he strange and solemn things
Of this mysterious realm.
All day my steps
Have been amid the beautiful, the wild,
The gloomy, the terrific; crystal founts
Almost invisible in their serene
And pure transparency, high pillared domes
With stars and flowers, all fretted like the halls
Of Oriental monarchs--rivers dark,
And drear, and voiceless, as Oblivion's stream,
That flows through Death's dim vale of silence,--gulfs
All fathomless, down which the loosened rock
Plunges, until its far-off echoes come
Fainter and fainter, like the dying roll
Of thunders in the distance.
... Beautiful
Are all the thousand snow-white gems that lie
In these mysterious chambers, gleaming out
Amid the melancholy gloom, and wild
These rocky hills and cliffs, and gulfs, but far
More beautiful and wild, the things that greet
The wanderer in our world of light--the stars
Floating on high, like islands of the blest,--
The autumn sunsets glowing like the gate
Of far-off Paradise; the gorgeous clouds
On which the glories of the earth and sky
Meet, and commingle; earth's unnumbered flowers,
All turning up their gentle eyes to heaven;
The birds, with bright wings glancing in the sun,
Filling the air with rainbow miniatures;
The green old forests surging in the gale;
The everlasting mountains, on whose peaks
The setting sun burns like an altar-flame.

* * * * *

=_Charles Constantine Pise, 1802-1866._= (Manual, p. 532.)

From "The Pleasures of Religion."

=_353._= THE RAINBOW.

Mark, o'er yon wild, as melts the storm away,
The rainbow tints their various hues display;
Beauteous, though faint, though deeply shaded, bright,
They span the clearing heavens, and charm the sight.
Yes, as I gaze, methinks I view--the while,
Hope's radiant form, and Mercy's genial smile.
Who doth not see, in that sweet bow of heaven,
Circling around the twilight hills of even,
Religion's light, which o'er the wilds of life
Shoots its pure rays through misery and strife;
Soothes the lone bosom, as it pines in woe,
And turns to heaven this barren world below?
O, what were man, did not her hallowed ray
Disperse, the clouds that thicken on his way!
A weary pilgrim, left in cheerless gloom,
To grope his midnight journey to the tomb;
His life a tempest, death, a wreck forlorn,