What care I for the sullen roar Of winds without, that ravage earth; It doth but bid me prize the more, The shelter of thy hallowed hearth; To thoughts of quiet bliss give birth: Then let the churlish tempest chide, It cannot check the blameless mirth That glads my own Fireside. My refuge ever from the storm Of this world's passion, strife and care; Thy precincts are a charmed ring, To thee my own Fireside! Shrine of my household deities! Fair scene of my home's unsullied joys! To thee my burthened spirit flies, When fortune frowns, or care annoys: Thine is the bliss that never cloys; The smile whose truth hath oft been tried ; What, then, are this world's tinsel toys To thee my own Fireside! Oh, may the yearnings, fond and sweet, THE FROSTED TREES. WHAT strange enchantment meets my view, Or am I born to regions new To see the glories there? Last eve when sun-set filled the sky And sleepy mists came down to lie But now the scene is changed, and all The trees, last eve so straight and tall, And streams of living daylight fall The silvery arches through. The boughs are strung with glittering pearls ! The work of fairy land. Each branch stoops meekly with the weight, And in the light breeze swerves, As if some viewless angel sate Upon its graceful curves, Oh! I could dream the robe of heaven, From the sky at silent even, For the morning's glorious show. THE BUGLE. BY GRENVILLE MELLEN. But still the dingle's hollow throat LADY OF THE LAKE. OH! wild enchanting horn! Wake, wake again, the night Is bending from her throne of beauty down, With still stars burning on her azure crown, Intense and eloquently bright. Night, at its pulseless noon! When the far voice of waters mourns in song, And some tired watch-dog, lazily and long, Barks at the melancholy moon. Hark! how it sweeps away, Soaring and dying on the silent sky, As if some sprite of sound went wandering by, With lone halloo and roundelay! Swell, swell in glory out! Thy tones come pouring on my leaping heart, And my stirred spirit hears thee with a start, As boyhood's old remembered shout. Oh! have ye heard that peal, From sleeping city's moon-bathed battlements, Or from the guarded field and warrior tents, Like some near breath around you steal? Or have ye in the roar Of sea, or storm, or battle, heard it rise, Go, go-no other sound, No music that of air or earth is born, ADDRESS TO LORD BYRON, ON THE PUBLICATION OF CHILDE HAROLD. BY GRANVILLE PENN. COLD is the breast, extinct the vital spark, Would joy to press that blessed ethereal ground, Where peace, and truth, and life, and friends, and love abound. I❝deem not Harold's breast a breast of steel," The shore to which his soul would love to cleave; Would, Harold, I could make thee know full oft, That bearing thus the helm, the land thou seekest is left. Is Harold "satiate with worldly joy?" That blessed freedom of thy soul to fly To Him, who, ever gracious, ever nigh, Demands the heart that breaks the world's hard chain; If early freed, though by satiety, Vast is the privilege that man may gain;— Who early foils the foe, may well the prize obtain. LYRE. I |