MIDNIGHT.

THE moon shines white and silent On the mist, which, like a tide Of some enchanted ocean,

O'er the wide marsh doth glide, Spreading its ghost-like billows Silently far and wide.

A vague and starry magic
Makes all things mysteries,

And lures the earth's dumb spirit
Up to the longing skies, -
I seem to hear dim whispers,
And tremulous replies.

The fireflies o'er the meadow
In pulses come and go;
The elm-trees' heavy shadow
Weighs on the grass below ;
And faintly from the distance

The dreaming cock doth crow.

All things look strange and mystic, The very bushes swell

And take wild shapes and motions, As if beneath a spell;

They seem not the same lilacs

From childhood known so well.

The snow of deepest silence

O'er everything doth fall,
So beautiful and quiet,
And yet so like a pall;

As if all life were ended,

And rest were come to all.

O wild and wondrous midnight,
There is a might in thee
To make the charmed body
Almost like spirit be,

And give it some faint glimpses
Of immortality!

THE FINDING OF THE LYRE.

THERE lay upon the ocean's shore
What once a tortoise served to cover;
A year and more, with rush and roar,
The surf had rolled it over,

Had played with it, and flung it by,
As wind and weather might decide it,
Then tossed it high where sand-drifts dry
Cheap burial might provide it.

It rested there to bleach or tan,

The rains had soaked, the suns had burned it ; With many a ban the fisherman

Had stumbled o'er and spurned it;

And there the fisher-girl would stay,
Conjecturing with her brother

How in their play the poor estray
Might serve some use or other.

So there it lay, through wet and dry,

As empty as the last new sonnet,

Till by and by came Mercury,

And, having mused upon it,

"Why, here,” cried he, "the thing of things In shape, material, and dimension !

Give it but strings, and, lo, it sings,

A wonderful invention!"

So said, so done; the chords he strained,
And, as his fingers o'er them hovered,
The shell disdained a soul had gained,
The lyre had been discovered.

O empty world that round us lies,
Dead shell, of soul and thought forsaken,
Brought we but eyes like Mercury's,
In thee what songs should waken!

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Its teasing hopes and weak regrets,
Are still as that oblivious sand.

Repose fills all the generous space
Of undulant plain; the rook and crow
Hush; 't is as if a silent grace,

By Nature murmured, calmed the face
Of Heaven above and Earth below.

From past and future toils I rest,
One Sabbath pacifies my year;
I am the halcyon, this my nest;
And all is safely for the best

While the World's there and I am here.

So I turn tory for the nonce,

And think the radical a bore,

Who cannot see, thick-witted dunce,

That what was good for people once

Must be as good forevermore.

Sun, sink no deeper down the sky;
Earth, never change this summer mood;
Breeze, loiter thus forever by,

Stir the dead leaf or let it lie
Since I am happy, all is good.

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