THE SUNBEAM.

THOU art no lingerer in monarch's hall,
A joy thou art, and a wealth to all!
A bearer of hope unto land and sea-
Sunbeam! what gift hath the world like thee?

Thou art walking the billows, and Ocean smilesThou hast touch'd with glory his thousand isles— Thou hast lit up the ships, and the feathery foam, And gladden'd the sailor, like words from home.

To the solemn depths of the forest-shades,

Thou art streaming on through their green arcades, And the quivering leaves that have caught thy glow, Like fire-flies glance to the pools below.

I look'd on the mountains-a vapor lay
Folding their heights in its dark array;
Thou brakest forth-and the mist became
A crown and a mantle of living flame.

I look'd on the peasant's lowly cot—
Something of sadness had wrapt the spot;
But a gleam of thee on its casement fell,
And it laugh'd into beauty at that bright spell.

To the earth's wild places a guest thou art,
Flushing the waste like the rose's heart;
And thou scornest not, from thy pomp to shed
A tender light on the ruin's head.

Thou tak'st through the dim church-aisle thy way, And its pillars from twilight flash forth to day, And its high pale tombs, with their trophies old, Are bath'd in a flood as of burning gold.

And thou turnest not from the humblest grave, Where a flower to the sighing winds may wave; Thou scatterest its gloom like the dreams of rest, Thou sleepest in love on its grassy breast.

Sunbeam of summer, oh! what is like thee?
Hope of the wilderness, joy of the sea !

-One thing is like thee, to mortals given,—

The faith, touching all things with hues of Heaven.

THE TRAVELLER AT THE SOURCE OF

THE NILE.

IN sunset's light o'er Afric thrown,
A wanderer proudly stood
Beside the well-spring, deep and lone,
Of Egypt's awful flood ;

The cradle of that mighty birth,

So long a hidden thing to earth.

He heard its life's first murmuring sound,

A low mysterious tone;

A music sought, but never found

By kings and warriors gone;

He listen'd-and his heart beat high-
That was the song of victory!

The rapture of a conqueror's mood
Rush'd burning through his frame,

The depths of that green solitude
Its torrents could not tame,

Though stillness lay, with eve's last smile,
Round those calm fountains of the Nile.

Night came with stars :-across his soul
There swept a sudden change,
Ev'n at the pilgrim's glorious goal,

A shadow dark and strange,

Breath'd from the thought, so swift to fall O'er triumph's hour-And is this all?

No more than this!-what seem'd it now
First by that spring to stand?
A thousand streams of lovelier flow

Bath'd his own mountain land!

Whence, far o'er waste and ocean track,
Their wild sweet voices call'd him back.

They call'd him back to many a glade,
His childhood's haunt of play,
Where brightly through the beechen shade
Their waters glanc'd away;

They call'd him, with their sounding waves,

Back to his fathers' hills and graves.

But darkly mingling with the thought

Of each familiar scene,

Rose up a fearful vision, fraught

With all that lay between;

The Arab's lance, the desert's gloom,
The whirling sands, the red simoom!

Where was the glow of power and pride?
The spirit born to roam?
His weary heart within him died

With yearnings for his home;

All vainly struggling to repress
That gush of painful tenderness.

He wept the stars of Afric's heaven

Beheld his bursting tears,

Ev'n on that spot where fate had given

The meed of toiling years.

-Oh happiness! how far we flee

Thine own sweet paths in search of thee!*

*The arrival of Bruce at what he considered to be the source of the Nile, was followed almost immediately by feelings thus suddenly fluctuating from triumph to despondence. See his Travels in Abyssinia.