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From these delightful fountains flow
Ambrosial rills of pleasure:

Can man desire, can Heaven bestow,
A more resplendent treasure?
Adorn'd with gems so richly bright,
We'll form a constellation,

Where every star with modest light,
Shall gild his proper station.

How grand in age, how fair in youth,
Are holy Friendship, Love, and Truth!

THE SINKING STAR.

Wordsworth.

I WATCH, and long have watched, with calm regret,
Yon slowly-sinking Star,-immortal Sire

(So might he seem) of all the glittering quire!
Blue ether still surrounds him-yet-and yet;
But now the horizon's rocky parapet

Is reach'd; where, forfeiting his bright attire,
He burns-transmuted to a sullen fire,

That droops and dwindles; and, the appointed debt
To flying moments paid, is seen no moré.
Angels and Gods; we struggle with our fate,
While health, power, glory, pitiably decline,
Depress'd and then extinguished; and our state,
In this, how different, lost Star, from thine,
That no to-morrow shall our beams restore !

THE VISIONARY.

Anon.

I HAVE been lonely, even from a child;
Though bound with sweet ties to a happy home,
With all life's sacred charities around me:
I have been lonely-for my soul had thirst
The waters of this world could not assuage:
I found them bitter, and I had high dreams,
And strange imaginations-yea, I lived
Amid my own creations; and a world
Of many hopes and raptures was within me,
Such as I could not tell off; for I knew
Such feelings could not bear a sympathy;
They were too sacred to admit communion,
Too blest to need it to the fields and woods
Did my heart's fullness pour them; solitude
Was the expansion of my secret visions,
When I could ask my soul to tell me all,

And many a bright and blessed reverie

Hath cheered my wanderings. I have heard sweet music
In my own thoughts, mysterious harmonies,

Felt, but not understood; vague, happy musings,

And shadowy sketches of my future fate,

In young and glowing colours. Are they faded ?
-Years are gone by; and once again I commupe
With my own spirit-it is passionless,
And silent now, its loveliest visions over;

And yet I do not shun this scrutiny :

Though I have fed my heart with perishing joys,
Yet have they not been in vain; for those wild hopes,
And noble aims, and all those proud aspirings,

Gave me a loftier being. I have plunged
Within the maddening wave, unawed, to succour
An object of my love. I have stood calm
In danger's fiercest moment, with a trust
Above all mortal peril. I have wandered
O'er moors and mountains to assuage the woes
Of human kind. In all that could excite

I have been foremost :-then have woke and wept
To feel how little and how weak I was.

ABBA THULE.*

Bowles.

I CLIMB the highest cliff; I hear the sound
Of dashing waves; I gaze intent around :
I mark the sun that orient lifts his head!
I mark the sea's lone rule beneath him spread;
But not a speck can my long straining eye,
A shadow, o'er the tossing waste descry,
That I might weep tears of delight and say,
It is the bark that bore my child away!”

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Thou sun, that beamest bright, beneath whose eye
The worlds unknown, and outstretched waters lie,
Dost thou behold him now, on some rude shore
Around whose crags the cheerless billows roar?
Watching the unwearied surges doth he stand,
And think upon his father's distant land?
Or has his heart forgot, so far away,

These native hills, these rocks, and torrents grey;

See History of the Pelew Islands.

The tall bananas whispering to the breeze,
The shores, the sound of those encircling seas,
Heard from his infant days, and the piled heap
Of holy stones, where his forefathers sleep?

Ah me! till sunk by sorrow, I shall dwell
With them forgetful, in the narrow cell;
Never shall time from my fond heart efface
His image: oft his shadow I shall trace
Upon the glimmering waters, when on high,
The white moon wanders through the cloudless sky.
Oft in my silent cave (when to its fire,
From the night's rushing tempest we retire)
I shall behold his form, his aspect bland,
I shall retrace his footsteps in the sand,
And when the hollow surges swell
Still think I listen to his echoing shell.

Would I had perished ere that hapless day,
When the tall vessel, in its trim array,
First rushed upon the sounding surge, and bore
My age's comfort from the sheltering shore !
I saw it spread its white wings to the wind-
Too soon it left these hills and woods behind-
Gazing, its course I followed, till mine eye
No longer could its distant track descry:
Till on the confines of the billows hoar,
A while it hung and then was seen no more,
And only the blue hollow heaven I spied,
And the long waste of waters tossing wide.

More mournful than each falling surge I heard,
Then dropt the stagnant tear upon my beard,
Methought the wild waves said amidst their roar,
At midnight, "Thou shalt see thy son no more."

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Now thrice twelve moons through the mid heavens have rolled,

And many a dawn, and slow night, have I told;

And still, as every weary day goes by,

A knot recording on my line I tie ;

But never more emerging from the main,

I see the stranger's bark approach again.

Has the fell storm o'erwhelmed him? Has its sweep
Buried the bounding vessel in the deep?

Is he cast bleeding on some desert plain ?
Upon his father did he call in vain?

Have pitiless and bloody tribes defiled

The cold limbs of my brave, my beauteous child?
Oh! I shall never, never hear his voice;
The spring time shall return, the isles rejoice,
But I must weep, my aged bosom torn,
And 'mid the cheering sunshine, droop forlorn!
The joyous conch sounds in the high wood loud;
O'er all the beach now stream the busy crowd;
Fresh breezes stir the waving plantain grove;
The fisher carols in the winding cove;

And light canoes along the lucid tide,

With painted shells, and sparkling paddles, glide.
I linger on the desert rock alone,

Heartless, and cry for thee, my Son, my Son.

TO THE FLYING FISH.

WHEN I have seen the snowy wing
O'er the blue wave at ev'ning spring,
And give those scales of silver white
So gayly to the eye of light,
As if thy frame were form'd to rise,
And live amid the glorious skies;

Moore.

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