DARKLY thou glidest onward,

Thou deep and hidden wave!

The laughing sunshine hath not look'd

Into thy secret cave.

Thy current makes no music.

A hollow sound we hear,

A muffled voice of mystery,
And know that thou art near.

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No brighter line of verdure
Follows thy lonely way;
No fairy moss, or lily's cup,
Is freshen❜d by thy play.

The halcyon doth not seek thee,
Her glorious wings to lave;

Thou know'st no tint of the summer sky,

Thou dark and hidden wave!

Yet once will day behold thee,
When to the mighty sea,

Fresh bursting from their cavern'd veins,

Leap thy lone waters free.

There wilt thou greet the sunshine
For a moment, and be lost,
With all thy melancholy sounds,
In the ocean's billowy host.

Oh! art thou not, dark river,

Like the fearful thoughts untold,
Which haply in the hush of night
O'er many a soul have roll'd?

Those earth-born strange misgivings-
Who hath not felt their power?

Yet who hath breathed them to his friend,
E'en in his fondest hour?

They hold no heart communion,
They find no voice in song,
They dimly follow far from earth

The grave's departed throng.

THE SILENT MULTITUDE.

Wild is their course, and lonely,

And fruitless in man's breast;

They come and go, and leave no trace
Of their mysterious guest.

Yet surely must their wanderings,

At length, be like thy way; Their shadows, as thy waters, lost In one bright flood of day!

THE SILENT MULTITUDE.

"For we are many in our solitudes."

Lament of Tasso

A MIGHTY and a mingled throng
Were gather'd in one spot;
The dwellers of a thousand homes.
Yet 'midst them voice was not.

The soldier and his chief were there-
The mother and her child:

The friends, the sisters of one hearth-
None spoke-none moved-none smiled.

There lovers met, between whose lives
Years had swept darkly by;

After that heart-sick hope deferr'd—
They met but silently.

You might have heard the rustling leaf,
The breeze's faintest sound,

The shiver of an insect's wing,

On that thick-peopled ground.

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Your voice to whispers would have died,
For the deep quiet's sake;

Your tread the softest moss have sought,
Such stillness not to break.

What held the countless multitude
Bound in that spell of peace?
How could the ever-sounding life
Amid so many cease?

Was it some pageant of the air—

Some glory high above,

That link'd and hush'd those human souls

In reverential love?

Or did some burdening passion's weight
Hang on their indrawn breath?
Awe-the pale awe that freezes words?
Fear the strong fear of death?

A mightier thing-Death, Death himself
Lay on each lonely heart!

Kindred were there—yet hermits all—
Thousands, but each apart.

THE ANTIQUE SEPULCHRE.'

O EVER joyous band

Of revellers amidst the southern vines!

"Les sarcophages même chez les anciens, ne rappellent que des idées guerrières ou riantes:-on voit des jeux, des danses, representés en bas-relief sur les tombeaux."

Corinne.

THE ANTIQUE SEPULCHRE.

On the pale marble, by some gifted hand,
Fix'd in undying lines!

Thou, with the sculptured bowl,

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And thou, that wearest the immortal wreath,
And thou, from whose young lip and flute, the soul
Of music seems to breathe;

And ye, luxuriant flowers!

Linking the dancers with your graceful ties,
And cluster'd fruitage, born of sunny hours,
Under Italian skies:

Ye, that a thousand springs, And leafy summers with their odorous breath, May yet outlast,-what do ye there, bright things! Mantling the place of death?

Of sunlight and soft air,
And Dorian reeds, and myrtles ever green,
Unto the heart a glowing thought ye bear;—
Why thus, where dust hath been?

Is it to show how slight

The bound that severs festivals and tombs,
Music and silence, roses and the blight,
Crowns and sepulchral glooms?

Or when the father laid

Haply his child's pale ashes here to sleep,
When the friend visited the cypress shade,
Flowers o'er the dead to heap;