So serious should my youth appear among The thoughtless throng,
So would I seem amid the young and gay
More grave than they,
That in my age as cheerful I might be
As the green winter of the Holly Tree.
REMEMBRANCE.
MAN hath a weary pilgrimage
As through the world he wends;
On every stage from youth to age
Still discontent attends ;
With heaviness he casts his eye
Upon the road before,
And still remembers with a sigh
The days that are no more.
To school the little exile goes
Torn from his mother's arms,
What then shall sooth his earliest woes,
When novelty hath lost its charms ?
Condemn'd to suffer through the day
Restraints which no rewards repay,
And cares where love has no concern,
Hope lengthens as she counts the hours,
Before his wish'd return.
From hard control and tyrant rules,
The unfeeling discipline of schools,
In thought he loves to roam,
And tears will struggle in his eye
While he remembers with a sigh
The comforts of his home.
Youth comes; the toils and cares of life
Torment the restless mind;
Where shall the tired and harass'd heart
Its consolation find?
Then is not Youth, as Fancy tells,
Life's summer prime of joy?
Ah no! for hopes too long delay'd,
And feelings blasted or betray'd,
The fabled bliss destroy;
And Youth remembers with a sigh
The careless days of Infancy.
Maturer Manhood now arrives, And other thoughts come on, But with the baseless hopes of Youth Its generous warmth is gone; Cold calculating cares succeed, The timid thought, the wary deed, The dull realities of truth; Back on the past he turns his eye, Remembering with an envious sigh The happy dreams of Youth.
So reaches he the latter stage
Of this our mortal pilgrimage,
With feeble step and slow;
New ills that latter stage await,
And old Experience learns too late
That all is vanity below.
Life's vain delusions are gone by,
Its idle hopes are o'er,
Yet Age remembers with a sigh
The days that are no more.
FROM THE CURSE OF KEHAMAH.
THEY sin who tell us Love can die.
With life all other passions fly,
All others are but vanity.
In heaven ambition cannot dwell,
Nor avarice in the vaults of hell.
Earthly these passions, are of earth,
They perish where they have their birth.
But Love is indestructible;
Its holy flame for ever burneth,
From heaven it came, to heaven returneth ;
Too oft on earth a troubled guest,
At times deceived, at times opprest,
It here is tried and purified,
And hath in heaven its perfect rest;
It soweth here with toil and care,
But the harvest-time of Love is there.
O! when a mother meets on high
The babe she lost in infancy,
Hath she not then, for pains and fears,
The day of wo, the anxious night,
For all her sorrow, all her tears,
An over-payment of delight!
THE LAST JUDGMENT.
THAT day of wrath, that dreadful day, When Heaven and Earth shall pass away,
What power shall be the sinner's stay?
How shall he meet that dreadful day?
When, shrivelling like a parched scroll,
The flaming heavens together roll;
When louder yet, and yet more dread,
Swells the high trump that wakes the dead!
Oh! on that day, that wrathful day,
When man to judgment wakes from clay,
Be God the trembling sinner's stay,
Though heaven and earth shall pass away!
HYMN OF THE HEBREW MAID.
WHEN Israel, of the Lord beloved,
Out from the land of bondage came,
Her father's God before her moved,
An awful guide in smoke and flame.
By day, along the astonish'd lands
The cloudy pillar glided slow;
By night, Arabia's crimson'd sands
Return'd the fiery column's glow.
There rose the choral hymn of praise,
And trump and timbrel answer'd keen;
And Zion's daughters pour'd their lays,
With priest's and warrior's voice between.
No portents now our foes amaze,
Forsaken Israel wanders lone;
Our fathers would not know THY ways,
And THOU has left them to their own.
But, present still, though now unseen!
When brightly shines the prosperous day,
Be thoughts of THEE a cloudy screen,
To temper the deceitful ray.
And oh, when stoops on Judah's path
In shade and storm the frequent night,
Be THOU, long-suffering, slow to wrath,
A burning and a shining light!
Our harps we left by Babel's streams,
The tyrant's jest, the Gentile's scorn;
No censer round our altar beams,
And mute are timbrel, trump, and horn.
But THOU hast said, The blood of goat,
The flesh of rams, I will not prize;
A contrite heart, a humble thought,
Are mine accepted sacrifice.
"WHY sitt'st thou by that ruin'd hall, Thou aged carle so stern and grey? Dost thou its former pride recall,
Or ponder how it pass'd away ?"
"Know'st thou not me!" the deep voice cried; So long enjoyed, so oft misusedAlternate, in thy fickle pride,
Desired, neglected, and accused?
"Before my breath, like blazing flax,
Man and his marvels pass away;
And changing empires wane and wax,
Are founded, flourish, and decay.
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