Chapter XXXVIII

The lay that memory, lenient goddess, lent,
Is ended, and my form, that fondly bent
O’er the wild tones that swell my untaught lyre,
Has ceased, extinct the momentary fire;
Mute is the voice, that erewhile tuned the lays,
That sung, dear distant home, thy honest praise.
Oh when again, shall I thy scenes review,
And each fond tie of tenderness renew;
Roam once again, along thy lovely stream;
Court, on thy hills, the moon’s first glitt’ring beam;
Dwell on the beauties of thy landscape wide;
And hear the torrent, on thy mountain side:
Tired of the busy, of the bustling scene,
My wishes dwell along thy circled green;
Bound o’er the intervening vast of space,
And all the beauties of thy landscape trace;--
Tho far removed, my native grove, from thee,
My faithful heart midst thy wild scenes will be,
When fancy lends her wings of loveliest hue,
And past delights come rushing to the view;--
Mark the sequester’d beauties of thy vales,
And breathe again thy healthful mountain gales;
Remembrance, sweetly, every charm shall bring,
That woke delight, in youth’s gay radiant spring;
The dearest blessing of my life shall be,
The lasting mem’ry, and the love of thee.

A MOTHER’S LOVE.

I

There is a feeling, warm and true
As that of seraphims above,
It sheds its balm like Hermon’s dew;
It is a tender mother’s love.

II

Bright is the pure incipient flame,
That warms the breast of ardent youth,
And dear the passion nought can tame,
Inspired by beauty, virtue, truth.

III

Sweet is the sound of friendship’s voice,
That bids each pulse to rapture move;
That bids each barren scene rejoice,
But sweeter far a mother’s love.

IV

Fond is the feeling, that inspires
With filial love, the tender child,
With gratitude his bosom fires
To her, who on his boyhood smil’d.

V

But placid, pure, and undefiled;
(By nature is the fabric wove)
By nature giv’n the savage wild,
Or christian; is a mother’s love.

VI

Mark! where of rosy health bereft,
Emaciate, wan, and deadly pale,
(The blood its dying cheek has left,)
The infant lifts its feeble wail.

VII

And see! the mother by its side,
Sunk in dejected, tearless woe,
As thro’ its veins, the ebbing tide,
She views decline, with gradual flow.

VIII

No sorrowing accent strikes the ear,
To tell the workings of her grief;
No sob is heard, no falling tear
Her burning anguish yield relief.

IX

’Tis silent, as the breathless air,
In midnight’s deepest, darkest shade;
The hopeless shadow of despair,
That asks not consolation’s aid.

X

The infant dies!--remember’d still,
More precious to the soul it seems,
For glowing mem’ry paints at will
A thousand charms in fancy’s dreams.

XI

That form, thro’ many a lapse of years,
Comes on imagination’s wing,
And oft, its mother’s soul it chears,
And seems an angel’s smile to bring.

XII

See yonder mother! on her breast
In innocence her infant lays,
In smiles that mark the soul at rest;
How on his sleep she loves to gaze;

XIII

Her soul is in her placid eye,
And rapture lights its beaming glance;
How softly heaves her bosom’s sigh,
In pure affection’s loveliest trance.

XIV

That glance, the rapture of the mind,
Those sighs, her tranquil breast that move,
Are pledges dear, that ever bind
A mother’s pure, unaltered love.

ADDRESSED TO A YOUNG LADY.

I

There is a flower, whose modest mein
Seems every gazer’s eye to shun;
It flourishes, and fades unseen,
Through tepid showers, or radiant sun.

II

Where warm affection sheds its tears,
O’er some lost friend’s remember’d tomb,
Spite of the blast, its head it rears,
And seems to court the kindred gloom.

III

No gay parterre its blossoms share,
It dwells not in the busy croud,
But seeks the wild heath, bleak, and bare,
Or dwells in lonely solitude.

IV

It decks the humble, lowly dell,
Remov’d afar, from vice, and strife,
Where resignation loves to dwell,
When ills betide this varying life.

V

Its blossoms bath’d in pearly dew,
Its drooping crest and tearful eye,
Its lovely tints of azure hue,
Are emblems dear of sympathy.

VI

The wild bee, sips its honied store,
Disporting on, from flower, to flower;
The humming birds its sweets explore,
Shut from the precincts of the bower.

VII

And such, fair maid, thy modest mein,
It shuns the gazer’s vulgar eye,
Nor seek’st thou, eager to be seen,
The croud, where pleasure’s vot’ries hie.

VIII

But social virtues deck thy name,
A sympathetic heart is thine,
A soul that knows, nor guilt, nor shame,
Fraught with fair virtue’s power divine.

IX

Each grace that nature can impart,
Each generous feeling, too is thine,
Sincerity, that foe to art,
Richer than diamond of the mine.