the air she grasps and clings!See! his glowing arms have wound her—
To the sky she shrieks and springs!
See! the flushing chace of Tempe
Trembles with Olympian air—
See! green sprigs and buds are shooting
From those white raised arms of prayer!
In the earth her feet are rooting!—
Breasts and limbs and lifted eyes,
Hair and lips and stretching fingers,
Fade away—and fadeless rise.
And the god whose fervent rapture
Clasps her finds his close embrace
Full of palpitating branches,
And new leaves that bud apace,
Bound his wonder-stricken forehead;—
While in ebbing measures slow
Sounds of softly dying pulses
Pause and quiver, pause and go;
Go, and come again, and flutter
On the verge of life,—then flee!
All the white ambrosial beauty
Is a lustrous Laurel Tree!
Still with the great panting love-chase
All its running sap is warmed;—
But from head to foot the virgin
Is transfigured and transformed.
Changed!—yet the green Dryad nature
Is instinct with human ties,
And above its anguish’d lover
Breathes pathetic sympathies;
Sympathies of love and sorrow;
Joy in her divine escape;
Breathing through her bursting foliage
Comfort to his bending shape.
Vainly now the floating Naiads
Seek to pierce the laurel maze,
Nought but laurel meets their glances,
Laurel glistens as they gaze.
Nought but bright prophetic laurel!
Laurel over eyes and brows,
Over limbs and over bosom,
Laurel leaves and laurel boughs!
And in vain the listening Dryad
Shells her hand against her ear!—
All is silence—save the echo
Travelling in the distance drear.
LONDON BY LAMPLIGHT
There stands a singer in the street,
He has an audience motley and meet;
Above him lowers the London night,
And around the lamps are flaring bright.
His minstrelsy may be unchaste—
’Tis much unto that motley taste,
And loud the laughter he provokes
From those sad slaves of obscene jokes.
But woe is many a passer by
Who as he goes turns half an eye,
To see the human form divine
Thus Circe-wise changed into swine!
Make up the sum of either sex
That all our human hopes perplex,
With those unhappy shapes that know
The silent streets and pale cock-crow.
And can I trace in such dull eyes
Of fireside peace or country skies?
And could those haggard cheeks presume
To memories of a May-tide bloom?
Those violated forms have been
The pride of many a flowering green;
And still the virgin bosom heaves
With daisy meads and dewy leaves.
But stygian darkness reigns within
The river of death from the founts of sin;
And one prophetic water rolls
Its gas-lit surface for their souls.
I will not hide the tragic sight—
Those drown’d black locks, those dead lips white,
Will rise from out the slimy flood,
And cry before God’s throne for blood!
Those stiffened limbs, that swollen face,—
Pollution’s last and best embrace,
Will call, as such a picture can,
For retribution upon man.
Hark! how their feeble laughter rings,
While still the ballad-monger sings,
And flatters their unhappy breasts
With poisonous words and pungent jests.
O how would every daisy blush
To see them ’mid that earthy crush!
O dumb would be the evening thrush,
And hoary look the hawthorn bush!
The meadows of their infancy
Would shrink from them, and every tree,
And every little laughing spot,
Would hush itself and know them not.
Precursor to what black despairs
Was that child’s face which once was theirs!
And O to what a world of guile
Was herald that young angel smile!
That face which to a father’s eye
Was balm for all anxiety;
That smile which to a mother’s heart
Went swifter than the swallow’s dart!
O happy homes! that still they know
At intervals, with what a woe
Would ye look on them, dim and strange,
Suffering worse than winter change!
And yet could I transplant them there,
To breathe again the innocent air
Of youth, and once more reconcile
Their outcast looks with nature’s smile;
Could I but give them one clear day
Of this delicious loving May,
Release their souls from anguish dark,
And stand them underneath the lark;—
I think that Nature would have power
To graft again her blighted flower
Upon the broken stem, renew
Some portion of its early hue;—
The heavy flood of tears unlock,
More precious than the Scriptured rock;
At least instil
