And round my bier ye come to weep, Say, 'Not a tear must o'er her fall! LVII. E. B. Browning. THE SABBATH. RESH glides the brook and blows the gale, The whirring wheel, the rushing sail, Six days stern Labour shuts the poor A Father's tender mercy gave Six days of toil, poor child of Cain, The fields that yester-morning knew Fresh glides the brook and blows the gale, The whirring wheel, the rushing sail, So rest,-O weary heart!-but, lo, The church-spire, glist'ning up to heaven, Lone through the landscape's solemn rest, They tell thee, in their dreaming school, Alas! since Time itself began, That fable hath but fooled the hour; Yet every day in seven, at least, One bright Republic shall be known ;- Six days may Rank divide the poor, O Dives, from thy banquet hall— The seventh the Father opes the door, LVIII. E. L. Bulwer Lytton. TO A SKYLARK. AIL to thee, blithe spirit! Bird thou never wert, That from heaven, or near it, Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. Higher still and higher From the earth thou springest; The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. In the golden lightning Of the sunken sun, O'er which clouds are brightening, Thou dost float and run; Like an embodied Joy whose race is just begun. The pale purple even Like a star of heaven In the broad day-light Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight. Keen as are the arrows Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there. All the earth and air From one lonely cloud The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed. What thou art we know not; What is most like thee? From rainbow clouds there flow not Drops so bright to see, As from thy presence showers a rain of melody. Like a poet hidden In the light of thought, Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not : Like a high-born maiden In a palace tower, Soul in secret hour With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower : Like a glow-worm golden In a dell of dew, Scattering unbeholden Its aërial hue Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view : Like a rose embowered In its own green leaves, By warm winds deflowered, Till the scent it gives Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-wingéd thieves. Sound of vernal showers On the twinkling grass, All that ever was Joyous and clear and fresh, thy music doth surpass. Teach us, sprite or bird, What sweet thoughts are thine : I have never heard Praise of love or wine That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. Chorus hymeneal, Or triumphal chant, Matched with thine would be all But an empty vaunt A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. What objects are the fountains Of thy happy strain? What fields, or waves, or mountains ? What shapes of sky or plain? What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain? With thy clear keen joyance Languor cannot be : Shadow of annoyance Never came near thee: Thou lovest; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. Waking or asleep, Thou of death must deem Things more true and deep Than we mortals dream, Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream? We look before and after, And pine for what is not : With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. Yet if we could scorn Hate, and pride, and fear; If we were things born Not to shed a tear, I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. |