A THOUGHT BY THE SEASHORE.
BURY me by the sea.
When on my heart the hand of Death is prest,
If the soul lingereth ere she join the blest,
And haunts awhile her clay,
Then mid the forest shades I would not lie,
For the green leaves like me would droop and die.
Nor mid the homes of men,
The haunts of busy life, would I be laid :
There ever was I lone, and my vexed shade
Would sleep unquiet then;
The surging tide of life might overwhelm
The shadowy boundaries of the silent realm.
No sculptured marble pile
To bear my name be reared upon my breast-
Beneath its weight my free soul would not rest;
But let the blue sky smile,
The changeless stars look lovingly on me,
And let me sleep beside this sounding sea:
This ever-beating heart
Of the great Universe! here would the soul
Plume her soiled pinions for the final goal,
Ere she should thence depart-
Here would she fit her for the high abode-
Here by the sea, she would be nearer God.
I feel his presence now:
Thou mightiest of his vassals, as I stand
And watch beside thee on the sparkling sand,
Thy crested billows bow;
And as thy solemn chant swells through the air,
My spirit, awed, joins in thy ceaseless prayer.
Life's fitful fever o'er,
Here then would I repose, majestic sea;
E'en now faint glimpses of eternity
Come o'er me on thy shore:
My thoughts from thee to highest themes are given,
As thy deep distant blue is lost in Heaven.
THE DUMB CREATION.
DEAL kindly with those speechless ones,
That throng our gladsome earth; Say not the bounteous gift of life
Alone is nothing worth.
What though with mournful memories
They sigh not for the past?
What though their ever joyous Now
No future overcast?
No aspirations fill their breast
With longings undefined;
They live, they love, and they are blest,
For what they seek they find.
They see no mystery in the stars,
No wonder in the plain,
And Life's enigma wakes in them
No questions dark and vain.
To them earth is a final home,
A bright and blest abode;
Their lives unconsciously flow on
In harmony with God.
To this fair world our human hearts
Their hopes and longings bring,
And o'er its beauty and its bloom
Their own dark shadows fling.
Between the future and the past
In wild unrest we stand,
And ever as our feet advance,
Retreats the promised land.
And though Love, Fame, and Wealth and Power,
Bind in their gilded band,
We pine to grasp the unattained—
The something still beyond.
And, beating on their prison bars,
Our spirits ask more room,
And with unanswered questionings,
They pierce beyond the tomb.
Then say thou not, oh, doubtful heart!
There is no life to come:
That in some tearless, cloudless land,
Thou shalt not find thy home.
THE WOUNDED VULTURE.
A KINGLY Vulture sat alone,
Lord of the ruin round,
Where Egypt's ancient monuments
Upon the desert frowned.
A hunter's eager eye had marked
The form of that proud bird,
And through the voiceless solitude
His ringing shot was heard.
It rent that vulture's pluméd breast,
Aimed with unerring hand,
And his life-blood gushed warm and red
Upon the yellow sand.
No struggle marked the deadly wound,
He gave no piercing cry,
But calmly spread his giant wings,
And sought the upper sky.
In vain with swift pursuing shot
The hunter seeks his prey,
Circling and circling upward still
On his majestic way.
Up to the blue empyrean
He wings his steady flight,
Till his receding form is lost
In the full flood of light.
Oh, wounded heart! oh, suffering soul!
Sit not with folded wing,
Where broken dreams and ruined hopes
Their mournful shadows fling.
Outspread thy pinions like that bird,
Take thou the path sublime,
Beyong the flying shafts of Fate,
Beyond the wounds of Time.
Mount upward! brave the clouds and storms!
Above life's desert plain
There is a calmer, purer air,
A heaven thou, too, may'st gain.
And as that dim, ascending form
Was lost in day's broad light,
So shall thine earthly sorrrows fade,
Lost in the Infinite.