To him who, in the love of Nature, holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language: for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty; and she glides
Into his darker musings with a mild
And gentle sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images

Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart,
Go forth under the open sky, and list

To Nature's teachings, while from all around -
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air-
Comes a still voice, - Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again;
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix forever with the elements;
To be a brother to the insensible rock,
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.
Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world, — with kings,
The powerful of the earth, the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills,
Rock-ribbed, and ancient as the sun; the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between ;
The venerable woods; rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks,
That make the meadows green; and, poured
round all,

-

Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste, Are but the solemn decorations all

Of the great tomb of man! The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings
Of morning, traverse Barca's desert sands,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound
Save his own dashings, yet the dead are there!
And millions in those solitudes, since first

And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glide away, the sons of men -
The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
And the sweet babe, and the gray-headed man
Shall, one by one, be gathered to thy side
By those who in their turn shall follow them.

So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan that moves
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
To the pale realms of shade, where each shall take
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and
soothed

By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

A HUNDRED YEARS TO COME.
WHO 'll press for gold this crowded street,
A hundred years to come?
Who'll tread yon church with willing feet,
A hundred years to come?
Pale, trembling age and fiery youth,
And childhood with his brow of truth,
The rich and poor, on land, on sea,
Where will the mighty millions be,
A hundred years to come?

We all within our graves shall sleep,
A hundred years to come;
No living soul for us will weep,
A hundred years to come.

[The MSS. of this poem, which appeared during the first quarter of the present century, was said to have been found in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, in London, near a perfect human skeleton, and to have been sent by the curator to the Morning Chronicle for publication. It excited so much attention that every effort was made to discover the author, and a responsible party went so far as to offer a reward of fifty guineas for informa

Say, did these fingers delve the mine?
Or with the envied rubies shine?
To hew the rock or wear a gem
Can little now avail to them.

But if the page of Truth they sought,
Or comfort to the mourner brought,
These hands a richer meed shall claim
Than all that wait on Wealth and Fame.

Avails it whether bare or shod
These feet the paths of duty trod?
If from the bowers of Ease they fled,
To seek Affliction's humble shed;
If Grandeur's guilty bribe they spurned,
And home to Virtue's cot returned,
These feet with angel wings shall vie,
And tread the palace of the sky!

THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore:
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,

cognito, and, we believe, has never been discovered.]

BEHOLD this ruin! 'T was a skull
Once of ethereal spirit full.

This narrow cell was Life's retreat,

This space was Thought's mysterious seat.
What beauteous visions filled this spot,
What dreams of pleasure long forgot?
Nor hope, nor joy, nor love, nor fear,
Have left one trace of record here.

Beneath this mouldering canopy
Once shone the bright and busy eye,
But start not at the dismal void,
If social love that eye employed,
If with no lawless fire it gleamed,

But through the dews of kindness beamed,
That eye shall be forever bright
When stars and sun are sunk in night.

Within this hollow cavern hung
The ready, swift, and tuneful tongue;
If Falsehood's honey it disdained,
And when it could not praise was chained;
If bold in Virtue's cause it spoke,
Yet gentle concord never broke,
This silent tongue shall plead for thee
When Time unveils Eternity!

And with the heart of May

Doth every beast keep holiday ;–

Thou child of joy,

Forget the glories he hath known, And that imperial palace whence he came.

VII.

happy shepherd boy!

IV.

Ye blesséd creatures! I have heard the call
Ye to each other make;
I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,

My head hath its coronal,

The fulness of your bliss, I feel, I feel it all.
O evil day! if I were sullen
While earth herself is adorning,

This sweet May morning,

And the children are culling

On every side,

In a thousand valleys far and wide, Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm, And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm, I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!

But there's a tree, of many one, A single field which I have looked upon, Both of them speak of something that is gone; The pansy at my feet

Doth the same tale repeat.

Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

V.

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar.
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory, do we come
From God, who is our home.
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing boy;

But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy.

The youth who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended:

At length the man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

VI.

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own. Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind; And even with something of a mother's mind, And no unworthy aim,

The homely nurse doth all she can To make her foster-child, her inmate man,

A six years' darling of a pygmy size!
See, where mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes!
See at his feet some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly learned art,
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral,

And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song.
Then will he fit his tongue

To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
But it will not be long

Ere this be thrown aside,

And with new joy and pride

The little actor cons another part,
Filling from time to time his "humorous stage"
With all the persons, down to palsied age,
That life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.

VIII.

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy soul's immensity !
Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage! thou eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
Haunted forever by the eternal mind!-
Mighty prophet! Seer blest,

On whom those truths do rest

Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave!
Thou over whom thy immortality
Broods like the day, a master o'er a slave,
A presence which is not to be put by!
Thou little child, yet glorious in the might
of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

IX.

O joy that in our embers

Is something that doth live, That nature yet remembers

What was so fugitive!

The thought of our past years in me doth breed Perpetual benediction: not, indeed,

For that which is most worthy to be blest,