Strength of my youth, all your vigour is gone :
Thoughts of my youth, your gay visions are flown.
Days of my youth, I wish not your recall:
Hairs of my youth, I'm content ye should fall:
Eyes of my youth, you much evil have seen :
Cheeks of my youth, bathed in tears you have been :
Thoughts of my youth, you have led me astray :
Strength of my youth, why lament your decay?
Days of my age, ye will shortly be past:
Pains of my age, yet awhile you can last:
Joys of my age, in true wisdom delight:
Eyes of my age, be religion your light:
Thoughts of my age, dread
ye not the cold sod:
Hopes of my age, be ye fixed on your God!
E Muses! dames of dignified renown,
Revered alike in country and in town, Your bard the mysteries of a visit show (For sure your ladyships those mysteries know): What is it, then, obliging sisters! say, The debt of social visiting to pay? "Tis not to toil before the idol pier; To shine the first in fashion's lunar sphere;
By sad engagements forced abroad to roam,
And dread to find the expecting fair at home!
To stop at thirty doors in half a day,
Drop the gilt card, and proudly roll away;
To alight, and yield the hand with nice parade;
Up-stairs to rustle in the stiff brocade;
Swim through the drawing-room with studied air,
Catch the pinked beau, and shade the rival fair;
To sit, to curb, to toss with bridled mien,
Mince the scant speech, and lose a glance between ;
Unfurl the fan, display the snowy arm,
And ope, with each new motion, some new charm:
Or sit in silent solitude, to spy
Each little failing with malignant eye;
Or chatter with incessancy of tongue,
Careless if kind or cruel, right or wrong;
To trill of us and ours, of mine and me,
Our house, our coach, our friends, our family,
While all the excluded circle sit in pain,
And glance their cool contempt or keen disdain :
To inhale from proud Nanking a sip of tea,
And wave a courtesy trim, and flirt away;
Or waste at cards peace, temper, health, and life,
Begin with sullenness, and end in strife;
Lose the rich feast by friendly converse given,
And backward turn from happiness and heaven.
It is in decent habit, plain and neat,
To spend a few choice hours in converse sweet,
Careless of forms, to act the unstudied part,
To mix in friendship, and to blend the heart;
To choose those happy themes which all must feel
The moral duties and the household weal,
The tale of sympathy, the kind design,
Where rich affections soften and refine
To amuse, to be amused, to bless, be blest,
And tune to harmony the common breast;
To cheer with mild good-humour's sprightly ray
And smooth life's passage o'er its thorny way;
To circle round the hospitable board,
And taste each good our generous climes afford;
To court a quick return with accents kind,
And leave, at parting, some regret behind.
THE INCOMPREHENSIBILITY OF GOD.
HERE art Thou?-THOU! source and support of all
That is or seen or felt; thyself unseen,
Unfelt, unknown-alas, unknowable !
I look abroad among thy works—the sky,
Vast, distant, glorious with its world of suns-
Life-giving earth, and ever-moving main,
And speaking winds—and ask if these are Thee!
The stars that twinkle on, the eternal hills,
The restless tide's outgoing and return,
The omnipresent and deep-breathing air—
Though hailed as gods of old, and only less,
Are not the Power I seek; are thine, not Thee!
I ask Thee from the Past: if, in the years,
Since first intelligence could search its source,
Or in some former unremembered being
(If such, perchance, were mine), did they behold Thee? And next interrogate Futurity,
So fondly tenanted with better things
Than e'er experience owned—but both are mute;
And Past and Future, vocal on all else,
So full of memories and phantasies,
Are deaf and speechless here! Fatigued, I turn
From all vain parley with the elements,
And close mine eyes, and bid the thought turn inward
From each material thing its anxious guest,
If, in the stillness of the waiting soul,
He may vouchsafe himself—Spirit to spirit!
O Thou, at once most dreaded and desired,
Pavilioned still in darkness, wilt thou hide Thee?
What though the rash request be fraught with fate,
Nor human eye may look on thine and live?
Welcome the penalty! let that come now,
Which soon or late must come. For light like this
Who would not dare to die?
And hush the wish that knows not what it asks.
Await His will, who hath appointed this,
With every other trial. Be that will
Done now, as ever. For thy curious search,
And unprepared solicitude to gaze
On Him-the Unrevealed-learn hence, instead,
To temper highest hope with humbleness
Pass thy novitiate in these outer courts,
Till rent the veil, no longer separating
The Holiest of all-as erst, disclosing
A brighter dispensation; whose results
Ineffable, interminable, tend
Even to the perfecting thyself-thy kind—
Till meet for that sublime beatitude,
By the firm promise of a voice from heaven
Pledged to the pure in heart!
David Humphreys.
WESTERN EMIGRATION.
TH all that's ours, together let us rise,
Seek brighter plains, and more indulgent skies;
Where fair Ohio rolls his amber tide,
And Nature blossoms in her virgin pride;
Where all that Beauty's hand can form to please
Shall crown the toils of war with rural ease.
The shady coverts and the sunny hills,
The gentle lapse of ever-murmuring rills,
The soft repose amid the noontide bowers,
The evening walk among the blushing flowers,
The fragrant groves, that yield a sweet perfume,
And vernal glories in perpetual bloom,
Await you there; and Heaven shall bless the toil:
Your own the produce, and your own the soil.
There, free from envy, cankering care, and strife,
Flow the calm pleasures of domestic life;
There mutual friendship soothes each placid breast:
Blest in themselves, and in each other blest.
From house to house the social glee extends,
For friends in war, in peace are doubly friends.
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