shadows fall

From the lindens tall,

That lift aloft their massive wall

Against the southern sky;

And from the realms

Of the shadowy elms

A tide-like darkness overwhelms

The fields that round us lie.

But the night is fair,

And everywhere

A warm, soft, vapour fills the air,

And distant sounds seem near;

And above, in the light

Of the star-lit night,

Swift birds of passage wing their flight

Through the dewy atmosphere.

BIRDS OF PASSAGE.

67

I hear the beat

Of their pinions fleet,

As from the land of snow and sleet

They seek a southern lea.

I hear the cry

Of their voices high

Falling dreamily through the sky,

But their forms I cannot see.

O, say not so!

Those sounds that flow

In murmurs of delight and woe

Come not from wings of birds.

They are the throngs

Of the poet's songs,

Murmurs of pleasures, and pains, and wrongs,

The sound of winged words.

This is the cry

Of souls, that high

On toiling, beating pinions, fly,

Seeking a warmer clime.

From their distant flight

Through realms of light

It falls into our world of night,

With the murmuring sound of rhyme.

THE old house by the lindens

Stood silent in the shade,

And on the gravelled pathway

The light and shadow played.

THE OPEN WINDOW.

69

69

But the faces of the children,

They were no longer there.

The large Newfoundland house-dog
Was standing by the door;
He looked for his little playmates,

Who would return no more.

They walked not under the lindens, They played not in the hall;

But shadow, and silence, and sadness Were hanging over all.

The birds sang in the branches,

With sweet, familiar tone;

But the voices of the children

Will be heard in dreams alone!

And the boy that walked beside me, He could not understand

Why closer in mine, ah! closer,

I pressed his warm, soft hand!