THREE SONNETS. THE MOTION OF THE MISTS. HERE by the sunless lake there is no air, Yet with how ceaseless motion, with how strange Flowing and fading, do the high mists range The gloomy gorges of the mountains bare. Some weary breathing never ceases there,— The ashen peaks can feel it hour by hour; The purple depths are darkened by its power; A soundless breath, a trouble all things share That feel it come and go. See! onward swim The ghostly mists, from silent land to land, From gulf to gulf; now the whole air grows dimLike living men, darkling a space, they stand. But lo! a Sunbeam, like the Cherubim, Scatters them onward with a flaming brand. CORUISK. I think this is the very stillest place On all God's earth, and yet no rest is here. The vapours mirrored in the black loch's face Drift on like frantic shapes and disappear; A never-ceasing murmur in mine ear Tells me of waters wild that flow and flow. There is no rest at all, afar or near, Only a sense of things that moan and go. And lo! the still small life these limbs contain I feel flows on like those, restless and proud; Before that breathing nought within my brain BUT WHITHER? And whither, O ye vapours! do ye wend? Whose strange breath's come and go ye feel so deep? Onward we fleet, swift as the running rill,The vapours drift, the mists within the brain Float on obscuringly and have no will. Only the bare peaks and the stones remain, These only, and a God sublime and still. ROBERT BUCHANAN. IN THE SHADOWS. DIE down, O dismal day! and let me live; And come, blue deeps! magnificently strewn With coloured clouds-large, light, and fugitiveBy upper winds through pompous motions blown. Now it is death in life-a vapour dense Creeps round my window till I cannot see The far snow-shining mountains and the glens Shagging the mountain tops. O God! make free This barren, shackled earth, so deadly cold. Breathe gently forth thy Spring, till Winter flies In rude amazement, fearful and yet bold, While she performs her customed charities. I weigh the loaded hours till life is bare O God! for one clear day, a snowdrop, and sweet air! DAVID GRAY. THE LUGGIE. OH, sweet and still around the hill Thy silver waters, Brook, are creeping; Beneath the hill as sweet and still Thy weary friend lies sleeping: A laurel leaf is in his hair, His eyes are closed to human seeming, O Brook! he smiled, a happy child, Till, last, thy laurel leaf he took, Dream-eyed and tearful, like a woman, O Brook! in song full sweet and strong For though he knows nor fret nor fear, Though life no more slips strangely through him, Yet he may sleep more sound, to hear His friend so close unto him. And when at last the sleepers cast Their swathes aside, and, wondering, waken, Let thy friend be full tenderlie In silvern arms uptaken. Him be it then thy task to bear Up to the Footstool, softly flowing, Smiles on his eyes, and in his hair Thy leaf of laurel blowing! ROBERT BUCHANAN. DECLENSION AND REVIVAL. 'From Me is thy fruit found.' DIE to thy root, sweet flower! If so God wills, die even to thy root; Live there awhile an uncomplaining, mute, Blank life, with darkness wrapped about thy head, This is no grave, though thou among the dead Spring from thy root, sweet flower! When so God wills, spring even from thy root; Send through the earth's warm breast a quickened shoot; Of bloom and odour. Life is on the plains, DORA GREENWELL. FEBRUARY IST, 1842. NE month is past, another is begun, ONE Since merry bells rang out the dying year, And buds of rarest green began to peer, As if impatient for a warmer sun; And, though the distant hills are bleak and dun, Pierces the cold earth, with its green-streaked spire; HARTLEY COLERIDGE. |