Our creeds are not less vain; our sleeping life still dreams;

The present, like the past,

Passes in joy and sorrow, love and shame;

Truth dwells as deep; wisdom is yet a name;

Life still to death flies fast;

And the same shrouded light from the dark future gleams.

Spirits of vale and hill, of river and of ocean,—
Ye thousand deities!

Over the earth be president again;

And dance upon the mountain and the main

In view of mortal eyes:

Love us, and be beloved, with the Old Time's devotion!

JOHN STERLING.

1806-1844.

DEDALUS.

Wail for Dædalus, all that is fairest !
All that is tuneful in air or wave!

Shapes whose beauty is truest and rarest,
Haunt with your lamps and spells his grave!

Statues bend your heads in sorrow:

Ye that glance amid ruins old,

That know not a past nor expect a morrow,
On many a moonlight Grecian wold.

By sculptured cave and speaking river,
Thee, Dædalus! oft the Nymphs recall;
The leaves with a sound of winter quiver,
Murmur thy name, and withering fall.

Yet are thy visions in soul the grandest
Of all that crowd on the tear-dimm'd eye,
Though, Dædalus! thou no more commandest
New stars to that ever widening sky.

Ever thy phantoms arise before us,

Our loftier brothers, but one in blood; By bed and table they lord it o'er us,

With looks of beauty and words of good.

Calmly they show us mankind victorious
O'er all that is aimless, blind, and base;
Their presence has made our nature glorious,
Unveiling our night's illumined face.

Thy toil has won them a god-like quiet;

Thou hast wrought their path to a lovely sphere; Their eyes to peace rebuke our riot

And shape us a home of refuge here.

For Dædalus breathed in them his spirit;
In them their sire his beauty sees:
We too, a younger brood, inherit

The gifts and blessings bestow'd on these.

But ah! their wise and graceful seeming
Recalls the more that the Sage is gone:
Weeping we wake from deceitful dreaming
And find our voiceless chamber lone.

Dædalus! thou from the twilight fleèst

Which thou with visions hast made so bright; And when no more those shapes thou seèst, Wanting thine eye they lose their light.

Even in the noblest of Man's creations,
Those fresh worlds round this old of ours,
When the Seer is gone, the orphan'd nations
See but the tombs of perish'd powers.

Wail for Dædalus, Earth and Ocean!
Stars and Sun! lament for him;
Ages! quake in strange commotion;
All ye realms of Life! be dim!

Wail for Dædalus! awful Voices

From earth's deep centre mankind appal. Seldom ye sound, and then Death rejoices: For he knows that then the Mightiest fall.

WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS.

1806-1870.

THE LOST PLEIAD.

Not in the sky,

Where it was seen,

Nor on the white tops of the glistening wave,

Nor in the mansions of the hidden deep

(Though green

And beautiful its caves of mystery)

Shall the bright watcher have

A place, and as of old high station keep.

Gone! gone!

O, never more to cheer

The mariner who holds his course alone

On the Atlantic, through the weary night
When the stars turn to watchers and do sleep,
Shall it appear,

With the sweet fixedness of certain light
Down-shining on the shut eyes of the deep.

Vain! vain !

Hopeful most idly then shall he look forth,
That mariner from his bark.

Howe'er the North

Doth raise his certain lamp when tempests lower,

He sees no more that perish'd light again;

And gloomier grows the hour

Which may not, through the thick and crowding dark,

Restore that lost and loved One to her tower.

He looks, the shepherd on Chaldea's hills

Tending his flocks,—

And wonders the rich beacon doth not blaze,
Gladdening his gaze,

And from his dreary watch along the rocks
Guiding him safely home through perilous ways.
How stands he in amaze,

Still wondering as the drowsy silence fills
The sorrowful scene and every hour distils
Its leaden dews! how chafes he at the night,
Still slow to bring the expected and sweet light
So natural to his sight!

And lone,

Where its first splendours shone,

Shall be that pleasant company of stars :

How should they know that death

Such perfect beauty mars?

And, like the earth, its common bloom and breath, Fallen from on high,

Their lights grow blasted by its touch, and die,— All their concerted springs of harmony

Snapp'd rudely, and the generous music gone.

A strain, a mellow strain

Of wailing sweetness, fill'd the earth and sky:
The stars lamenting in unborrow'd pain

That one of the Selected Ones must die,
Must vanish, when most lovely, from the rest!
Alas! 'tis evermore the destiny:

The hope heart-cherish'd is the soonest lost;
The flower first budded soonest feels the frost :
Are not the shortest-lived still loveliest?
And, like the pale star shooting down the sky,
Look they not ever brightest when they fly
The desolate home they bless'd?

NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS.

1807-1867.

TWO WOMEN.

The shadows lay along Broadway,
'Twas near the twilight-tide,
And slowly there a Lady fair
Was walking in her pride :
Alone walk'd she; but viewlessly
Walk'd spirits at her side.

Peace charm'd the street beneath her feet,
And Honour charm'd the air;
And all astir look'd kind on her,

And call'd her good as fair :
For all God ever gave to her
She kept with chary care.

She kept with care her beauties rare
From lovers warm and true,

For her heart was cold to all but gold,
And the rich came not to woo :
But honour'd well are charms to sell,
If priests the selling do.

Now walking there was One more fair,

A slight Girl, lily pale;

And she had unseen company

To make the spirit quail :

'Twixt Want and Scorn she walk'd forlorn

And nothing could avail.

No mercy now can clear her brow

For this world's peace to pray :

For as love's wild prayer dissolved in air, Her woman's heart gave way:

But the sin forgiven by Christ in Heaven By man is cursed alway.