But now the clouds, in angry crowds, On heaven's grim forehead muster, And all in nature quakes, and feels O, glorious still in every form, Feel thy light spray around me play, While yet a boy I felt it joy To gaze upon thy glories; And shout in joyous chorus. To nurse sublime emotion; My soul is awed, and filled with God, By thee, majestic ocean. THE CHARITIES OF THE POOR. THERE is a thought so purely blest, That to its use I oft repair, LYTE. When evil breaks my spirit's rest, To deck with flowers the bleakest moorA thought whose home is Paradise, The charities of poor to poor. It were not for the rich to blame, If they, whom fortune seems to scorn, Should be dispensed with freer hand, To give the stranger's children bread, And when all else to give is gone, The precious gifts of love and tears! Therefore, lament not, honest soul! That Providence holds back from thee The means thou might'st so well controlThose luxuries of charity. Manhood is nobler, as thou art; And, should some chance thy coffers fill, How art thou sure to keep thine heart, To hold unchanged thy loving will? Wealth, like all other power, is blind, And bears a poison in its core, That fills the hero's breast with joy; Which mere possession might destroy. MONCKTON MILNES. THE CONVICT SHIP. MORN on the waters! and purple and bright, O'er the glad waves, like a child of the sun, Full to the breeze she unbosoms her sail, And her pennon streams onward, like hope, in the gale; And the surges rejoice as they bear her along. And the sailor sings gaily aloft in her shrouds : Night on the waves! and the moon is on high, Treading its depths in the power of her might, Seems not the ship like an island of rest? Bright and alone on the shadowy main, Like a heart-cherished home on some desolate plain! Spreading her wings on the bosom of night, With streamers afloat, and with canvass unfurled ; Yet chartered by sorrow, and freighted with sighs: As the smiles we put on, just to cover our tears; And the withering thoughts that the world cannot know, Like heart-broken exiles, lie burning below; Whilst the vessel drives on to that desolate shore, Where the dreams of our childhood are vanished and o'er. HERVEY. THE SHADOWS. WHO has not felt, 'mid azure skies, And tinge with earth the hues of heaven? That shadowing consciousness will steal And close each cadence of the lyre. In the most radiant landscape's round, O for the suns that never part, The fields with hues unfading drest; The unfalt'ring strain, th' unclouded heart, The joy, the triumph, and the rest. EARL OF CARLISLE. ON THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY. PROUDLY on Cressy's tented wold |