Gilds Indian mountains, or his setting beam Flames on the Atlantic isles; 'tis nought to me: Since God is ever present, ever felt,
In the void waste as in the city full;
And where He vital breathes, there must be joy.
When even at last the solemn hour shall come,
And wing my mystic flight to future worlds,
I cheerful will obey; there, with new powers,
Will rising wonders sing: I cannot go
Where universal Love not smiles around,
Sustaining all yon orbs, and all their suns;
From seeming evil still educing good,
And better thence again, and better still,
In infinite progression. But I lose
Myself in Him, in Light ineffable:
Come then, expressive silence, muse His praise!
Unseen, that rules the illimitable world,
That guides its motions, from the brightest star
To the least dust of this sin-tainted mould;
While man, who madly deems himself the lord
Of all, is nought but weakness and dependence.
This sacred truth, which God alone can teach,
Hast thou yet learnt, when wandering all alone,
Each bird, each insect, flitting through the sky,
Is more sufficient for itself than thou?
EXTRACTS FROM "THE PELICAN ISLAND."
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, performed its little task,-
To build its dwelling and its sepulchre
From its own essence exquisitely modelled;
There breed and die, and leave a progeny,
Still multiplied beyond the reach of numbers,
To frame new cells and tombs; then breed and die,
As all their ancestors had done, and rest
Hermetically sealed, each on its shrine
A statue in this temple of oblivion!
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 mount
By marvellous structure, climbing towards the day,
Each wrought alone, yet all together wrought,
Unconscious, not unworthy instruments,
By which a Hand invisible was rearing
A new creation in the secret deep.
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 turned
To adamant by their petrific touch,
Frail were their frames-ephemeral their lives-
Their masonry imperishable. All
Life's needful functions, food, exertion, rest,
By nice economy of Providence
Were overruled to carry on the process,
Which out of water brought forth solid rock.
In God's own language, to its parent saying,
Thus far, nor farther shalt thou go, and here
Shall thy proud waves be stayed.
A sea-lake rose amidst the fossil isle,
Reflecting in its ring its cliffs and caverns,
With heaven itself seen like a lake below.
Light as a flake of foam upon the wind,
Keel-upward from the deep emerged a shell,
Shaped like the moon ere half her horn is filled;
Fraught with young life, it righted as it rose,
And moved at will along the yielding water.
The native pilot of this little bark
Put out a tier of oars on either side,
Spread to the wafting breeze a two-fold sail,
And mounted up and glided down the billow
In happy freedom, pleased to feel the air,
And wander in the luxury of light.
Worth all the dead creation, in that hour,
To me appeared this lonely Nautilus,
My fellow-being, like myself alive.
Entranced in contemplation, vague yet sweet,
I watched its vagrant course and rippling wake
Till I forgot the sun amidst the heavens.
It closed, sank, dwindled to a point, then nothing;
While the last bubble crowned the dimpling eddy,
Through which mine eyes still giddily pursued it,
A joyous creature vaulted through the air,
The aspiring fish that fain would be a bird,
On long, light wings, that flung a diamond shower
Of dew-drops round its evanescent form,
Sprang into light, and instantly descended.
Ere I could greet the stranger as a friend,
Or mourn his quick departure, on the surge
A shoal of dolphins, tumbling in wild glee,
Glowed with such orient tints, they might have been
The rainbow's offspring, when it met the ocean
In that resplendent vision I had seen.
While yet in ecstasy I hung o'er these,
With every motion pouring out fresh beauties,
As though the conscious colours came and went
At pleasure, glorying in their subtle changes, -
Enormous o'er the flood, Leviathan
Looked forth, and from his roaring nostrils sent
Two fountains to the sky, then plunged amain
In headlong pastime through the closing gulf.
J. MONTGOMERY.
THE moon is watching in the sky; the stars
Are swiftly wheeling on their golden cars;
Ocean outstretched with infinite expanse,
Serenely slumbers in a glorious trance.
The tide, o'er which no troubling tempests breathe,
Reflects a cloudless firmament beneath,
Where, poised as in the centre of a sphere,
A ship above and ship below appear;
A double image pictured on the deep,
The vessel o'er its shadow seems to sleep;
Yet, like the host of heaven, that never rest,
With evanescent motion to the west,
The pageant glides through loneliness and night,
And leaves behind a rippling wake of light.
Hark! through the calm and silence of the scene,
Slow, solemn, sweet, with many a pause between,
Celestial music swells along the air!
No! 'tis the evening hymn of praise and prayer
From yonder deck, where, on the stern retired,
Three humble voyagers, with looks inspired,
And hearts enkindled with a brighter flame
Than ever lit to empire or to fame,
Devoutly stand: their choral accents rise
On wings of harmony beyond the skies;
And, 'midst the song that seraph minstrels sing,
Day without night, to their immortal King,
These simple strains, which erst Bohemian hills
Echoed to pathless woods and desert rills,
Now heard from Shetland's azure bound, are known
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