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BENEDICITE.

145

A slumberous stretch of mountain-land, far seen
Where the low westering day, with gold and green,
Purple and amber, softly blended, fills

The wooded vales, and melts among the hills;
A vine-fringed river, winding to its rest
On the calm bosom of a stormless sea,
Bearing alike upon its placid breast,

With earthly flowers and heavenly stars impressed,
The hues of time and of eternity:

Such are the pictures which the thought of thee, Ofriend, awakeneth,-charming the keen pain Of thy departure, and our sense of loss Requiting with the fulness of thy gain.

Lo! on the quiet grave thy life-borne cross,
Dropped only at its side, methinks doth shine,
Of thy beatitude the radiant sign!

No sob of grief, no wild lament, be there,
To break the Sabbath of the holy air;

But, in their stead, the silent-breathing prayer
Of hearts still waiting for a rest like thine.
() spirit redeemed! Forgive us, if henceforth,
With sweet and pure similitudes of earth,

We keep thy pleasant memory freshly green, Of love's inheritance a priceless part,

Which Fancy's self, in reverent awe, is seen To paint, forgetful of the tricks of art,

With pencil dipped alone in colors of the heart

BENEDICITE.

GOD's love and peace be with thee, where
Soe'er this soft autumnal air

Lifts the dark tresses of thy hair!

Whether through city casements comes
Its kiss to thee, in crowded rooms,
Or, out among the woodland blooms,

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It freshens o'er thy thoughtful face,
Imparting, in its glad embrace,
Beauty to beauty, grace to grace!

Fair Nature's book together read,
The old wood-paths that knew our tread,
The maple shadows overhead,-

The hills we climbed, the river seen
By gleams along its deep ravine,—
All keep thy memory fresh and green.

Where'er I look, where'er I stray,
Thy thought goes with me on my way,
And hence the prayer I breathe to-day!

O'er lapse of time and change of scene,
The weary waste which lies between
Thyself and me, my heart I lean.

Thou lack'st not Friendship's spell-word, nor
The half-unconscious power to draw
All hearts to thine by Love's sweet law.

With these good gifts of God is cast
Thy lot, and many a charm thou hast
To hold the blessed angels fast.

If, then, a fervent wish for thee

The gracious heavens will heed from me,
What should, dear heart, its burden be?

The sighing of a shaken reed—
What can I more than meekly plead
The greatness of our common need?

God's love-unchanging, pure, and true---
The Paraclete white-shining through
His peace--the fall of Hermon's dew!

PICTURES.

With such a prayer, on this sweet day,
As thou may'st hear and I may say,
I greet thee, dearest, far away!

147

PICTURES.

I.

LIGHT, warmth, and sprouting greenness, and o'er all

Blue, stainless, steel-bright ether, raining down Tranquillity upon the deep-hushed town,

The freshening meadows, and the hill-sides brown;

Voice of the west wind from the hills of pine, And the brimmed river from its distant fall, Low hum of bees, and joyous interlude

Of bird-songs in the streamlet-skirting wood,Heralds and prophecies of sound and sight, Blessed forerunners of the warmth and light, Attendant angels to the house of prayer,

With reverent footsteps keeping pace with mine,

Once more, through God's great love, with you I share

A morn of resurrection sweet and fair

As that which saw, of old, in Palestine,

Immortal Love uprising in fresh bloom
From the dark night and winter of the tomb !
Fifth month, 2d, 1852.

II.

White with its sun-bleached dust, the pathway

winds

Before me; dust is on the shrunken grass,
And on the trees beneath whose boughs I pass;
Frail screen against the Hunter of the sky,

Who, glaring on me with his lidless eye, While mounting with his dog-star high and higher,

Ambushed in light intolerable, unbinds

The burnished quiver of his shafts of fire.
Between me and the hot fields of his South
A tremulous glow, as from a furnace-mouth,
Glimmers and swims before my dazzled sight,
As if the burning arrows of his ire

Broke as they fell, and shattered into light.
Yet on my cheek I feel the Western wind,
And hear it telling to the orchard trees,
And to the faint and flower-forsaken bees,
Tales of fair meadows, green with constant
streams,

And mountains rising blue and cool behind, Where in moist dells the purple orchis gleams, And starred with white the virgin's bower is twined So the o'erwearied pilgrim, as he fares

Along life's summer waste, at times is fanned, Even at noontide, by the cool, sweet airs

Of a serener and a holier land,

Fresh as the morn, and as the dewfall bland. Breath of the blessed Heaven for which we pray, Blow from the eternal hills !-make glad our earthly way!

Eighth month, 1852.

DERNE.16

NIGHT on the city of the Moor!

On mosque and tomb, and white-walled shore,
On sea-waves, to whose ceaseless knock
The narrow harbor-gates unlock,

On corsair's galley, carack tall,

And plundered Christian caraval!

DERNE.

The sounds of Moslem life are still;
No mule-bell tinkles down the hill

Stretched in the broad court of the khan,
The dusty Bornou caravan

Lies heaped in slumber, beast and man;
The Sheik is dreaming in his tent,
His noisy Arab tongue o'er-spent;
The kiosk's glimmering lights are gone,
The merchant with his wares withdrawn;
Rough pillowed on some pirate breast,
The dancing-girl has sunk to rest;
And, save where measured footsteps fall
Along the Bashaw's guarded wall,
Or where, like some bad dream, the Jew
Creeps stealthily his quarter through,
Or counts with fear his golden heaps,
The City of the Corsair sleeps!

149

But where yon prison long and low
Stands black against the pale star-glow,
Chafed by the ceaseless wash of waves,
There watch and pine the Christian slaves;—
Rough-bearded men, whose far-off wives
Wear out with grief their lonely lives;
And youth, still flashing from his eyes
The clear blue of New England skies,
A treasured lock of whose soft hair
Now wakes some sorrowing mother's prayer;
Or, worn upon some maiden breast,
Stirs with the loving heart's unrest!

A bitter cup each life must drain,
The groaning earth is cursed with pain,
And, like the scroll the angel bore
The shuddering Hebrew seer before,
O'erwrit alike, without, within,
With all the woes which follow sin;
But, bitterest of the ills beneath
Whose load man totters down to death,

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