A LAMENT. SWIFTER far than Summer's flight, Art thou come and gone; As the earth when leaves are dead, I am left lone, alone. The swallow Summer comes again; To fly with thee, false as thou. My heart each day desires the morrow; Sleep itself is turned to sorrow; Vainly would my Winter borrow Sunny leaves from any bough: Lilies for a bridal bed, Pansies let my flowers be; Waste one hope, one fear for me. "CALM IS THE NIGHT." CALM is the night, and the city is sleeping- Yonder a man at the heavens is staring, Wringing his hands as in sorrowful case; He turns to the moonlight, his countenance baring O, heaven! he shows me my own sad face! Shadowy form, with my own agreeing! Why mockest thou thus, in the moonlight cold, The sorrows which here once vexed my being Many a night in the days of old? HENRY HEINE (German). Translation of CHARLES G. LELAND. THE FISHING SONG. THE CASTLE BY THE SEA. "HAST thou seen that lordly castle, That Castle by the Sea? Golden and red, above it The clouds float gorgeously. "And fain it would stoop downward To the mirrored wave below; "Well have I seen that castle, "The winds and the waves of ocean, Didst thou hear, from those lofty chambers, The harp and the minstrel's rhyme?" "The winds and the waves of ocean, They rested quietly; But I heard on the gale a sound of wail, "And sawest thou on the turrets The king and his royal bride? And the wave of their crimson mantles? And the golden crown of pride? "Led they not forth, in rapture, A beauteous maiden thereResplendent as the morning sun, Beaming with golden hair?" "Well saw I the ancient parents, Without the crown of pride; They were moving slow, in weeds of woe; No maiden was by their side!" LUDWIG UHLAND (German). Translation of HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. DESOLATION. THINK ye the desolate must live apart, By solemn vows to convent-walls confined? Ah! no; with men may dwell the cloistered heart, And in a crowd the isolated mind. 519 Tearless, behind the prison-bars of fate, Upon the promised yet forbidden land— Patience the shrine to which their bleeding feet, Day after day, in voiceless penance turn; Silence the holy cell and calm retreat In which unseen their meek devotions burn; Life is to them a vigil which none share, Their hopes a sacrifice, their love a prayer. HENRY T. TUCKERMAN. THE FISHING SONG. Down in the wide, gray river Floats the fisherman's song. The oar-stroke times the singing, The song falls with the oar; And an echo in both is ringing I thought to hear no more. Out of a deeper current The song brings back to me A cry from mortal silence Of mortal agony. Life that was spent and vanished, Hearts that are dead in living, Come back in the fisherman's song. I see the maples leafing, Just as they leafed before; The green grass comes no greener Down to the very shore With the rude strain swelling, sinking, Yet the soul hath life diviner; Its past returns no more, But in echoes, that answer the minor Of the boat-song, from the shore. And the ways of God are darkness; His judgment waiteth long; ROSE TERRY. "BREAK, BREAK, BREAK." BREAK, break, break On thy cold gray stones, O sea! O well for the fisherman's boy That he shouts with his sister at play! O well for the sailor lad That he sings in his boat on the bay! And the stately ships go on, To the haven under the hill; Break, break, break At the foot of thy crags, O sea! THE DAYS THAT ARE NO MORE. TEARS, idle tears! I know not what they mean. Tears, from the depth of some divine despair, Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail That brings our friends up from the underworld; Sad as the last which reddens over one Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds square: So sad, so strange, the days that are no more. Dear as remembered kisses after death, But the tender grace of a day that is dead Deep as first love, and wild with all regret, ALFRED TENNYSON. |