That touch, as her hand meets and mingles with mine,
Shoots along to my heart with electrical thrill;
'Twas a moment for earth too supremely divine,
And while life lasts, its sweetness shall cling to me still.
We met and we drank from the crystalline well
That flows from the fountain of science above;
On the beauties of thought we would silently dwell,
Till we looked, though we never were talking of love.
We parted the tear glistened bright in her eye,
And her melting hand shook as I dropped it for ever;
Oh! that moment will always be hovering by;
Life may frown, but its light shall abandon me—never.
"AS THY DAY, SO SHALL THY STRENGTH BE.”
WHEN adverse winds and waves arise,
And in my heart despondence sighs;
When life her throng of care reveals,
And weakness o'er my spirit steals;
Grateful I hear the kind decree,
That as my day, my strength shall be."
When, with sad footstep, memory roves
Mid smitten joys and buried loves;
When sleep my tearful pillow flies,
And dewy morning drinks my sighs;
Still to thy promise, Lord, I flee,
That as my day, my strength shall be."
One trial more must yet be past,
One pang-the keenest, and the last;
And when, with brow convulsed and pale,
My feeble, quivering heart-strings fail,
Redeemer, grant my soul to see
That as her day, her strength shall be." -LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY.
WHY gaze ye on my hoary hairs,
Ye children, young and gay?
Your locks, beneath the blast of cares,
Will bleach as white as they.
I had a mother once, like you,
Who o'er my pillow hung,
Kissed from my cheek the briny dew,
And taught my faltering tongue.
She, when the nightly couch was spread,
Would bow my infant knee,
And place her hand upon my head,
And, kneeling, pray for me.
But then there came a fearful day;
I sought my mother's bed,
Till harsh hands tore me thence away,
And told me she was dead.
I plucked a fair white rose, and stole
To lay it by her side,
And thought strange sleep enchained her soul,
For no fond voice replied.
That eve I knelt me down in wo,
And said a lonely prayer;
Yet still my temples seemed to glow
As if that hand were there.
Years fled, and left me childhood's joy,
Gay sports and pastimes dear;
I rose a wild and wayward boy,
Who scorned the curb of fear.
Fierce passions shook me like a reed;
Yet, ere at night I slept,
That soft hand made my bosom bleed,
And down I fell, and wept.
Youth came the props of virtue reeled;
But oft, at day's decline,
A marble touch my brow congealed—
Blessed mother! was it thine?
In foreign lands I travelled wide,
My pulse was bounding high,
Vice spread her meshes at my side,
And pleasure lured my eye;
Yet still that hand, so soft and cold,
Maintained its mystic sway,
As when, amid my curls of gold,
With gentle force it lay.
And with it breathed a voice of care,
As from the lowly sod,
"My son-my only one-beware!
Nor sin against thy God."
Ye think, perchance, that age hath stole
My kindly warmth away,
And dimmed the tablet of the soul;
Yet when, with lordly sway,
This brow the plumed helm displayed
That guides the warrior throng,
Or beauty's thrilling fingers strayed
These manly locks among,
That hallowed touch was ne'er forgot!
And now, though time hath set
His frosty seal upon my lot,
These temples feel it yet.
And if I e'er in Heaven appear,
A mother's holy prayer,
A mother's hand, and gentle tear,
That pointed to a Saviour dear,
Have led the wanderer there.
DEEP solitude I sought. There was a dell
Where woven shades shut out the eye of day,
While, towering near, the rugged mountains made
Dark background 'gainst the sky. Thither I went,
And bade my spirit drink that lonely draught
For which it long had languished 'mid the strife
And fever of the world. I thought to be
There without witness. But the violet's eye
Looked up upon me, the fresh wild-rose smiled,
And the young pendent vine-flower kissed my cheek;
And there were voices too. The garrulous brook,
Untiring, to the patient pebbles told
Its history; up came the singing breeze,
And the broad leaves of the cool poplar spake
Responsive every one. Even busy life
Woke in that dell. The tireless spider threw
From spray to spray her silver-tissued snare.
The wary ant, whose curving pincers pierced
The treasured grain, toiled toward her citadel.
To the sweet hive went forth the loaded bee,
And from the wind-rocked nest, the mother-bird
Sang to her nurslings.
Yet I strangely thought
To be alone, and silent in thy realm,
Spirit of life and love! It might not be!
There is no solitude in thy domains
Save what man makes, when, in his selfish breast,
He locks his joys, and bars out others' grief.
Thou hast not left thyself to nature's round
Without a witness. Trees, and flowers, and streams,
Are social and benevolent; and he
Who oft communeth in their language pure,
Roaming among them at the cool of day,
Shall find, like him who Eden's garden dressed,
His Maker there, to teach his listening heart.
BETTER MOMENTS.
My mother's voice! how often creeps
Its cadence on my lonely hours!
Like healing sent on wings of sleep,
Or dew to the unconscious flowers.
I can forget her melting prayer
While leaping pulses madly fly,
But in the still unbroken air
Her gentle tone comes stealing by,
And years, and sin, and manhood flee,
And leave me at my mother's knee.
The book of nature, and the print
Of beauty on the whispering sea,
Give aye to me some lineament
Of what I have been taught to be.
My heart is harder, and perhaps
My manliness hath drunk up tears,
And there's a mildew in the lapse
Of a few miserable years—
But nature's book is even yet
With all my mother's lessons writ.
I have been out at eventide
Beneath a moonlight sky of spring,
When earth was garnished like a bride,
And night had on her silver wing—
When bursting leaves and diamond grass,
And waters leaping to the light,
And all that makes the pulses pass
With wilder fleetness, thronged the night
When all was beauty, then have I
With friends on whom my love is flung
Like myrrh on winds of Araby,
Gazed up where evening's lamp is hung.
And when the beautiful spirit there
Flung over me its golden chain,
My mother's voice came on the air
Like the light dropping of the rain-
And resting on some silver star
The spirit of a bended knee,
I've poured her low and fervent prayer
That our eternity might be
To rise in heaven like stars at night,
And tread a living path of light!
I have been on the dewy hills,
When night was stealing from the dawn,
And mist was on the waking rills,
And tints were delicately drawn
In the gray east-when birds were waking
With a low murmur in the trees,
And melody by fits was breaking
Upon the whisper of the breeze,
And this when I was forth, perchance,
As a worn reveller from the dance-
And when the sun sprang gloriously
And freely up, and hill and river
Were catching upon wave and tree
The arrows from his subtle quiver—
I say a voice has thrilled me then,
Heard on the still and rushing light,
Or, creeping from the silent glen,
Like words from the departing night,
Hath stricken me; and I have pressed
On the wet grass my fevered brow,
And pouring forth the earliest
First prayer, with which I learned to bow,
Have felt my mother's spirit rush
Upon me as in by-past years,
And yielding to the blessed gush
Of my ungovernable tears,
Have risen up the gay, the wild—
As humble as a very child.
HYMN OF NATURE.
GOD of the earth's extended plains!
The dark green fields contented lie;
The mountains rise like holy towers,
Where man might commune with the sky;
The tall cliff challenges the storm
That lowers upon the vale below,
Where shaded fountains send their streams
With joyous music in their flow.
God of the dark and heavy deep!
The waves lie sleeping on the sands
Till the fierce trumpet of the storm
Hath summoned up their thundering bands;
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