Sweet harp! if hush'd awhile that tuneful sorrow, Which may not flow unintermitted still, A lover's prayer one strain less sad might borrow, Of all thou pourest at thine own sweet will. Now when her forehead in that pale moon gleaming, Yon dark-tressed maid beneath the softening hour, As fain to lose no touch of thy sad streaming, Leans to the night from forth her latticed bower; And the low whispering air, and thy lone ditty, Around her heart their mingled spells have wove; Now cease those notes awhile that plain for pity, And wake thy bolder song, and ask for love. ANON. POESY. WILT thou come, and sit with me, We will seek some quiet scene, N Overarching boughs have made Shining tracery all about; Where, like music in a dream, Where the small bird, timidly, I am weary of the sound, That doth compass me around;— From the clasping of its chain, POESY. Come, and thou shalt weave me there, And the rayless gloom doth lie With all these, and more than these, Thou shalt weave a web so fine, Break the tranced calm within. T. WESTWOOD. 195 RECOLLECTION. ROUND yonder watch-fire's blaze the muleteers In circle close.-The leader of the throng, Fluent and fast, to never sated ears The tale recites, or chants the Arab song,— Wild stanzas, strange adventures. Loud and long The applause resounds, as each invented sleight Of magic art, or fate of Afrite strong By Genii quelled in preternatural fight, Fills, as the story rolls, each breast with fresh delight. He little thinks, the tale he loves to tell, Which cheats his willing comrades of their rest, Through many a midnight hour defrauds as well, In foreign garb and other language dressed, stage, Given youth one smile the more, one wrinkle snatched from age. RECOLLECTION. 197 For not alone beneath the palm-tree's shade Amid the nargile's ascending cloud, Does Eastern fiction dwell, or Scherezade Dispense her favours to the listening crowd. All ranks, all nations at her shrine have bowed; The pictured forms her lively pencil drew Please in all climes alike; and statesmen proud In grave debate have owned her lessons true, Finding that ancient lamps sometimes excel the new. Far other task meanwhile for me delays The needful gift of well-earned sleep's repose; The beam that from my tremulous cresset plays, Its light upon the sacred volume throws. Oh! who in distant climes the rapture knows, E'en on the spot of which the tale is told, To mark where Tabor frowns or Jordan flows. To feel at morn our steps shall print the mould Where Gideon pitched his camp or Sisera's chariot rolled ! Such rapture ours, when, on Esdraelon's plain, Tabor in front and Jezreel left behind, [again By Kishon's source we pitched. Oh! ne'er Shall joys, of power like these to fill the mind, Rise in the civilized haunts of human kind. |