YE keen breezes from the salt Atlantic,
Which to the beach where memory loves to
On your stray pinions waft reviving coolness!
Bend your course hither!
For in the surf ye scattered to the sunshine,
Did we not sport together in my boyhood,
Screaming for joy amid the flashing breakers,
O rude companions?
Then to the meadows beautiful and fragrant,
Where the coy spring beholds her earliest verdure
Brighten with smiles that rugged seaside hamlet
How would we hasten !
There, under elm trees affluent in foliage,
High o'er whose summit hovered the sea eagle,
Through the hot glaring noontide have we rested
After our gambols.
Vainly the sailor called you from your slumber; Like a glazed pavement shone the level ocean; Where, with the snow-white canvas idly drooping, Stood the tall vessels.
And when at length exulting ye awakened,
Rushed to the beach and ploughed the liquid acres,
How have I chased you through the shivered billows
In my frail shallop!
Playmates, old playmates, hear my invocation!
In the close town I waste this golden summer,
Where piercing cries and sounds of wheels in motion
Ceaselessly mingle.
When shall I feel your breath upon my forehead? When shall I hear you in the elm trees' branches? When shall we wrestle in the briny surges,
HE royal sage, Lord of the Magic Ring,
Solomon, once upon a morn in spring,
By Cedron, in his garden's rosiest walk,
Was pacing with a pleasant guest in talk;
When they beheld, approaching, but with face
Yet undiscerned, a stranger in the place.
How he came there, what wanted, who could be,
How dare, unushered, beard such privacy,
Whether 'twas some great Spirit of the Ring,
And if so, why he thus should daunt the king,
(For the Ring's master, after one sharp gaze,
Stood waiting, more in trouble than amaze ;)
All this the courtier would have asked; but fear
Palsied his utterance, as the man drew near.
The stranger seemed (to judge him by his dress)
One of mean sort, a dweller with distress,
Or some poor pilgrim; but the steps he took
Belied it with strange greatness; and his look
Opened a page in a tremendous book
He wore a cowl, from under which there shone,
Full on the guest, and on the guest alone,
A face, not of this earth, half veiled in gloom
And radiance, but with eyes like lamps of doom,
Which, ever as they came, before them sent
Rebuke and staggering and astonishment,
With sense of change, and worse of change to be,
Sore sighing, and extreme anxiety,'
And feebleness, and faintness, and moist brow,
The Past a scoff, the Future crying, "Now!"
All that makes wet the pores, and lifts the hair;
All that makes dying vehemence despair,
Knowing it must be dragged it knows not where.
The excess of fear and anguish, which had tied The courtier's tongue, now loosed it, and he cried, "O royal master! Sage! Lord of the Ring,
I cannot bear the horror of this thing;
Help with thy mighty art!
On the remotest mountain of Cathay."
Solomon wished, and the man vanished straight; Up comes the terror, with his orbs of fate.
"Solomon," with a lofty voice said he,
"How came that man here, wasting time with thee? I was to fetch him, ere the close of day, From the remotest mountain of Cathay." Solomon said, bowing him to the ground, "Angel of Death, there will the man be found."
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