him,

When the roused Teuton dashes from his

limb

The rusted chain of ages, help to bind His hands for whom thou claim'st the freedom of the mind!

CHALKLEY HALL.89

And here his neighbors gathered in to greet Their friend again,

To hear the good man tell of simple truth, Sown in an hour

men throng

The marble floor

Genius keeps

His vigils still ;

Than that where Avon's son of song is laid,

Of Vaucluse hallowed by its Petrarch's shade,

Or Virgil's laurelled hill.

[IBN BATUTA, the celebrated Mussulman travpress-tree in Ceylon, universally held sacred by the natives, the leaves of which were said to fall only at certain intervals, and he who had the happiness to find and eat one of them was restored, at once, to youth and vigor. The trav eller saw several venerable JOGEES, or saints, sitting silent and motionless under the tree, patiently awaiting the falling of a leaf.]

Grim as the idols at their side,
And motionless as they.

Unheeded in the boughs above

The song of Ceylon's birds was sweet; Unseen of them the island flowers Bloomed brightly at their feet.

O'er them the tropic night-storm swept, The thunder crashed on rock and hill; The cloud-fire on their eyeballs blazed, Yet there they waited still!

What was the world without to them? The Moslem's sunset-call, the dance Of Ceylon's maids, the passing gleam

Of battle-flag and lance?

They waited for that falling leaf
Of which the wandering Jogees sing:
Which lends once more to wintry age
The greenness of its spring.

O, if these poor and blinded ones

In trustful patience wait to feel
O'er torpid pulse and failing limb
A youthful freshness steal;

Shall we, who sit beneath that Tree
Whose healing leaves of life are shed,
In answer to the breath of prayer,
Upon the waiting head;

ΤΟ

Not to restore our failing forms,
And build the spirit's broken shrine,
But on the fainting SOUL to shed

A light and life divine;

Shall we grow weary in our watch,
And murmur at the long delay ?
Impatient of our Father's time
And his appointed way?

Or shall the stir of outward things
Allure and claim the Christian's eye,
When on the heathen watcher's ear
Their powerless murmurs die ?
Alas! a deeper test of faith
Than prison cell or martyr's stake,
The self-abasing watchfulness

Of silent prayer may make.

We gird us bravely to rebuke

Our erring brother in the wrong, And in the ear of Pride and Power Our warning voice is strong.

The fox his hillside cell forsakes, The muskrat leaves his nook, The bluebird in the meadow brakes Is singing with the brook. "Bear up, O Mother Nature!" cry Bird, breeze, and streamlet free; "Our winter voices prophesy

Of summer days to thee!

109

So, in those winters of the soul,
By bitter blasts and drear
O'erswept from Memory's frozen pole,
Will sunny days appear.

Reviving Hope and Faith, they show
The soul its living powers,
And how beneath the winter's snow
Lie germs of summer flowers!

The Night is mother of the Day,
The Winter of the Spring,
And ever upon old Decay

The greenest mosses cling.
Behind the cloud the starlight lurks,
Through showers the sunbeams fall;
For God, who loveth all his works,
Has left his Hope with all!
4th 1st month, 1847.

Glitters like that flashing mirror
In the self-same sun.
But upon thy youthful forehead
Something like a shadow lies;
And a serious soul is looking
From thy earnest eyes.

With an early introversion,

Through the forms of outward things,
Seeking for the subtle essence,
And the hidden springs.

Deeper than the gilded surface
Hath thy wakeful vision seen,
Farther than the narrow present
Have thy journeyings been.

Thou hast midst Life's empty noises
Heard the solemn steps of Time,
And the low mysterious voices

Of another clime.

And his brief and simple record
How serenely sweet!

O'er life's humblest duties throwing
Light the earthling never knew,
Freshening all its dark waste places
As with Hermon's dew.

All which glows in Pascal's pages, All which sainted Guion sought, Or the blue-eyed German Rahel Half-unconscious taught:

Beauty, such as Goethe pictured, Such as Shelley dreamed of, shed Living warmth and starry brightness Round that poor man's head.

Not a vain and cold ideal,
Not a poet's dream alone,

But a presence warm and real,
Seen and felt and known.

When the red right-hand of slaughter
Moulders with the steel it swung,
When the name of seer and poet

Dies on Memory's tongue,

All bright thoughts and pure shall gather Round that meek and suffering one,Glorious, like the seer-seen angel

Standing in the sun!

Take the good man's book and ponder
What its pages say to thee,
Blessed as the hand of healing
May its lesson be.

If it only serves to strengthen
Yearnings for a higher good,
For the fount of living waters
And diviner food;

If the pride of human reason Feels its meek and still rebuke,

111

stern strife,

And planted in the pathway of his life The ploughshares of your hatred hot from hell,

Who clamored down the bold reformer when

He pleaded for his captive fellow-men, Who spurned him in the market-place, and sought

Within thy walls, St. Tammany, to bind

In party chains the free and honest thought,

The angel utterance of an upright mind, Well is it now that o'er his grave ye raise The stony tribute of your tardy praise, For not alone that pile shall tell to Fame Of the brave heart beneath, but of the builders' shame!