Ye feelingly reprove; And daily in the conscious breast, Your visitations are a test And exercise of love. When some great change gives boundless scope To an exulting Nation's hope, Oft, startled and made wise By your low-breathed interpretings, The simply meek foretaste the springs Of bitter contraries. Ye daunt the proud array of war, As sail hath been unfurled; "Tis said, that warnings ye dispense, Emboldened by a keener sense; That men have lived for whom, With dread precision, ye made clear The hour that in a distant year Should knell them to the tomb. Unwelcome insight! Yet there are While on that isthmus which commands God, who instructs the brutes to scent Whose wisdom fixed the scale Of natures, for our wants provides, MEMORY. A PEN to register; a key - Are well assigned to memory By allegoric Bards. As aptly, also, might be given A Pencil to her hand; That, softening objects, sometimes even Outstrips the heart's demand; That smoothes foregone distress, the lines Of lingering care subdues, Long-vanished happiness refines, And clothes in brighter hues; Yet, like a tool of Fancy, works That startle Conscience, as she lurks Within her lonely seat. O! that our lives, which flee so fast, In purity were such, That not an image of the past Should fear that pencil's touch! Retirement then might hourly look Age steal to his allotted nook With heart as calm as lakes that sleep, To their own far-off murmurs listening. SONNET. It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, Breathless with adoration; the broad sun Is sinking down in its tranquillity; The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea. And doth with his eternal motion make A sound like thunder-everlastingly. Dear Child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here, Thy nature is not therefore less divine: TO A SEXTON. LET thy wheelbarrow alone — 'Tis already like a hill In a field of battle made, Where three thousand skulls are laid; These died in peace each with the other, — Father, sister, friend, and brother. Mark the spot to which I point! From this platform, eight feet square, Take not even a finger-joint: Andrew's whole fireside is there. Here, alone, before thine eyes, Simon's sickly daughter lies, From weakness now, and pain defended, Look but at the gardener's pride How he glories, when he sees By the heart of Man, his tears, By his hopes and by his fears, Thou, too heedless, art the Warden Of a far superior garden. Thus then, each to other dear, Andrew there, and Susan here, And, should I live through sun and rain Let one grave hold the Loved and Lover! ODE, COMPOSED ON MAY MORNING. WHILE from the purpling east departs A quickening hope, a freshening glee, Whose first-drawn breath, from bush and tree, All Nature welcomes Her whose sway Like morning's dewy gleams; The tremulous heart excite; And hums the balmy air to still The balance of delight. |