A GOOD that never satisfies the mind,
A beauty fading like the April flowers,
A sweet with floods of gall that runs combined,
A pleasure passing ere in thought made ours,
An honour that more fickle is than wind,
A glory at opinion's frown that lowers,
A treasury which bankrupt time devours,
A knowledge than grave ignorance more blind,
A vain delight our equals to command,
A style of greatness, in effect a dream,
A fabulous thought of holding sea and land,
A servile lot, decked with a pompous name,
Are the strange ends we toil for here below,
Till wisest death make us our errors know.
W. DRUMMOND.
WHAT'S hallowed ground? Has earth a clod
Its Maker meant not should be trod
By man, the image of his God
Erect and free,
Unscourged by Superstition's rod
To bow the knee?
That's hallowed ground-where, mourned and missed,
The lips repose our love has kissed ;-
But where's their memory's mansion? Is't
Yon churchyard's bowers?
No! in ourselves their souls exist,
A part of ours.
A kiss can consecrate the ground
Where mated hearts are mutual bound;
The spot where love's first links were wound,
That ne'er are riven,
Is hallowed down to earth's profound,
And up to Heaven!
For time makes all but true love old;
The burning thoughts that then were told
Run molten still in memory's mould;
And will not cool,
Until the heart itself be cold
In Lethe's pool.
What hallows ground where heroes sleep?
'Tis not the sculptured piles you heap!
In dews that heavens far distant weep
Their turf may bloom;
Or Genii twine beneath the deep
Their coral tomb.
But strew his ashes to the wind
Whose sword or voice has served mankind—
And is he dead, whose glorious mind
Lifts thine on high?-
To live in hearts we leave behind,
Is not to die.
Is 't death to fall for Freedom's right?
He's dead alone that lacks her light!
And murder sullies in Heaven's sight,
The sword he draws :-
What can alone ennoble fight?
A noble cause!
Give that! and welcome War to brace
Her drums! and rend Heaven's reeking space!
The colours planted face to face,
Though Death's pale horse lead on the chase,
Shall still be dear.
And place our trophies where men kneel
To Heaven!-but Heaven rebukes my zeal !
The cause of Truth and human weal,
O God above!
Transfer it from the sword's appeal
To Peace and Love.
1 A river of Hell. It made those who drank of its waters forget their past.
"Far off from these, a slow and silent stream,
Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls
Her watery labyrinth, whereof who drinks
Forthwith his former state and being forgets-
Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain."
Peace, Love! the cherubim, that join
Their spread wings o'er Devotion's shrine,
Prayers sound in vain, and temples shine,
Where they are not-
The heart alone can make divine
To incantations dost thou trust,
And pompous rites in domes august?
See mouldering stones and metal's rust
Belie the vaunt,
That men can bless one pile of dust
With chime or chaunt.
The ticking wood-worm mocks thee, man!
Thy temples,-creeds themselves grow wan!
But there's a dome of nobler span,
A temple given
Thy faith, that bigots dare not ban—
Its space is Heaven!
Its roof, star-pictured Nature's ceiling,
Where trancing the wrapt spirit's feeling,
And God himself to man revealing,
The harmonious spheres
Make music, though unheard their pealing
By mortal ears.
Fair stars! are not your beings pure?
Can sin, can death, your worlds obscure?
Else why so swell the thoughts at your
Aspect above?
Ye must be Heavens that make us sure
Of heavenly love!
And in your harmony sublime
I read the doom of distant time;
That man's regenerate soul from crime
Shall yet be drawn,
And reason on his mortal clime
Immortal dawn.
What's hallowed ground? 'Tis what gives birth
To sacred thoughts in souls of worth!-
Peace! Independence! Truth! go forth
Earth's compass round;
And your high priesthood shall make earth
All hallowed ground.
"FOR this true nobleness I seek in vain,
In woman and in man I find it not;
I almost weary of my earthly lot,
My life-springs are dried up with burning pain."
Thou find'st it not? I pray thee look again,
Look inward through the depths of thine own soul.
How is it with thee? Art thou sound and whole?
Doth narrow search show thee no earthly stain ?
Be noble! And the nobleness that lies
In other men, sleeping, but never dead
Will rise in majesty to meet thine own;
Then wilt thou see it gleam in many eyes,
Then will pure light around thy path be shed,
And thou wilt never more be sad and lone.
A Supplication for Guidance.
THE prayers I make will then be sweet indeed,
If thou the spirit give by which I pray;
My unassisted heart is barren clay,
That of its native self can nothing feed.
Of good and pious works Thou art the seed,
That quickens only where Thou say'st it may.
Unless Thou show to us Thine own true way,
No man can find it; Father! Thou must lead.
Do Thou, then, breathe such thoughts into my mind
By which such virtue may in me be bred
That in Thy holy footsteps I may tread;
The fetters of my tongue do Thou unbind,
That I may have the power to sing of Thee,
And sound Thy praises everlastingly.
MICHAEL ANGELO.
(Translated by Wordsworth.)
Sub Pondere Crescit.1
THE hope of Truth grows stronger day by day;
I hear the soul of man around me waking,
Like a great sea, its frozen fetters breaking,
And flinging up to heaven its sunlit spray,
Tossing huge continents in scornful play,
And crushing them, with din of grinding thunder,
That makes old emptinesses stare in wonder;
The memory of a glory passed away
Lingers in every heart, as, in the shell,
Resounds the bygone freedom of the sea,
And, every hour new signs of promise tell
That the great soul shall once again be free,
For high, and yet more high, the murmurs swell
Of inward strife for truth and liberty.
Jephthah's Daughter.
"And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the Lord, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering. And Jephthah came to Mizpeh unto his house, and, behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances: and she was his only child; beside her he had neither son nor daughter."
SINCE our Country, our God-Oh, my sire!
Demand that thy daughter expire;
Since thy triumph was bought by thy vow-
Strike the bosom that's bared for thee now!
And the voice of my mourning is o'er,
And the mountains behold me no more:
If the hand that I love lay me low,
There cannot be pain in the blow!
And of this, oh, my father! be sure-
That the blood of thy child is as pure
As the blessing I beg ere it flow,
And the last thought that soothes me below.
I Even beneath a weight it grows.
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