Two voices swelled athwart the lea:
I listened while they sang;
One soft as lute on summer sea-
One like the trumpet's clang.
"Daughter, rest!-no cloud of sorrow
Dews thy brow with tears of pain;
Sleep to-night-the dawning morrow
Soon for thee will smile again.
Starlight sleeps upon the water-
Sunlight slumbers in the west;
Close thine eyelids, gentle daughter,
Nature's voices whisper-rest!
"Daughter, rest!-I smooth thy pillowLay thy head upon it, sweet; Here doth never roar the billow,
Here the drum may never beat. Light of war will ne'er come o'er theeSound of conflict rend thy breast; But thy Father's lips before thee,
In thy dream shall murmur-rest!
Daughter, rest!-no thorn shall wound thee
Mid thy dream of roses wild,
Mother's arm is clasped around thee
Mother rocks her widowed child. Sleep!-the weary herd is folded,
Drowsy birds have sought their nest; Hush!-the song which father moulded Dies in silence-daughter, rest!"
Two voices swelled athwart the lea:
I listened while they sang;
One soft as lute upon the sea-
One like the trumpet's clang.
"Forward!-mid the battle's hum
Roughly rolls the daring drum.
Victory, with hurried breath,
Calls ye, from her mouths of death:
War, with hand of crimson stain,
Waves ye to the front again.
Onward! ere the field is won
Onward! ere the fight is done!
"Forward!-raise the banner high! Toss its spangles to the sky,
Let its eagle, reeking red,
Float above the foeman's head;
WHERE LIVES THE SOUL OF POETRY
Let its stripes of red and white
Blind again his dazzled sight.
Onward! ere the field is won-
Forward! ere the fight is done!
"Forward to the front again!
Urge the steed and loose the rein;
Spur amid the rattling peal!
Charge amid the storm of steel!
O'er the stream, and from the glen,
Cowards watch the strife of men.
Onward! ere the field is won-
Onward! ere the fight is done!"
WHERE LIVES THE SOUL OF POETRY.
WHERE lives the soul of poetry? It dwells
In the lone desert, where no fountain wells;
Speaks in the Kamsin's blast, dread foe of man,
That overthrows the luckless caravan,
And in a tomb, unknown to friendship, hides
The toiling camels and their Arab guides;
Dwells in the boiling maelstroom, deep and dark,
WHERE LIVES THE SOUL OF POETRY.
That roars a dismal warning to the bark,
And lingers where volcanic mountains throw
A burning deluge on the vale below.
Where lives the soul of poetry? Dark caves
Worn by the foamy buffeting of waves;
The blue abysses of the moaning sea,
Where coral insects fashion dome and tree,
And mermaids chant, by mortal eye unseen,
And comb in sparry halls their tresses green;
The broad savanna, where the bison strays,
And come in herds the fallow deer to graze;
The mossy forest, far from haunts of men,
Where the wild wolf prepares his savage den;
The giant Andes, round whose frosty peaks
The tempest hovers and the condor shrieks.
Cold, cheerless Greenland, where the ice-berg hoar
Strikes with a deafening crash the barren shore,
While roves the white fox, and the polar bear,
In quest of prey, forsakes his icy lair;
Bright tropic bowers, within whose depths of green,
The pard and savage tiger lurk unseen,
Where the fierce scales of deadly reptiles shine,
While round the trunks of giant palms they twine;
The spicy groves of Araby the blest,
In fadeless robes of bloom and verdure drest;
294 WHERE LIVES THE SOUL OF POETRY.
Where birds of gorgeous plumage perch and sing,
In varied strains, or wander on the wing;
Romantic Persia, where the dulcet lay
Of the glad Peri never dies away,
Where the light pinions of the wooing wind
Fan the young leaves of date or tamarind,
While nightingales amid the branches throng,
And own the presence of the soul of song.
The rich warm hues that flush the western cloud,
When yellow twilight weaves her glorious shroud;
The babbling cascade that descends in foam,
And flashes beauty from its rocky home;
The mingling tones of laughing earth and air,
When Morn braids purple in her golden hair;
The dance of leaves, the lulling fall of rain,
The river on its journey to the main;
The quiet lakes that spread their sheets of blue,
A sweet enchantment lending to the view.
The fierce tornado, parent of dismay,
Uprooting sylvan giants in his way;
The lulling winds of summer, or the blast
That howls a requiem when the leaf is cast;
The pearly moonshine of an autumn night,
When glen and glade are bathed in spectral light;
The lawn of spring, with varied flowers inwrought,
Are the pure nurses of poetic thought.
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