The New Monthly Belle Assemblée/Volume 22/April 1845/Stanzas
The sympathies of nature are neither exploded by philosophy, nor condemned by religion. These two luminaries of the mind do not extinguish, but only regulate the affections; restraining them when inordinate, and reducing them under the dominion of reason when they begin to acquire an undue and dangerous tendency.
STANZAS.
When every leaf and every flower
Is fading from that hue so bright,
Of loveliness bestow’d by light,
When o’er the fields and meadows gay
The deep’ning shades of parting day
Diffuse a soft, a tranquil hue,
Though stealing beauty from the view?
Possesses no sweet soothing power;
I love it not: its pensive light—
More solemn than still darker night—
Brings to my heart in sad review
All that of pain it ever knew;
And those to love or friendship dear
Are thought of with a sigh or tear.
Which gives to night a softer day—
When the full orb with light serene
Presides the goddess of the scene,
And o’er the glittering landscape throws
A beauteous calm, a bright repose;
While hill and valley, lake and stream,
Shine lovely in her lucid beam?
When stars, in their own splendour bright,
Surround her in the deep blue sky
With awful majesty on high!
For then, forgetting earthly care,
I gaze on all the grandeur there,
And feel, as o’er my path they shine,
“The hand that made them is divine!”
Nor eve nor night can glad thy heart
Toward earthly things: but in the dawn
Of fresh, reviving, rosy morn,
Or in the sun’s effulgent ray,
Which rules in brightness o’er the day,
Say, canst thou aught of pleasure find,
To solace or delight thy mind?
The wak’ning beauty of the morn—
The sun just rising to my view;
Like the mild native of Peru,
My heart rejoices in the sight,
Nature’s great source of life and light;
I feel his animating ray,
And hail the glorious god of day!
The thing that is uttered from the inmost parts of a man’s soul differs altogether from what is uttered by the outer part. The outer is of to-day, and passes away; the inmost is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.
The weakness of sickly and imperfect virtue might perhaps often be recovered and strengthened by the support, and in the society of more fixed and regular characters, and this would lead to its being established upon a better and surer foundation.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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