THE RESTLESS HEART. A millstone and the human heart are driven ever round; If they have nothing else to grind, they must themselves be ground. CHRISTIAN LOVE. Whilom love was like a fire, and warmth and comfort it bespoke ; But, alas! it now is quenched, and only bites us, like the smoke. ART AND TACT. Intelligence and courtesy not always are combined; RETRIBUTION. Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small; Though with patience he stands waiting, with exactness grinds he all. TRUTH. When by night the frogs are croaking, kindle but a torch's fire, Ha! how soon they all are silent! Thus truth silences the liar. RHYMES. If perhaps these rhymes of mine should sound not well in strangers' ears, They have only to bethink them that it happens so with theirs ; For so long as words, like mortals, call a fatherland their own, They will be most highly valued where they are best and longest known. Songs and Sonnets. SEAWEED. WHEN descends on the Atlantic The gigantic Storm-wind of the equinox, Landward in his wrath he scourges The toiling surges, Laden with seaweed from the rocks: From Bermuda's reefs; from edges In some far-off, bright Azore; Surges of San Salvador; From the tumbling surf, that buries Answering the hoarse Hebrides; And from wrecks of ships, and drifting Spars, uplifting Ever drifting, drifting, drifting On the shifting Currents of the restless main; All have found repose again. So when storms of wild emotion Of the poet's soul, ere long From each cave and rocky fastness, Floats some fragment of a song: From the far-off isles enchanted, With the golden fruit of Truth; In the tropic clime of Youth; From the strong Will, and the Endeavour That for ever Wrestles with the tides of Fate; Floating waste and desolate Ever drifting, drifting, drifting On the shifting Currents of the restless heart; Till at length in books recorded, Household words, no more depart. THE DAY IS DONE. THE day is done, and the darkness I see the lights of the village Gleam through the rain and the mist, And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me, That my soul cannot resist : A feeling of sadness and longing, As the mist resembles the rain. Come, read to me some poem, Not from the grand old masters, For, like strains of martial music, Read from some humbler poet, Whose songs gushed from his heart, As showers from the clouds of summer Or tears from the eyelids start; Who, through long days of labour, Such songs have power to quiet The restless pulse of care, And come like the benediction That follows after prayer. X Then read from the treasured volume The poem of thy choice, And lend to the rhyme of the poet And the night shall be filled with music AFTERNOON IN FEBRUARY. THE day is ending, The night is descending; The marsh is frozen, The river dead. Through clouds like ashes On village-windows That glimmer red. The snow recommences; The buried fences Mark no longer The road o'er the plain; While through the meadows, Like fearful shadows, Slowly passes A funeral train. The bell is pealing, To the dismal knell ; |