I Knew by the smoke that so gracefully curled
Above the green elms, that a cottage was near,
And I said, “If there ’s peace to be found in the world,
A heart that is humble might hope for it here!”
It was noon, and on flowers that languished around
In silence reposed the voluptuous bee;
Every leaf was at rest, and I heard not a sound...
There is not in this wide world a valley so sweet
As that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet;
O, the last ray of feeling and life must depart
Ere the bloom of that valley shall fade from my heart!
Yet it was not that Nature had shed o’er the scene
Her purest of crystal and brightest of green;
’T was not the soft magic of streamlet or...
And doth not a meeting like this make amends
For all the long years I ’ve been wand’ring away—
To see thus around me my youth’s early friends,
As smiling and kind as in that happy day?
Though haply o’er some of your brows, as o’er mine,
The snow-fall of Time may be stealing—what then?
Like Alps in the sunset, thus lighted by wine,...
“a Temple to Friendship,” cried Laura, enchanted,
“I ’ll build in this garden; the thought is divine.”
So the temple was built, and she now only wanted
An image of Friendship, to place on the shrine.
So she flew to the sculptor, who sat down before her
An image, the fairest his art could invent;
But so cold, and so dull, that the youthful...
WREATHE the bowl
With flowers of soul,
The brightest wit can find us;
We ’ll take a flight
Towards heaven to-night,
And leave dull earth behind us!
Should Love amid
The wreaths be hid
That Joy, the enchanter, brings us,
No danger fear
While wine is...
Here is one leaf reserved for me,
From all thy sweet memorials free;
And here my simple song might tell
The feelings thou must guess so well.
But could I thus, within thy mind,
One little vacant corner find,
Where no impression yet is seen,
Where no memorial yet has been,
O, it should be my sweetest care
To write my name...
THE Brilliant black eye
May in triumph let fly
All its darts without caring who feels ’em;
But the soft eye of blue,
Though it scatter wounds too,
Is much better pleased when it heals ’em!
Dear Fanny!
The black eye may say,
“Come and worship my ray;
By adoring, perhaps you may move me!”...
How sweet the answer Echo makes
To Music at night
When, roused by lute or horn, she wakes,
And far away o’er lawns and lakes
Goes answering light!
Yet Love hath echoes truer far
And far more sweet
Than e’er, beneath the moonlight’s star,
Of horn or lute or soft guitar
The songs repeat.
’T is when the sigh,—in...
From “Irish Melodies”
O THE DAYS are gone when beauty bright
My heart’s chain wove!
When my dream of life, from morn till night,
Was love, still love!
New hope may bloom,
And days may come,
Of milder, calmer beam,
But there ’s nothing half so sweet in life
As love’s young dream!
O...
From “Irish Melodies”
COME, rest in this bosom, my own stricken deer,
Though the herd have fled from thee, thy home is still here;
Here still is the smile, that no cloud can o’ercast,
And a heart and a hand all thy own to the last.
Oh! what was love made for, if ’t is not the same
Through joy and through torment, through glory and shame?...
