A woodman 'mid the forest-shade
Had found me in my rest,
Had lifted up my head, and laid
It softly on his breast!"
The princes sat, and wondering heard,
Then said, as closed the story,
Long live the good Count Eberhard-
His people's love his glory!"
I CANNOT leave the busy strand!
I gaze upon you standing there,
And giving to the sailor's hand
Your household furniture and ware:
Men from their shoulders lifting down
Baskets of bread, with careful hand
Prepared from German corn, and brown
From the old hearth in Fatherland;
Black Forest maids, with sunburnt faces,
Slim forms, and neatly-braided hair,
Come-each within the shallop places
Her jugs and pitchers all with care.
The pitchers carried oft to fill
At the familiar village spring-
When by Missouri all is still,
Visions of home will round them cling;
The rustic well, with stones girt round,
The low stone wall they bended o'er,
The hearth upon the family ground,
The mantelpiece, with all its store;
All will be dear, when, in the west,
These pitchers deck the log-hut lone,
Or when reached down, that some brown guest
May quench his thirst, and travel on.
Tired in the chase, the Cherokees
Will drink from them on hunting-ground;
No more from glad grape-gleaning these
Shall come with German vine-leaves crowned!
Why, wanderers, must you leave your land?
The Neckar-vale has wine and corn;
Tall firs in our Black Forest stand;
In Spessart sounds the Alper's horn.
'Mid foreign woods you'll long in vain
For your paternal mountains green,
For Deutschland's yellow fields of grain,
And hills of vines with purple sheen!
The vision of your olden time,
Of all you leave so far behind,
Like some old legendary rhyme,
Will rise in dreams and haunt your mind.
The boatman calls-depart in peace!—
God keep you-man, and wife, and child!
Joy dwell with you!-and fast increase
Your rice and maize in yonder wild!
UNDER the sea-waves bright and clear,
Deep on the pearly gravelly sands,
Sleeps many a brave his slumber drear,
Who joined the gay and gallant bands
That pushed from forth their land and home,
Companions of the wild sea-foam,
When blasts arose and tossed their bark,
Till, whelmed beneath the waters dark,
The storm-king claimed them for his own,
That late in life and beauty shone!
Under the sea-waves green and bright,
Deep on the pearly gravelly sands,
Sleeps many a one in slumber light,
But not by the storm-king's ruthless hands;
For there, within his narrow berth,
Lies the cold corpse of clammy earth!
Never to hail a harbour more,
Never to reach a friendly shore;
To a rude plank his form they lash;
Heave overboard-waves sullen plash!
Ocean-depths yawn widely gaping,
Graves in the mirror-sea to form;
Churchyard hillocks there are shaping,
Every swell of the heaving storm!
Could we descend into the deep,
Could we but still the waves to sleep,
There might we rows of sleepers see,
Count the white bones lie glitteringly-
Things that the polypus spins so fine,
Weaving his network beneath the brine:
There might we see them pillowed fair
On moss, and sand, and soft sea-weed;
Grinning in death, behold them there!
Fishes in shoals around them breed;
Swordfish polish their bony arms;
Mermaids mutter their mystic charms,
And deck them out to make them fair,
With many a gift of ocean rare!
One anoints, while another kneeling,
Braids the long-neglected tresses,
From the soft purple shell now stealing
Bloom for the wan and bony faces.
One with a pearly necklace long,
Weaving a wild and mournful song,
Wanders among the dead in the sea,
Glittering with ornaments wondrously.
There may you see the shrivelled arm
Gleaming in amber's golden glow;
There the bright coral's crimson charm
Naked skull wreathing-blanched like snow.
Pearls the most precious-pure and white-
Glare in those vacant orbs of light;
And the sea-reptiles, loathsome, crawl
In and out, and around them all,
Sucking the marrow from the bones
Greedily, of those shipwrecked ones.
There might we see the stately mast
Bearing its freight of corpses lashed,
Clasped by the sea-rock, where the blast,
Shattering it fiercely, wildly dashed;
Gnawed by the worms, unconscious sleeper,
Rooted to rock-cliff all the deeper,
Dreams perchance of the granite tower
Beetling above his home's sweet bower;
For under the sea-waves bright and green,
Among pure pearls of the silvery sheen,
Many a rustic companion sleeps,
Who sank in the wave-worn ocean deeps.
Slumber they far from home and hall;
Flowers there are none to deck their bier;
Friends are not nigh to spread the pall,
O'er their pale forms to shed the tear.
Balmy rosemary there is none :
Rose-tree never shall breathe upon
Graves where, sweet, they sleep 'neath the billow,
Waving around no weeping willow.
Matters it not! Though fall no tear
Over the corpse in his briny bier,
Troubles it not the "dead in the sea".
Salt tears around them flow ceaselessly.
LOVE AND SUPERSTITION.
ОH never rudely will I blame this faith
In the might of stars and angels! 'Tis not merely
The human being's pride that peoples space
With life and mystical predominance;
Since likewise for the stricken heart of love
This visible nature, and this common world,
Is all too narrow; yea, a deeper import
Lurks in the legend told my infant years
Than lies upon that truth we live to learn.
For fable is love's world, his home, his birthplace:
Delightedly dwells he 'mong fays and talismans,
And spirits; and delightedly believes
Divinities, being himself divine.
The intelligible forms of ancient poets,
The fair humanities of old religion,
The power, the beauty, and the majesty,
That had her haunts in dale, or piny mountain,
Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring,
Or chasms and watery depths; all these have vanished.
They live no longer in the faith of reason!
But still the heart doth need a language, still
Doth the old instinct bring back the old names,
And to yon starry world they now are gone,
Spirits or gods, that used to share this earth'
With man as with their friend; and to the lover
Yonder they move, from yonder visible sky
Shoot influence down: and even at this day
'Tis Jupiter who brings whate'er is great,
And Venus who brings everything that's fair!
-SCHILLER'S Piccolomini.
SEE how the day beameth brightly before us!
Blue is the firmament, green is the earth;
Grief hath no voice in the universe-chorus-
Nature is ringing with music and mirth.
Lift up the looks that are sinking in sadness—
Gaze! and if beauty can capture thy soul,
Virtue herself will allure thee to gladness-
Gladness, philosophy's guerdon and goal.
Enter the treasuries pleasure uncloses-
List! how she thrills in the nightingale's lay!
Breathe! she is wafting thee sweets from the roses;
Feel! she is cool in the rivulet's play;
Taste! from the grape and the nectarine gushing
Flows the red rill in the beams of the sun-
Green in the hills, in the flower-groves blushing,
Look! she is always and everywhere one.
Banish, then, mourner, the tears that are trickling
Over the cheeks that should rosily bloom;
Why should a man, like a girl or a sickling,
Suffer his lamp to be quenched in the tomb?
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