Unheeded spreads thy blossomed bud
Its milky bosom to the bee;
Unheeded falls along the flood
Thy desolate and aged tree.
Forsaken scene! how like to thee
The fate of unbefriended worth!
Like thine her fruit dishonoured falls;
Like thee in solitude she calls
A thousand treasures forth.
O! silent spirit of the place!
If lingering with the ruined year,
Thy hoary form and awful face
I yet might watch and worship here,
Thy storm was music to my ear!
Thy wildest walk a shelter given
Sublimer thoughts on earth to find,
And share, with no unhallowed mind,
The majesty of heaven!
What though the bosom friends of Fate,-
Prosperity's unwearied brood,
Thy consolations cannot rate
O, self-dependent solitude!
Yet, with a spirit unsubdued,
Though darkened by the clouds of Care,
To worship thy congenial gloom,
Like pilgrim to the Prophet's tomb,
Misfortune shall repair.
On her the world hath never smiled,
Or looked but with accusing eye ;—
All silent goddess of the wild,
To thee that misanthrope shall fly!
I hear her deep soliloquy,-
I mark her proud but ravaged form,
As stern she wraps her mantle round, And bids, on winter's bleakest ground, Defiance to the storm.
Peace to her banished heart, at last,
In thy dominions shall descend,
And strong as beechwood in the blast
Her spirit shall refuse to bend;
Enduring life without a friend,
The world and falsehood left behind,
Thy votary shall bear elate,
And triumph o'er opposing Fate
Her dark inspired mind.
But dost thou, Folly, mock the muse
A wanderer's mountain walk to sing,
Who shuns a warring world, nor wooes
The vulture cover of its wing?
Then fly, thou towering shivering thing,
Back to the fostering world beguiled,
To waste in self-consuming strife
The loveless brotherhood of life,
Away, thou lover of the race
That hither chased yon weeping deer!
If nature's all majestic face
More pitiless than man's appear;
Or if the wild winds seem more drear
Than man's cold charities below,
Behold around his peopled plains,
Where'er the social savage reigns
Exuberance of woe!
His art and honours wilt thou seek
Embossed on grandeur's giant walls?
Or hear his moral thunders speak
Where senates light their airy halls, Where man his brother man enthralls, Or sends his whirlwind warrants forth, To rouse the slumbering fiends of war, To dye the blood-warm waves afar, And desolate the earth.
From clime to clime pursue the scene
And mark in all thy spacious way,
Where'er the tyrant man has been,
There Peace, the cherub, cannot stay;
In wilds and woodlands far away
She builds her solitary bower,
Where only anchorites have trod
Or friendless men to worship God,
Have wandered for an hour.
In such a far forsaken vale,
And such sweet Eldun vale is thine,-
Afflicted nature shall inhale
Heaven-borrowed thoughts and joys divine;
No longer wish, no more repine
For man's neglect or woman's scorn ;-
Then wed thee to an exile's lot,
For if the world hath loved thee not,
Its absence may be borne.
THE dust that here, with motion true,
In silence tells the waning hour,
Once glowed with vital heat, and knew,
The pride of honour, wealth, and power-
Was one, who, lost in pleasure's maze,
Relentless beauty's charms admired;
He saw, but withered in the gaze,
And in a fatal flame expired.
Still in this glass his ashes move,
Proclaiming to each pining breast,
That he, who knows the pangs of love,
May never, never, hope for rest!
New Monthly Magazine.
THE MARRIAGE OF PELEUS AND THETIS.
HIGH placed upon a hill of Thessaly,
(That lifts its forehead to the clear blue skies,
And when the storms are high,
And, like its diadem, the lightning shines,
Shakes in wild music all its whispering pines)
Sate twice ten thousand deities.
Pelion! in song renowned and heathen story,
Dost thou remember that auspicious day,
(Marked in celestial history)
When gods and star-bright spirits deigned to stray
Along thy rills and through thy pastures sweet,
Or sporting on their heavenly pinions fleet
Shook light and fragrance through the noontide air ?—
Then every god that loved the nymphs was there
(The nymphs, the gods' especial care)
And goddesses and spirits all of mighty name.
First sweet Aurora in the morning came-
(For well she loved the sea-green maid,
Thetis, who wont her streaming hair to braid,
Ere yet Apollo dashed the shores with flame),
And over Pelion's giant-head she threw
(For this was Thetis' nuptial day)
A veil of roses, such as in the Spring
Burst into beauty 'fore the sons of May,
And many a flower, touched with the rainbow's hue,
She cast-such (though on earth they fade away)
In heaven live ever blossoming.
And this was the coy Thetis' nuptial day
The bridegroom was a man of fame,
(His line immortal, though from earth his name)
And through a kingdom once held sceptered sway
(Thessalian Peleus)—'Twas a day of state,
And all the assembled gods and heroes then
Came down in mortal shapes 'mongst men,
(Save one, the greatest of the great)
Those holy rites of love to celebrate.
Then came the mightiest on his blazing throne
Borne downwards, buoyant on a thunder-cloud;
And as he passed each living creature bowed.
Mountains, and woods, and waves, were forced to own
His powerful presence-though unseen he rode,
And spared the world the image of a god-
Saturnian Jove!-on Pelian's topmost height
Thou sat'st amidst the circling deities,
Ranked each in order, for, as in the skies,
They toook their place to view this marriage rite.
The Queen of heaven was there, her braids of jet
Clasped by a dazzling coronet;
Her port was majesty her look was light-
And pale Minerva, with her face divine,
And with mild eyes intelligently bright—
And there Apollo's brow was seen to shine
'Midst the rich clusters of his golden hair ;
And Venus, with her zone unbound was there,
Upon a thymy hillock bent;—
And Bacchus, crowned with leaves of vine,
Son of the star-bright Semele-and Mars
And dark Bellona left their thundering cars,
To consecrate a day so sweet and fair-
And Neptune, charmed, had left his element.
Below, below-joyous the woods among
And fountains- through the cool and leafy shade
Bright nymphs and sylvan spirits strayed-
Some laughing chased some 'woke the cheerful song—
And some that strain to melancholy dear
Some bathed their limbs amidst the waters clear,
Naiads and heaven born Nereids,
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