When first in ancient time, from Jubal’s tongue
The tuneful anthem filled the morning air,
To sacred hymnings and Elysian song
His music-breathing shell the minstrel woke.
Devotion breathed aloud from every chord:—
The voice of praise was heard in every tone,
And prayer, and thanks to Him the Eternal One,
To him, that with bright inspiration touched
The high and gifted lyre of heavenly song,
And warmed the soul with new vitality.
A stirring energy through nature breathed:—
The voice of adoration from her broke,
Swelling aloud in every breeze, and heard
Long in the sullen waterfall,—what time
Soft Spring or hoary Autumn threw on earth
Its bloom or blighting,—when the Summer smiled,
Or Winter o’er the year’s sepulchre mourned.
The Deity was there!—a nameless spirit
Moved in the breasts of men to do him homage;
And when the morning smiled, or evening pale
Hung weeping o’er the melancholy urn,
They came beneath the broad o’erarching trees,
And in their tremulous shadow worshipped oft,
Where pale the vine clung round their simple altars,
And grey moss mantling hung. Above was heard
The melody of winds, breathed out as the green trees
Bowed to their quivering touch in living beauty,
And birds sang forth their cheerful hymns. Below,
The bright and widely wandering rivulet
Struggled and gushed amongst the tangled roots,
That choked its reedy fountain—and dark rocks
Worn smooth by the constant current. Even there
The listless wave, that stole with mellow voice
Where reeds grew rank on the rushy-fringed brink,
And the green sedge bent to the wandering wind,
Sang with a cheerful song of sweet tranquillity.
Men felt the heavenly influence—and it stole
Like balm into their hearts, till all was peace;
And even the air they breathed,—the light they saw,—
Became religion,—for the ethereal spirit
That to soft music wakes the chords of feeling,
And mellows every thing to beauty,—moved
With cheering energy within their breasts,
And made all holy there—for all was love.
The morning stars, that sweetly sang together—
The moon, that hung at night in the mid-sky—
Dayspring—and eventide—and all the fair
And beautiful forms of nature, had a voice
Of eloquent worship. Ocean with its tides
Swelling and deep, where low the infant storm
Hung on his dun, dark cloud, and heavily beat
The pulses of the sea—sent forth a voice
Of awful adoration to the spirit,
That, wrapt in darkness, moved upon its face.
And when the bow of evening arched the east,
Or, in the moonlight pale, the curling wave
Kissed with a sweet embrace the sea-worn beach,
And soft the song of winds came o’er the waters,
The mingled melody of wind and wave
Touched like a heavenly anthem on the ear;
For it arose a tuneful hymn of worship.
And have our hearts grown cold? Are there on earth
No pure reflections caught from heavenly light?—
Have our mute lips no hymn—our souls no song?—
Let him that in the summer-day of youth
Keeps pure the holy fount of youthful feeling,—
And him that in the nightfall of his years
Lies down in his last sleep, and shuts in peace
His dim pale eyes on life’s short wayfaring,
Praise him that rules the destiny of man.
AUTUMNAL NIGHTFALL.
Round Autumn’s mouldering urn,
Loud mourns the chill and cheerless gale,
When nightfall shades the quiet vale,
And stars in beauty burn.
’Tis the year’s eventide.
The wind,—like one that sighs in pain
O’er joys that ne’er will bloom again,
Mourns on the far hill-side.
And yet my pensive eye
Rests on the faint blue mountain long,
And for the fairy-land of song,
That lies beyond, I sigh.
The moon unveils her brow;
In the mid-sky her urn glows bright,
And in her sad and mellowing light
The valley sleeps below.
Upon the hazel grey
The lyre of Autumn hangs unstrung,
And o’er its tremulous chords are flung
The fringes of decay.
I stand deep musing here,
Beneath the dark and motionless beech,
Whilst wandering winds of nightfall reach
My melancholy ear.
The air breathes chill and free;
A Spirit, in soft music calls
From Autumn’s grey and moss-grown halls,
And round her withered tree.
The hoar and mantled oak,
With moss and twisted ivy brown,
Bends in its lifeless beauty down
Where weeds the fountain choke.
That fountain’s hollow voice
Echoes the sound of precious things;—
Of early feeling’s tuneful springs
Choked with our blighted joys.
Leaves, that the night-wind bears
To earth’s cold bosom with a sigh,
Are types of our mortality,
And of our fading years.
The tree that shades the plain,
Wasting and hoar as time decays,
Spring shall renew with cheerful days,—
But not my joys again.
ITALIAN SCENERY.
——Night rests in beauty on Mont Alto.
Beneath its shade the beauteous Arno sleeps
In Vallombrosa’s bosom, and dark trees
Bend with a calm and quiet shadow down
Upon the beauty of that silent river.
Still in the west, a melancholy smile
Mantles the lips of day, and twilight pale
Moves like a spectre in the dusky sky;
While eve’s sweet star on the fast-fading year
Smiles calmly:—Music steals at intervals
Across the water, with a tremulous swell,
From out the upland dingle of tall firs,
And a faint footfall sounds, where dim and dark
Hangs the grey willow from the river’s brink,
O’ershadowing its current. Slowly there
The lover’s gondola drops down the stream,
Silent,—save when its dipping oar is heard,
Or in its eddy sighs the rippling wave.
Mouldering and moss-grown, through the lapse of years,
In motionless beauty stands the giant oak,
Whilst those, that saw its green and flourishing youth,
Are gone and are forgotten. Soft the fount,
Whose secret springs the star-light pale discloses,
Gushes in hollow music, and beyond
The broader river sweeps its silent way,
Mingling a silver current with that sea,
Whose waters have no tides, coming nor going.
On noiseless wing along that fair blue sea
The halcyon flits,—and where the wearied storm
Left a loud moaning, all is peace again.
A calm is on the deep! The winds that came
O’er the dark sea-surge with a tremulous breathing.
And mourned on the dark cliff where weeds grew rank,
And to the autumnal death-dirge the deep sea
Heaved its long billows,—with a cheerless song
Have passed away to the cold earth again,
Like a wayfaring mourner. Silently
Up from the calm sea’s dim and distant verge,
Full and unveiled the moon’s broad disk emerges.
On Tivoli, and where the fairy hues
Of autumn glow upon Abruzzi’s woods,
The silver light is spreading. Far above,
Encompassed with their thin, cold atmosphere,
The Apennines uplift their snowy brows,
Glowing with colder beauty, where unheard
The eagle screams in the fathomless ether,
And stays his wearied wing. Here let us pause!
The spirit of these solitudes—the soul
That dwells within these steep and difficult places—
Speaks a mysterious language to mine own,
And brings unutterable musings. Earth
Sleeps in the shades of nightfall, and the sea
Spreads like a thin blue haze beneath my feet,
Whilst the grey columns and the mouldering tombs
Of the Imperial City, hidden deep
Beneath the mantle of their shadows, rest.
My spirit looks on earth!—A heavenly voice
Comes silently: “Dreamer, is earth thy dwelling!—
Lo! nursed within that fair and fruitful bosom
Which has sustained thy being, and within
The colder breast of Ocean, lie the germs
Of thine own dissolution! E’en the air,
That fans the clear blue sky and gives thee strength—
Up from the sullen lake of mouldering reeds,
And the wide waste of forest, where the osier
Thrives in the damp and motionless atmosphere,—
Shall bring the dire and wasting pestilence
And blight thy cheek. Dream thou of higher things;—
This world is not thy home!” And yet my eye
Rests upon earth again! How beautiful,
Where wild Velino heaves its sullen waves
Down the high cliff of grey and shapeless granite,—
Hung on the curling mist, the moonlight bow
Arches the perilous river. A soft light
Silvers the Albanian mountains, and the haze
That rests upon their summits, mellows down
The austerer features of their beauty. Faint
And dim-discovered glow the Sabine hills,
And listening to the sea’s monotonous shell,
High on the cliffs of Terracina stands
The castle of the royal Goth in ruins.
But night is in her wane:—day’s early flush
Glows like a hectic on her fading cheek,
Wasting its beauty. And the opening dawn
With cheerful lustre lights the royal city,
Where, with its proud tiara of dark towers,
It sleeps upon its own romantic bay.