PREMONITION. The sweetest hour in all love's wond'rous story, When Hope first whispers of the coming glory. A SUDDEN Strange unfolding In the cheerful noontide glare; The sense of something coming, A whisper in the breezes One has not heard before; A longing in the billow, A yearning in the shore. A bubbling up of life From every wayside thing; A meaning in the dip Of even a swallow's wing. A fear as if the morrow Would ope some hidden portal; A joy as if the feet Stood at the gate immortal. An angel in the pathway To every common goal, A widening of the outlook That opens on the soul. A sound of song at midnight, A tear upon the eyelash, The lips' smile might impugn. A coming back of childhood Play on! Play on! As higher rise The lifted strains, I seem, I seem To mount, to mount through roseate skies, Through drifted cloud and golden gleam, To realms, to realms of thought and fire, Where angels walk and souls aspire, And sorrow comes but as the night That brings a star for our delight. Play on! Play on! The spirit fails, To slip from Heaven; to fall and find Ah, sweet, art thou the star, the star VIRTUE. Virtue, Prince, Doth need no pedigree to make it lovely. Risifi's Daughter, p. 11. LIFE. Life is no plain, however vast or varied, AT THE PIANO. PLAY on! Play on! As softly glides By sunlit isles, where life and dream Are one, are one; and hope and bliss Move hand in hand, and thrilling, kiss 'Neath bowery blooms, In twilight glooms, And love is life, and life is love. They who see her call her fair; Say her smile pleases; that her voice is soft; I feel in that one instant all the reach -Ibid, p. 87. Sooner far |