That make-bright-landscapes when they blush abroad -
The dingle gray, and wooded copse, with hut
And hamlet, nestling in the bosky vale,
And spires brown peeping o'er the ancient elms,
And steepled cities, faint and far away,
With all that bird and meadowbrook and gale
Impart, are mingled for admiring eyes
That love to banquet on thy blissful scene.
But Ocean is thy glory; and methinks
Some musing wanderer by-the-shore I see
Weaving his island-fancies.-Round-him, rock
And cliff, whose gray trees mutter to the wind,
And streams down-rushing with a torrent ire:
The sky seems craggy, with her cloud-piles hung
Deep-mass'd, as though embodied thunder lay
And darken'd in a dream-of-havoc there!-
Before-him, Ocean, yelling in the blast,
Wild as the death-wail of a drowning host:
The surges, be they tempests as they roll,
Lashing their fury into living foam,
Yon war-ship shall outbrave them all!—her sails
Resent the winds, and their remorseless howl;
And, when she ventures the abyss of waves,
Remounts expands her wings, and then-away!
Proud as an eagle dashing through the clouds.
And well, brave scion of the empress Isle,
Thy spirit mingles with the mighty scene,
Hailing thy country on her ocean-throne.
But she hath dread atonements to complete,
And bloody tears to shed. Thy lofty dreams,
O England! may be humbled yet; behold
The war-clouds rise,-beware! for 'in thine own
Great heart' the darkness-of-rebellion breeds,
And frowns-of-heaven hang awful o'er thy doom!
That meanest thou, O sleeper?
From " Hymns for the Church Militant."
SINNER! rouse-thee from thy sleep!
Wake-and o'er-thy-folly weep;
Raise thy spirit dark and dead:
Jesus waits, his light to shed.
Wake from sleep! arise from death!
See the bright and living path:
Watchful tread that path; be wise ;-
Leave thy folly seek the skies.
Leave thy folly cease from crime,
From-this-hour redeem thy time;
Life secure without delay
Evil is the mortal day.
Be not blind and foolish still;
Call'd of Jesus, learn his will :
Jesus calls from death and night;
Jesus waits to shed his light.
I MARK'D a whirlpool in perpetual play,
As though the mountain were itself alive,
And catching-prey on-every-side with feelers
Countless-as-sunbeams slight as gossamer.
Compress'd like wedges - radiated like stars -
Branching like sea-weed whirled in dazzling rings -
Subtle and variable as flickering flames,
Sight could not trace their evanescent changes,
Nor comprehend their motions, till minute.
And curious observation caught the clue
To this live labyrinth,-where every one,
By instinct taught, perform'd its little task.
Millions of millions thus from-age,-to-age,
With simplest skill, and toil unweariable,
(No moment and no movement unimproved)
Laid-line on line, on-terrace terrace spread,
To swell the heightening - brightening - gradual mound,
By-marvellous-structure climbing toward the day.
Omnipotence wrought in them with them by them;
Hence what Omnipotence-alone could do'
Worms did. I saw the living-pile ascend,
The mausoleum of its architects,
Still dying upwards as their labours closed:
Slime the material; but the slime was turn'd
To-adamant by their petrific touch;
Frail were their frames ephemeral their lives,
Their masonry imperishable. *
* * * A point at first,
It peered above those waves a point so-small
I just perceived it fix'd where all was floating;
And, when a bubble cross'd it, the blue film
Expanded like a sky above the speck :
That speck became a handbreadth; day and night
It spread accumulated and ere-long
Presented to-my-view a dazzling plain,
White-as-the-moon amid the sapphire-sea.
Compared with this amazing edifice,
Babel's stupendous folly, though it aim'd
To scale heaven's battlements, was but a toy,
The plaything of the world in infancy.
`Nine-times the age of man' that coral-reef Had bleach'd beneath the torrid noon, and borne The thunder of a thousand hurricanes,
Raised, by the jealous ocean, to repel
That strange encroachment on his old domain.
Fragments of shells - dead sloughs - sea-monsters' bones.
Whales stranded in the shallows hideous weeds
Hurl'd out-of-darkness by the uprooting surges;
These, with unutterable relics more,
Heap'd the rough surface, till the various mass,
By-Nature's-chemistry combined and purged,
Had buried-the-bare-rock in crumbling mould.
All seasons were propitious; every wind,
From the hot siroc to the wet monsoon,
Temper'd the crude materials; while heaven's dew
Fell on-the-sterile-wilderness as sweetly
As though it were a garden of the LORD.
THERE is a book who runs may read,
Which heavenly truth imparts;
And all the lore its scholars need,
The works-of-God, above below
Within-us and around,
Are pages-in-that-book to show
How God-himself is found.
The glorious sky, embracing all,
Is like the Maker's love;
Wherewith encompass'd, great and small
In-peace-and-order move.
The moon above, the Church below,
A wondrous race they run;
But all their radiance, all their glow,
Each borrows of its sun:
The Saviour lends the light and heat
That crowns His holy hill;
The saints, like stars, around-His-seat
Perform their courses still.
The saints-above are stars in Heaven;
What are the saints on earth?
Like trees they stand whom God has given
Our Eden's happy birth:
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