THE WATER-LILY.
“The Water-Lilies, that are serene in the calm clear water, but no less serene among the black and scowling waves.”—Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life.
Oh! beautiful thou art,
Thou sculpture-like and stately river-queen!
Crowning the depths, as with the light serene
Of a pure heart.
Bright lily of the wave!
Rising in fearless grace with every swell,
Thou seem’st as if a spirit meekly brave
Dwelt in thy cell:
Lifting alike thy head
Of placid beauty, feminine yet free,
Whether with foam or pictured azure spread
The waters be.
What is like thee, fair flower,
The gentle and the firm! thus bearing up
To the blue sky that alabaster cup,
As to the shower?
Oh! love is most like thee,
The love of woman! quivering to the blast
Through every nerve, yet rooted deep and fast,
Midst life’s dark sea.
And faith—oh, is not faith
Like thee, too, lily! springing into light,
Still buoyantly, above the billows’ might,
Through the storm’s breath?
Yes! link’d with such high thought,
Flower! let thine image in my bosom lie;
Till something there of its own purity
And peace be wrought—
Something yet more divine
Than the clear, pearly, virgin lustre shed
Forth from thy breast upon the river’s bed.
As from a shrine.
THE SONG OF PENITENCE.[431]
UNFINISHED.
[We learn from the Rev. R. P. Graves, that “The Song of Penitence,” if it had been finished in time, was intended for insertion among the “Scenes and Hymns of Life.”]
He pass’d from earth
Without his fame,—the calm, pure, starry fame
He might have won, to guide on radiantly
Full many a noble soul,—he sought it not;
And e’en like brief and barren lightning pass’d
The wayward child of genius. And the songs
Which his wild spirit, in the pride of life,
Had shower’d forth recklessly, as ocean-waves
Fling up their treasures mingled with dark weed,
They died before him;—they were winged seed
Scatter’d afar, and, falling on the rock
Of the world’s heart, had perish’d. One alone,
One fervent, mournful, supplicating strain,
The deep beseeching of a stricken breast,
Survived the vainly-gifted. In the souls
Of the kind few that loved him, with a love
Faithful to even its disappointed hope,
That song of tears found root, and by their hearths
Full oft, in low and reverential tones,
Fill’d with the piety of tenderness,
Is murmur’d to their children, when his name
On some faint harp-string of remembrance falls,
Far from the world’s rude voices, far away.
Oh! hear, and judge him gently; ’twas his last.
I come alone, and faint I come—
To nature’s arms I flee;
The green woods take their wanderer home,
But Thou, O Father! may I turn to thee?
The earliest odour of the flower,
The bird’s first song is thine;
Father in heaven! my dayspring’s hour
Pour’d its vain incense on another shrine.
Therefore my childhood’s once-loved scene
Around me faded lies;
Therefore, remembering what hath been,
I ask, is this mine early paradise?
It is, it is—but Thou art gone;
Or if the trembling shade
Breathe yet of thee, with alter’d tone
Thy solemn whisper shakes a heart dismay’d.
[431] Suggested by the late Mrs Fletcher’s story of The Lost Life, published in the Amulet for 1830.