SONGS FROM THE SOUTH-LAND.
Young Spring, bright Summer, Autumn's solemn form,
And Winter with its aged locks—and breathe
In mournful cadences, that come abroad,
Like the far windharps wild, touching wail,
A melancholy dirge o'er the dead year,
Gone from the earth forever.
For memory and for tears.
Still chambers of the heart, a spectre dim,
Whose tones are like the wizard voice of time,
Heard from the tomb of ages, points its cold
And solemn finger to the beautiful
And holy visions, that have passed away,
And left no shadow of their loveliness
On the dead waste of life. The spectre lifts
The coffin-lid of Hope and Joy and Love,
And bending mournfully above the pale,
Sweet forms that slumber there, scatters dead flowers O'er what has passed to nothingness.
Has gone, and with it many a glorious throng
Of happy dreams. Its mark is on each brow,
In its swift course,
Its shadow in each heart.
It waved its sceptre o'er the beautiful;
And they are not. It laid its pallid hand
Upon the strong man: and the haughty form
Is fallen, and the flashing eye is dim.
It trod the hall of revelry, where thronged
The bright and joyous; and the tearful wail
Of stricken ones is heard, where erst the song
And reckless shout resounded. It passed o'er
The battle plain, where sword, and spear and shield,
Flashed in the light of midday; and the strength
Of serried hosts is shivered, and the grass,
Green from the soil of carnage, waves above
The crushed and mouldering skeleton.
And faded like a wreath of mist at eve;
Yet, ere it melted in the viewless air,
It heralded its millions to their home,
In the dim land of dreams.
Fierce spirit of the glass and scythe! What power
Can stay him in his silent course, or melt
His iron heart to pity! On, still on,
He presses and forever. The proud bird,
The Condor of the Andes, that can soar
Through heaven's unfathomable depths, or brave
SONGS FROM THE SOUTH-LAND.
The fury of the northing hurricane,
And bath its plumage in the thunder's home
Furls his broad wing at nightfall, and sinks down
To rest upon his mountain crag; but Time
Knows not the weight of sleep or weariness,
And Night's deep darkness has no chain to bind
His rushing pinion.
O'er earth, like troubled visions o'er the breast
Of dreaming sorrow; cities rise and sink
Like bubbles on the water; fiery isles
Spring blazing from the ocean, and go back
To their mysterious caverns; mountains rear
To heaven their bold and blackened cliffs, and bow
Their tall heads to the plain; and empires rise,
Gathering the strength of hoary centuries,
And rush down, like the Alpine avalanche,
Startling the nations; and the very stars,
Yon bright and glorious blazonry of God,
Glitter awhile in their eternal depths,
And like the Pleiad, loveliest of their train,
Shoot from their glorious spheres, and pass away
To darkle in the trackless void; yet Time,
Time, the tomb-builder, holds his fierce career,
Dark, stern, all pitiless, and pauses not
Amid the mighty wrecks that strew his path,
To sit and muse, like other conquerors,
Upon the fearful ruin he hath wrought.
Shall happy bells, from yonder ancient spire,
Send their glad greetings to each Christmas fire
Round which the children play?
How shall we grace the day?
Ah! Let the thought that on this holy morn
The Prince of Peace the Prince of Peace was born
Employ us, while we pray!
Pray for the peace which long
Hath left this tortured land, and haply now
Holds its white court on some far mountain's brow, There hardly safe from wrong!
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