BY THE LATE BISHOP HEBER.
IF thou wert by my side, my love!
How fast would evening fail
In green Bengala's palmy grove,
Listening the nightingale!
If thou, my love, wert by my side,
My babies at my knee,
How gaily would our pinnace glide
O'er Gunga's mimic sea!
I miss thee at the dawning grey,
When, on our deck reclined,
In careless ease my limbs I lay,
And woo the cooler wind.
I miss thee when by Gunga's stream
My twilight steps I guide;
But most beneath the lamp's pale beam,
I miss thee from my side.
I spread my books, my pencil try,
The lingering noon to cheer,
But miss thy kind approving eye,
Thy meek attentive ear.
But when of morn and eve the star
Beholds me on my knee,
I feel, though thou art distant far,
Thy prayers ascend for me.
Then on!-then on !-where duty leads,
My course be onward still,
O'er broad Indostan's sultry meads,
O'er bleak Almorah's hill.
That course, nor Delhi's kingly gates,
Nor wild Malwah detain,
For sweet the bliss us both awaits,
By yonder western main.
Thy towers, Bombay, gleam bright, they say,
Across the dark blue sea;
But ne'er were hearts so light and gay,
As then shall meet in thee!
DOMESTIC LOVE! not in proud palace halls
Is often seen thy beauty to abide;
Thy dwelling is in lowly cottage walls,
That in the thickets of the woodbine hide;
With hum of bees around, and from the side
Of woody hills some little bubbling spring,
Shining along through banks with harebells dyed;
And many a bird to warble on the wing,
When Morn her saffron robe o'er heaven and earth doth fling.
O, love of loves!-to thy white hand is given
Of earthly happiness the golden key!
Thine are the joyous hours of winter's even,
When the babes cling around their father's knee;
And thine the voice, that on the midnight sea
Melts the rude mariner with thoughts of home,
Peopling the gloom with all he longs to see.
Spirit! I've built a shrine; and thou hast come,
And on its altar closed-for ever closed thy plume!
BY WASHINGTON ALLSTON, ESQ.
THOUGH ages long have past,
Since our fathers left their home,
Their pilot in the blast,
O'er untravelled seas to roam,
Yet lives the blood of England in our veins;
And shall we not proclaim
That blood of honest fame,
Which no tyranny can tame
While the language free and bold
Which the bard of Avon sung,
In which our Milton told
How the vault of Heaven rung,
When Satan, blasted, fell with all his host;
While these with reverence meet,
Ten thousand echoes greet,
And from rock to rock repeat,
Round our coast!
While the manners, while the arts,
That mould a nation's soul,
Still cling around our hearts,
Between, let ocean roll,
Our joint communion breaking with the sun;
Yet still from either beach
The voice of blood shall reach,
More audible than speech,
ON such an eve, perchance, as this,
When not a zephyr skims the deep,
And sea-birds rest upon the' abyss,
Scarce by its heaving rocked to sleep,-
On such an eve as this, perchance,
Might Scylla eye the blue expanse.
The languid ocean scarce at all
Amongst the sparkling pebbles hissing,The lucid wavelets, as they fall,
The sunny beach in whispers kissing,
Leave not a furrow,-as they say
Oft haps, when pleasure ebbs away.
Full many a broad, but delicate tint
Is spread upon the liquid plain;
Hues, rich as aught from fancy's mint,
Enamelled meads, or golden grain ;-
Flowers sub-marine, or purple heath,
Are mirrored from the world beneath.
One tiny star-beam, faintly trembling,
Gems the still waters' tranquil breast;
Mark the dim sparklet, so resembling
Its parent in the shadowing east ;-
It seems-so pure, so bright the trace,—
As sea and sky had changed their place.
Hushed is the loud tongue of the deep :
Yon glittering sail, far o'er the tide, Amid its course appears to sleep ;—
We watch, but only know it glide
Still on, by a bright track afar,
Like genius, or a falling star!
Oh! such an eve is sorrow's balm,
Yon lake the poet's Hippocrene;
And who would ruffle such a calm,
Or cast a cloud o'er such a scene!
'Tis done; and nature weeps thereat,
Thou boisterous progeny of Watt!
Wast thou a grampus,-nay, a whale,—
Or ork one sees in Ariosto;
Went'st thou by rudder, oar, or sail,
Still wouldst thou not so outrage gusto!
But when did gusto ever dream
Of seeing ships propelled by steam?
Now blazing like a dozen comets,
And rushing as if nought could bind thee,
The while thy strange internal vomits
A sooty train of smoke behind thee;
Tearing along the azure vast,
With a great chimney for a mast!
Satan, when scheming to betray us
He left of old his dark dominions,
And winged his murky way through chaos,
And waved o'er Paradise his pinions;
Whilst Death and Sin came at his back,
Would leave, methinks, just such a track!
Was there no quirk,-one can't tell how,-
No stiff-necked flaw,-no quiddit latent,
Thou worst of all sea monsters, thou!
That might have undermined thy patent,—
Or kept it in the' inventor's desk,-
Fell bane of all that 's picturesque ?
Should Neptune, in his turn, invade thee,
And at a pinch old Vulcan fail thee,
The sooty mechanist who made thee
May hold it duty to bewail thee;-
But I shall bring a garland votive,
Thou execrable locomotive!
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