THE CORAL GROVE.

BY JAMES PERCIVAL.

DEEP in the wave is a coral grove,

Where the purple mullet and gold-fish rove,
Where the sea-flower spreads its leaves of blue,
That never are wet with falling dew,
But in bright and changeful beauty shine
Far down in the green and grassy brine.
The floor is of sand like the mountain drift,
And the pearl shells spangle the flinty snow:
From coral rocks the sea-plants lift

Their boughs where the tides and billows flow;
The water is calm and still below,

For the winds and waves are absent there,
And the sands are bright as the stars that glow
In the motionless fields of upper air;
There with its waving blade of green,

The sea-flag streams through the silent water,
And the crimson leaf of the dulse is seen
To blush like a banner bathed in slaughter;
There with a light and easy motion,

The fan-coral sweeps through the clear deep sea;
And the yellow and scarlet tufts of ocean
Are bending like corn on the upland lea;
And life, in rare and beautiful forms,
Is sporting amid those bowers of stone,
And is safe, when the wrathful spirit of storms,
Has made the top of the wave his own;
And when the ship from his fury flies,
Where the myriad voices of ocean roar,
When the wind-god frowns in the murky skies,
And demons are waiting the wreck on shore :
Then far below, in the peaceful sea,
The purple mullet and gold-fish rove,
Where the waters murmur tranquilly

Through the bending twigs of the Coral Grove.

MY MOTHER'S GRAVE.

My mother's grave, my mother's grave! Oh! dreamless is her slumber there, And drowsily the banners wave

O'er her that was so chaste and fair Yea! love is dead, and memory faded ! But when the dew is on the brake, And silence sleeps on earth and sea, And mourners weep, and ghosts awake, Oh! then she cometh back to me, In her cold beauty darkly shaded !

I cannot guess her face or form;
But what to me is form or face?
I do not ask the weary worm

To give me back each buried grace
Of glistening eyes or trailing tresses !
I only feel that she is here,

And that we meet, and that we part ; And that I drink within mine ear, And that I clasp around my heart, Her sweet, still voice, and soft caresses!

Not in the waking thought by day,
Not in the sightless dream by night,
To the mild tones and glances play

Of her who was my cradle's light!
But in some twilight of calm weather,
She glides, by fancy dimly wrought,
A glittering cloud, a darkling beam,
With all the quiet of a thought,
And all the passion of a dream,
Linked in the golden spell together!

ON A PICTURE.

How may this little tablet feign the features of a face, Which o'er-informs with loveliness its proper share of space;

Or human hands on ivory enable us to see

The charms, that all must wonder at, thou work of gods, in thee.

But yet, methinks, that sunny smile familiar stories tells,

And I should know those placid eyes, two shaded crystal wells;

Nor can my soul, the limner's art attesting with a sigh, Forget the blood that decked thy cheek, as rosy clouds the sky.

They could not semble what thou art, more excellent than fair,

As soft as sleep or pity is, and pure as mountain air; But here are common, earthly hues, to such an aspect wrought,

That none, save thine, can seem so like the beautiful of thought.

The song I sing, thy likeness like, is painful mimicry Of something better, which is now a memory to me, Who have upon life's frozen sea just reached the icy spot,

Where men's magnetic feelings show their guiding task forgot.

The sportive hopes that used to chase their shifting shadows on,

Like children playing in the sun, are gone for ever

LYRE.

gone;

S

194

ON A PICTURE.

And on a careless, sullen peace, my double-fronted

mind,

Like Janus, when his gates are shut, looks forward and behind.

Apollo placed his harp, of old, awhile upon a stone, Which has resounded since, when struck, a breaking harp-string's tone;

And thus my heart, though wholly now from earthly softness free,

If touched, will yield the music yet, it first received of thee.

THE CLOSE OF AUTUMN.

BY WILLIAM C. BRYANT.

THE melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,

Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere.

Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the withered leaves

lie dead,

They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread,

The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs

the jay,

And from the wood-top calls the crow, through all the gloomy day.

Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprung and stood

In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?

Alas! they all are in their graves-the gentle race of

flowers

Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of

ours:

The rain is falling where they lie-but the cold November rain

Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again.

The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago, And the brier-rose, and the orchis died, amid the summer's glow;

But on the hill the golden rod, and the aster in the wood,

And the yellow sunflower by the brook in autumn beauty stood,

Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague on men,

And the brightness of their smile was gone from upland, glade, and glen.

And now, when comes the calm mild day-as still such days will come,

To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter

home;

When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are still,

And twinkle in the hazy light the waters of the rill, The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore,

And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream

no more.

And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died,

The fair meek blossom that grew up, and faded by my side.