No vital chord nor troubled what she loved, Philosophy might look her in the face, And, like a hermit stooping to the well
To teach the young idea how to shoot, To pour the fresh instruction o'er the mind, To breathe the enlivening spirit, and to fix
That yields him sweet refreshment, might therein The generous purpose in the glowing breast. See but his own serenity reflected With a more heavenly tenderness of hue!
Yet whilst the world's ambitious empty cares, Its small disquietudes and insect stings, Disturbed her never, she was one made up Of feminine affections, and her life Was one full stream of love from fount to sea.
O, speak the joy! ye whom the sudden tear Surprises often, while you look around, And nothing strikes your eye but sights of bliss, All various nature pressing on the heart; An elegant sufficiency, content, Retirement, rural quiet, friendship, books, Ease and alternate labor, useful life, Progressive virtue, and approving Heaven. These are the matchless joys of virtuous love; And thus their moments fly. The Seasons thus As ceaseless round a jarring world they roll, Still find them happy; and consenting Spring Sheds her own rosy garland on their heads; Till evening comes at last, serene and mild; When after the long vernal day of life, Enamored more, as more remembrance swells With many a proof of recollected love, Together down they sink in social sleep; Together freed, their gentle spirits fly To scenes where love and bliss immortal reign.
'Tis not the coarser tie of human laws, Unnatural oft, and foreign to the mind, That binds their peace, but harmony itself, Attuning all their passions into love; Where friendship full-exerts her softest power, Perfect esteem enlivened by desire Ineffable, and sympathy of soul;
Thought meeting thought, and will preventing will,
With boundless confidence: for naught but love Can answer love, and render bliss secure. Meantime a smiling offspring rises round, And mingles both their graces. By degrees, The human blossom blows; and every day, Soft as it rolls along, shows some new charin, The father's lustre and the mother's bloom. Then infant reason grows apace, and calls For the kind hand of an assiduous care. Delightful task! to rear the tender thought,
Why don't the men propose?
This house is to be let for life or years; Her rent is sorrow, and her income tears; Cupid, 't has long stood void; her bills mak▪ known,
She must be dearly let, or let alone.
MY WIFE'S A WINSOME WEE THING., But rather raised to be a nobler man,
My Love, I have no fear that thou shouldst die;
Albeit I ask no fairer life than this, Whose numbering-clock is still thy gentle kiss, While Time and Peace with hands unlocked fly, Yet care I not where in Eternity
We live and love, well knowing that there is No backward step for those who feel the bliss Of Faith as their most lofty yearnings high: Love hath so purified my being's core, Meseems I scarcely should be startled, even, To find, some morn, that thou hadst gone before; Since, with thy love, this knowledge too was given,
Which each calm day doth strengthen more and
That they who love are but one step from Heaven.
I CANNOT think that thou shouldst pass away, Whose life to mine is an eternal law, A piece of nature that can have no flaw, A new and certain sunrise every day; But, if thou art to be another ray About the Sun of Life, and art to live Free from all of thee that was fugitive, The debt of Love I will more fully pay, Not downcast with the thought of thee so high,
And more divine in my humanity,
As knowing that the waiting eyes which scan My life are lighted by a purer being,
And ask meek, calm-browed deeds, with it agree ing.
OUR love is not a fading, earthly flower: Its winged seed dropped down from Paradise, And, nursed by day and night, by sun and shower,
Doth momently to fresher beauty rise:
To us the leafless autumn is not bare,
Nor winter's rattling boughs lack lusty green. Our summer hearts make summer's fulness, where No leaf, or bud, or blossom may be seen: For nature's lite in love's deep life doth lie, Love, whose forgetfulness is heanty's death, Whose mystic key these cells of Thou and I Into the infinite freedom openeth,
And makes the body's dark and narrow grate The wind-flung leaves of Heaven's Palace-gate.
Joy's wreath drooped o'er mine eyes; I could not
I THOUGHT our love at full, but I did err;
That sorrow in our happy world must be Love's deepest spokesman and interpreter. But, as a mother feels her child first stir Under her heart, so felt I instantly Deep in my soul another bond to thee Thrill with that life we saw depart from her; O mother of our angel child! twice dear! Death knits as well as parts, and still, I wis, Her tender radiance shall infold us here, Even as the light, borne up by inward bliss, Threads the void glooms of space without a fear, To print on farthest stars her pitying kiss.
FROM "PARADISE LOST," BOOK IX.
O FAIREST of creation, last and best Of all God's works, creature in whom excelled Whatever can to sight or thought be formed, Holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet! How art thou lost, how on a sudden lost, Defaced, deflowered, and now to death devote ' Rather, how hast thou yielded to transgress
The strict forbiddance, how to violate
The sacred fruit forbidden! Some cursed fraud Of enemy hath beguiled thee, yet unknown, And me with thee hath ruined, for with thee Certain my resolution is to die.
How can I live without thee, how forego Thy sweet converse, and love so dearly joined, To live again in these wild woods forlorn ? Should God create another Eve, and I Another rib afford, yet loss of thee Would never from my heart, no, no, I feel The link of nature draw me; flesh of flesh, Bone of my bone thou art, and from thy state Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe.
"BUT why do you go?" said the lady, while both sate under the yew,
Who are shocked if a color not virtuous is frankly put on by a vice."
Her eyes blazed upon him "And you! You bring us your vices so near That we smell them! you think in our presence a thought 't would defame us to hear!
"What reason had you, and what right. - I appeal to your soul from my life,
And her eyes were alive in their depth, as the To find me too fair as a woman? Why, sir, I
If two should smell it, what matter? who grum
bles, and where 's the pretence?"
"But I," he replied, "have promised another, when love was free,
"You grew, sir, pale to impertinence, once when I showed you a ring.
To love her alone, alone, who alone and afar loves You kissed my fan when I dropped it. No mat me."
ter! I've broken the thing.
"You did me the honor, perhaps, to be moved | And all stood back, and none my right denied, at my side now and then And forth we walked the world was free and wide In the senses, a vice, I have heard, which is Before us. Since that day common to beasts and some men.
I count my life: the Past is washed away.
"Love's a virtue for heroes! -as white as the It was no dream, that vow:
It was the voice that woke me from a dream,
And immortal as every great soul is that strug- A happy dream, I think; but I am waking now, gles, endures, and fulfills.
And drink the splendor of a sun supreme That turns the mist of former tears to gold Within these arms I hold
The fleeting promise, chased so long in vain : Ah, weary bird! thou wilt not fly again: Thy wings are clipped, thou canst no more de part,
Thy nest is builded in my heart!
I was the crescent; thou
The silver phantom of the perfect sphere, Held in its bosom: in one glory now
"I determined to prove to yourself that, what- Our lives united shine, and many a year
e'er you might dream or avow
By illusion, you wanted precisely no more of me than
Not the sweet moon of bridal only-we One lustre, ever at the full, shall be : One pure and rounded light, one planet whole, One life developed, one completed soul !
"There! Look me full in the face-in the For I in thee, and thou in me,
Unite our cloven halves of destiny.
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