Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 134.djvu/392

THE MELANCHOLY OCEAN.

Far off, amid the melancholy main. — Milton.
Inhabiting an island washed by a melancholy ocean. — "Vivian Grey."

Oh! the salt Atlantic breezes,
How they sweep reviving through me;
How their freshening spirit seizes
Soul and sense, to raise, renew me!

Oh! the grand Atlantic surges,
How they march, and mount, and mingle;
How their spray, exulting, scourges
Jutty cliff and sandy dingle!

Talk of melancholy ocean, —
If thou feelest wane and wither
Every germ of glad emotion,
Come, O Vivian Grey! come thither.

Sit and mark the matchless glory
Of the clouds that overshade us,
Afreets of the Eastern story,
Titans such as Keats portrayed us, —

Till majestically blending,
Folded on the western billow,
They await their lord's descending,
Strewing his imperial pillow.

Not in youth's intoxication,
Not in manhood's strange successes,
Didst thou drink an inspiration
Such as here the heart confesses.

Here, where joy surrounds thee wholly,
If thy thought a moment listens
To intruding melancholy,
It is born of reminiscence, —

Of the old forsaken causes,
Of the higher fame's bereavement,
Of a lifetime of applauses,
Barren, barren of achievement;

Genius in ignoble traces,
Leading ranks whom thou despisest,
Till thy self-willed fate effaces
All that in thy soul thou prizest;

For the prophet's fire and motion,
Icy mask and sneer sardonic, —
Be it so. — Majestic Ocean,
Thou art melancholy's tonic.

Spectator.O.

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LENACHLUTEN.

A WATERFALL IN ARGYLESHIRE.

'Mong crags where the purple heather grows,
'Mid rocks where blooms the mountain rose,
Onward the river calmly flows
To Lenachluten.

The waters dash on the rocks beneath
In a mad wild rush, they surge and seethe,
While dancing spray with a snowy wreath
Crowns Lenachluten.

Thus ever the stream of life flows on,
With faces happy and faces wan,
A moment here on this earth, then gone,
Like Lenachluten.

Some lives pass on like a peaceful dream;
Untouched by sorrow or care, they seem
To glide as the river whose waters stream
Towards Lenachluten.

Others career on their restless way;
Whate'er betide, they are ever gay,
As gleams the sparkling sunlit spray
On Lenachluten.

Some lives with folly and sin are fraught;
They dim earth's beauty with stain and spot,
As surges the scum, an ugly blot
On Lenachluten.

And now and again a genius bright
Dazzles the earth with his spirit's rlieht,
As shimmers the rainbow's tinted light
O'er Lenachluten.

Chambers' Journal.H. K. W.

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A CITY WEED.

I passed a graveyard in a London street,
Where 'stead of songs of birds, the hoarse sad cries
Of wretched men echoed from morn to night.
Locked were its gates, and rows of iron bars
Fenced in God's acre from tired wanderers' feet.
All broken lay the slabs which love had raised;
But on a mound where fell a patch of light,
A bindweed grew; and on its flowers, with eyes
O'erflowing with a wintry rain of tears,
A pale-faced, miserable woman gazed,
Heart-srck with longings for the nevermore,
And faint with memories of bygone years:
A breezy common with a heaven of stars,
And lovers parting at a cottage door.

Chambers' Journal.

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SLEEP.

Beautiful up from the deeps of the solemn sea,
Cometh sweet Sleep to me;
Up from the silent deeps,
Where no one waits and weeps:
Cometh, as one who clreameth,
With slowly waving hands;
And the sound of her raiment seemeth
Like waves on the level sands.
There is rest for all mankind,
As her slow wings stir the wind;
With lullaby the drowsy waters creep
To kiss the "feet of Sleep.

Blackwood's Magazine.J. R. S.