There spake a wishful tenderness,—a doubt
Whether to grieve or sleep, which Innocence
Alone can wear.—With ruthless haste he bound
The silken fringes of their curtaining lids
Forever.—There had been a murmuring sound
With which the babe would claim its mother's ear,
Charming her even to tears.—The spoiler set
His seal of silence.—But there beam'd a smile
So fix'd and holy from that marble brow,—
Death gazed and left it there;—he dared not steal
The signet-ring of Heaven.
THE GEORGIAN PLANET.
Slow-moving Orb! majestic and remote,
Which Galileo's glass had fail'd to note,
Thou, who with swift-wing'd Mercury art given
To mark the grand antithesis of heaven,
Keep'st thou like armed sentinel the ground
Where rival systems press our solar round?
Read'st thou from them with ever sleepless eyes
What thy own zodiac's fainter page denies?
Or call'st thy six torch-bearers forth, to light
The guarded frontier through the watchful night,
Like border chieftain, whose strong castle towers,
The dreaded boundary of contiguous powers?
Does the red Comet, in his hour of wrath,
Scorn thy dull movements and concentric path?
Or bear, replenish'd from some richer sphere,
Fuel and flame, thy shivering sons to cheer?
