They know me as their son, for side by side,
They were coeval with my ancestors,

Adorned with them my country's primitive times, And soon may give my dust their funeral shade. CONCORD, June, 1827.

GOOD HOPE

THE Cup of life is not so shallow
That we have drained the best,

That all the wine at once we swallow

And lees make all the rest.

Maids of as soft a bloom shall marry

As Hymen yet hath blessed,

And fairer forms are in the quarry
Than Phidias released.

1827.

LINES TO ELLEN

TELL me, maiden, dost thou use
Thyself thro' Nature to diffuse ?
All the angles of the coast

Were tenanted by thy sweet ghost,

Bore thy colors every flower,
Thine each leaf and berry bore;
All wore thy badges and thy favors
In their scent or in their savors,
Every moth with painted wing,
Every bird in carolling,

The wood-boughs with thy manners waved,
The rocks uphold thy name engraved,
The sod throbbed friendly to my feet,
And the sweet air with thee was sweet.
The saffron cloud that floated warm
Studied thy motion, took thy form,
And in his airy road benign
Recalled thy skill in bold design,
Or seemed to use his privilege
To gaze o'er the horizon's edge,
To search where now thy beauty glowed,
Or made what other purlieus proud.

1829.

SECURITY

THOUGH her eye seek other forms
And a glad delight below,

Yet the love the world that warms

Bids for me her bosom glow.

She must love me till she find

Another heart as large and true.

Her soul is frank as the ocean wind,
And the world has only two.

If Nature hold another heart
That knows a purer flame than me,
I too therein could challenge part
And learn of love a new degree.
1829.

A DULL uncertain brain,
But gifted yet to know

That God has cherubim who

Singing an immortal strain,
Immortal here below.

I know the mighty bards,

I listen when they sing,
And now I know

The secret store

Which these explore

go

When they with torch of genius pierce

The tenfold clouds that cover

The riches of the universe

From God's adoring lover.

And if to me it is not given
To fetch one ingot thence
Of the unfading gold of Heaven
His merchants may dispense,
Yet well I know the royal mine,

And know the sparkle of its ore,

Know Heaven's truth from lies that shine

Explored they teach us to explore.

1831.

A MOUNTAIN GRAVE

WHY fear to die

And let thy body lie

Under the flowers of June,

Thy body food

For the ground-worms' brood

And thy grave smiled on by the visiting moon.

Amid great Nature's halls

Girt in by mountain walls
And washed with waterfalls

It would please me to die,

Where every wind that swept my tomb

Goes loaded with a free perfume

Dealt out with a God's charity.

I should like to die in sweets,
A hill's leaves for winding-sheets,
And the searching sun to see
That I am laid with decency.
And the commissioned wind to sing
His mighty psalm from fall to spring
And annual tunes commemorate
Of Nature's child the common fate.
WILLIAMSTOWN, Vermont,

I June, 1831.

A LETTER

DEAR brother, would you know the life,

Please God, that I would lead?

On the first wheels that quit this weary town
Over yon western bridges I would ride

And with a cheerful benison forsake

Each street and spire and roof, incontinent.

Then would I seek where God might guide my steps,

Deep in a woodland tract, a sunny farm,

Amid the mountain counties, Hants, Franklin, Berks,
Where down the rock ravine a river roars,
Even from a brook, and where old woods
Not tamed and cleared cumber the ground
With their centennial wrecks.

Find me a slope where I can feel the sun