A Library of Poetry and Song: Being Choice Selections from the Best Poets

But now the green leaves of the tree,
The cuckoo, and "the busy bee,"
Return,

but with them bring not thee, Casa Wappy!

"T is so; but can it be Revive again

- while flowers

Man's doom, in death that we and ours
For aye remain ?

O, can it be, that o'er the grave
The grass renewed should yearly wave,
Yet God forget our child to save?
Casa Wappy!

It cannot be; for were it so

Thus man could die,

Life were a mockery, thought were woe,
And truth a lie;

Heaven were a coinage of the brain;
Religion frenzy, virtue vain,
And all our hopes to meet again,
Casa Wappy!

Then be to us, O dear, lost child!
With beam of love,

A star, death's uncongenial wild
Smiling above!

Soon, soon thy little feet have trod
The skyward path, the seraph's road,
That led thee back from man to God,
Casa Wappy!

Yet 't is sweet balm to our despair,
Fond, fairest boy,

That heaven is God's, and thou art there,
With him in joy;

There past are death and all its woes;
There beauty's stream forever flows;
And pleasure's day no sunset knows,
Casa Wappy!

Farewell, then, for a while, farewell,
Pride of my heart!

It cannot be that long we dwell,

Thus torn apart.

Time's shadows like the shuttle flee; And dark howe'er life's night may be, Beyond the grave I'll meet with thee,

Casa Wappy!

At first happy news came, in gay letters moiled With my kisses, of camp-life, and glory, and how They both loved me, and soon, coming home to be spoiled,

In return would fan off every fly from my brow With their green laurel-bough.

VIII.

[This was Laura Savio of Turin, a poetess and patriot, whose Then was triumph at Turin. "Ancona was free!"

sons were killed at Ancona and Gaeta.]

DEAD! one of them shot by the sea in the east,

And one of them shot in the west by the sea.

XVIII.

strong,
Writ now but in one hand. "I was not to faint. What then? Do not mock me.
One loved me for two... would be with me erelong :
And Viva Italia' he died for, our saint,
Who forbids our complaint."

XI.

My Nanni would add "he was safe, and aware
Of a presence that turned off the balls... was

imprest

bells low,

Ah, ring your

And burn your lights faintly! My country
is there,

Above the star pricked by the last peak of snow,
My Italy's there, with my brave civic pair,
To disfranchise despair.

It was Guido himself, who knew what I could bear, Forgive me.
And how 't was impossible, quite dispossessed,

To live on for the rest."

XIX.

Some women bear children in strength,

And bite back the cry of their pain in self-scorn. But the birth-pangs of nations will wring us at

A second time did Matthew stop;
And, fixing still his eye

Upon the eastern mountain-top,
To me he made reply:

"Yon cloud with that long purple cleft
Brings fresh into my mind
A day like this, which I have left
Full thirty years behind.

"And just above yon slope of corn

Such colors, and no other, Were in the sky that April morn,

Of this the very brother.

"With rod and line I sued the sport

Which that sweet season gave,

And, coming to the church, stopped short Beside my daughter's grave.

"Nine summers had she scarcely seen, The pride of all the vale;

And then she sang ;· she would have been A very nightingale.

"Six feet in earth my Emma lay;

And yet I loved her more

For so it seemed

than till that day
I e'er had loved before.

"And, turning from her grave, I met
Beside the churchyard yew
A blooming girl, whose hair was wet
With points of morning dew.

"A basket on her head she bare;

Her brow was smooth and white: To see a child so very fair,

It was a pure delight!

"No fountain from its rocky cave
E'er tripped with foot so free;
She seemed as happy as a wave
That dances on the sea.

"There came from me a sigh of pain
Which I could ill confine;

I looked at her, and looked again:
And did not wish her mine!"

Matthew is in his grave, yet now
Methinks I see him stand
As at that moment, with a bough
Of wilding in his hand.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

HESTER.

WHEN maidens such as Hester die, Their place ye may not well supply, Though ye among a thousand try, With vain endeavor.

THE LOST SISTER.

THEY waked me from my sleep, I knew not why, And bade me hasten where a midnight lamp Gleamed from an inner chamber. There she lay,

Beneath his God's rebuke. And she who nursed
That fair young creature at her gentle breast,
And oft those sunny locks had decked with
buds

Of rose and jasmine, shuddering wiped the dews
Which death distils.

The sufferer just had given Her long farewell, and for the last, last time Touched with cold lips his cheek who led so late

Her footsteps to the altar, and received
In the deep transport of an ardent heart

Her vow of love. And she had striven to press
That golden circlet with her bloodless hand
Back on his finger, which he kneeling gave
At the bright bridal morn. So there she lay
In calm endurance, like the smitten lamb
Wounded in flowery pastures, from whose breast
The dreaded bitterness of death had passed.
- But a faint wail disturbed the silent scene,
And in its nurse's arms a new-born babe
Was borne in utter helplessness along,
Before that dying eye.

Its gathered film
Kindled one moment with a sudden glow
Of tearless agony,
and fearful pangs,
Racking the rigid features, told how strong
A mother's love doth root itself. One cry
Of bitter anguish, blent with fervent prayer,
Went up to Heaven, and, as its cadence sank,

Her spirit entered there.

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DAY dawned; within a curtained room, Filled to faintness with perfume,

A lady lay at point of doom.

Day closed; a child had seen the light:
But, for the lady fair and bright,
She rested in undreaming night.

Spring rose; the lady's grave was green;
And near it, oftentimes, was seen
A gentle boy with thoughtful mien.
Years fled; he wore a manly face,
And struggled in the world's rough race,
And won at last a lofty place.
And then he died! behold before ye
Humanity's poor sum and story;

Life Death- and all that is of Glory.

BARRY CORNWALL.

O, WHY SHOULD THE SPIRIT OF MORTAL BE PROUD?

[The following poem was a particular favorite with Mr. Lincoln. Mr. F. B. Carpenter, the artist, writes that while engaged in painting his picture at the White House, he was alone one evening with the President in his room, when he said: "There is a poem which has been a great favorite with me for years, which was first shown to me when a young man by a friend, and which I afterwards saw and cut from a newspaper and learned by heart. I would," he continued, "give a great deal to know who wrote it, but have never been able to ascertain."]

O, WHY should the spirit of mortal be proud? Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud, A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave, Man passes from life to his rest in the grave.

The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade,
Be scattered around and together be laid;
And the young and the old, and the low and the
high,

Shall moulder to dust and together shall lie.

Who make in their dwelling a transient abode, Meet the things that they met on their pilgrimage road.

Yea! hope and despondency, pleasure and pain,
We mingle together in sunshine and rain;
And the smiles and the tears, the song and the
dirge,

The infant a mother attended and loved,
The mother that infant's affection who proved;
The husband that mother and infant who blessed, Still follow each other, like surge upon surge.
Each, all, are away to their dwellings of rest.

The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in
whose eye,

Shone beauty and pleasure, — her triumphs are by;

'Tis the wink of an eye, 'tis the draught of a breath, From the blossom of health to the paleness of death, From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud,

And the memory of those who loved her and praised, 0, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?

Are alike from the minds of the living erased.

The hand of the king that the sceptre hath borne ;
The brow of the priest that the mitre hath worn ;
The eye of the sage and the heart of the brave,
Are hidden and lost in the depth of the grave.

The peasant, whose lot was to sow and to reap ;
The herdsman, who climbed with his goats up the
steep;

The beggar, who wandered in search of his bread,
Have faded away like the grass that we tread.

The saint who enjoyed the communion of heaven,
The sinner who dared to remain unforgiven,
The wise and the foolish, the guilty and just,
Have quietly mingled their bones in the dust.

So the multitude goes, like the flowers or the weed
That withers away to let others succeed;
So the multitude comes, even those we behold,
To repeat every tale that has often been told.

For we are the same our fathers have been ;
We see the same sights our fathers have seen,
We drink the same stream and view the same sun,
Aud run the same course our fathers have run.

ELEONORA.

WILLIAM KNOX.

ELEGY ON THE COUNTESS OF ABINGDON.

No single virtue we could most commend,
Whether the wife, the mother, or the friend;
For she was all, in that supreme degree,
That as no one prevailed, so all was she.
The several parts lay hidden in the piece;
The occasion but exerted that, or this.

A wife as tender, and as true withal,
As the first woman was before her fall:
Made for the man, of whom she was a part;
Made to attract his eyes, and keep his heart.
A second Eve, but by no crime accursed;
As beauteous, not as brittle, as the first.
Had she been first, still Paradise had been,
And death had found no entrance by her sin.
So she not only had preserved from ill
Her sex and ours, but lived their pattern still.
Love and obedience to her lord she bore;
Not awed to duty by superior sway,
She much obeyed him, but she loved him more:
But taught by his indulgence to obey.

The thoughts we are thinking our fathers would Thus we love God, as author of our good.

think;

Yet unemployed no minute slipped away;
Moments were precious in so short a stay.
The haste of Heaven to have her was so great
That some were single acts, though each complete ;
But every act stood ready to repeat.

Her fellow-saints with busy care will look
For her blest name in fate's eternal book ;
And, pleased to be outdone, with joy will see
Numberless virtues, endless charity:
But more will wonder at so short an age,
To find a blank beyond the thirtieth page :
And with a pious fear begin to doubt

They died, ay! they died: and we things that The piece imperfect, and the rest torn out.

are now,

But 't was her Saviour's time; and could there be Who walk on the turf that lies over their brow, A copy near the original, 't was she.

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