Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 129.djvu/266

A HOLIDAY.

Out of the city, far away
With spring to-day! —
Where copses tufted with primrose
Give me repose,
Wood-sorrel and wild violet
Soothe my soul's fret,
The pure delicious vernal air
Blows away care,
The birds' reiterated songs
Heal fancied wrongs.

Down the rejoicing brook my grief
Drifts like a leaf,
And on its gently murmuring flow
Cares glide and go;
The bud-besprinkled boughs and hedges,
The sprouting sedges
Waving beside the water's brink,
Come like cool drink
To fever'd lips, like fresh soft mead
To kine that feed.

Much happier than the kine, I bed
My dreaming head
In grass; I see far mountains blue,
Like heav'n in view,
Green world and sunny sky above
Alive with love;
All, all, however came they there,
Divinely fair.

Is this the better oracle,
Or what streets tell?
O base confusion, falsehood, strife,
Man puts in life!
Sink, thou life-measurer! — I can say
"I've lived a day;"
And memory holds it now in keeping,
Awake or sleeping.

Fraser's Magazine.

---

SONNET.

I plucked some rose-leaves from a full-blown flower,
And came to me this thought, that though bereft
Of treasures sweet, yet are some rose-leaves left,
Though but a tithe of our loved former dower.
And when I passed again, the garden bower
Was strewn with petals which the faint wind bore
From off the unpicked stem; a fragrance o'er
The crimson forms crept slow in death's last hour.
So, gentle lady, when in beauty's prime
I heeded not thy excellences rare,
But fondly thought that all-decaying time
Could never dim thy lustrous beauty fair,
Yet death's fell hand, strewing thy early bloom,
Hath made a heaven of the darkest tomb.

J. H. J.

Tinsley's Magazine.

---

THE OLD MILL.

One hundred years the mill has stood:
One hundred years the dashing flood
Has turned the wheel with roaring sound,
Through foaming waters, round and round.

One hundred years: and overhead
The same broad roof of blue is spread;
And in the meadows, bright and green,
The miller's children still are seen.

And thus the world is still the same:
The sunset clouds are turned to flame;
And while we live, and when we die,
The lark still carols in the sky.

And others rise to fill our place;
We sleep, and others run the race:
And earth beneath and skies above
Are still the same; and God is love.

J. R. Eastwood.

Cassell's Family Magazine.

---

MICHAEL ANGELO.

His spirit haunts the olive-laden banks,
The cypressed village-belfry in decay,
The marble hills whose silvery whiteness flanks
The vale he loved: all seems the former day
When he began in art's warm hand to thaw
The frosted rock, and petrify the beam
That round his chisel swerved until he saw
The spirit's beauty o'er the features gleam.

And yon old sunset, that with rosy dyes
Fades in the marble hollows, tells anew
Of Twilight's nodding brows and closing eyes, -
As when the statue from their depths he drew
Which now in drowsy marble seems to wait,
Ere it go down, the waking of the dead, -
That simmers in half-sleep, as there it sate
When lifted dozing from its ancient bed.

There he first listened to the ringing note
That seemed in harmony with art to breathe
Out of the marble which the mallet smote,
As though a siren quickened underneath.
There he first dreamed how all forms fair below
In yonder virgin cemetery lay,
Their beauty crusted over, like the snow
Eternal with the snow of yesterday.

He sees the wrestlers, the last gasping throe,
The pent-up strength, the all-resisting strain;
Yet, ere the victor strike that vengeful blow,
The rigid arm he grasps must snap in twain.
He sees Laocoon climb the serpent-wave
That plunges o'er him with a tempest's might,
Hurrying his sons to the engulphing grave
That whirls them helpless from his suffering sight.

Dr. Hake.