r lamp,
In yonder slowly darkening sky;
It is the hour, when musing here,
I heave for thee the bursting sigh.
Thus, Mary, as yon mournful pall
Of darkness falls on all things round,
Ah! tell me shall the gloom of fate,
My cheerless pathway thus surround?
But, as yon lamp--the lamp of love!
With brilliant smile, relieves the gloom,
Say, shall thy heavenly smile relieve
The darkness of my mortal doom?
Alas! I do not know thy thoughts,
If thou wilt slay, or sweetly save;
Yet I shall love thee fondly still,
Until I rest within the grave.
SONG OF THE CONVERTED HEATHEN.
The sky to me did never speak,
The sea rolled ever dumb,--
Of him beneath whose wondrous power,
Their mystic forms had come.
The sacred light was curtained back
From my exploring eye,
And I seemed left to grope in night,
And there at last to die.
When lo! upon a day there came
A Man, with placid brow,
Who rent the curtain--and the light
Is gushing on me now.
The sky doth speak to me of God,
The deep and rolling sea
Is ever grandly singing, Lord,
To my bowed soul, of Thee.
Oh! I can see around them now
A radiant light doth shine,
A light that mocks the pencil's pride,
A light that is divine.
SIN OF THE CHORAL SINGER.
Hark! the organ's solemn peal
Ascends the lofty fane,
To win the soul's repeal,
From everlasting pain:
To waft the voice of praise
To Him who reigns above,
Which blends with burning lays
Of Seraph's holy love.
Hark! the deep-toned, solemn peal!
Again it strikes the air!
My trembling accents steal
To join the anthem there.
I strive to lift my mind
To God's most holy throne;
And, with my thought refined,
To think on Heaven alone.
But earth-born love intrudes
And brings me back to earth;
To dreamy solitudes
My spirit wanders forth:
To walk with one, a youth,
With bright and sunny hair,
Whose words are only truth,
Whose love is heavenly fair.
God! forgive my grievous sin!
God! forgive my erring love!
Write not my sentence in
Thine awful scroll above!
God! forgive thy creature's love,
Who only loves too well!
Let not that virtue prove
My doleful doom to hell.
But make my passion less--
Its burning purify;
And make it meet to bless
My spirit in the sky.
A PORTRAIT.
In those mild eyes, there is a light
Which dwells not with the evil; and
A calm repose upon thy features, which
S
|