THE RESURRECTION.
The day of wintry wrath is o'er,
The whirlwind and the storm have pass'd,
The whiten'd ashes of the snow
Enwrap the ruined world no more;
Nor keenly from the orient blow
The venom'd hissings of the blast.
The frozen tear-drops of despair
Have melted from the trembling thorn;
Hope plumes unseen her radiant wing,
And lo! amid the expectant air,
The trumpet of the angel Spring
Proclaims the resurrection morn.
Oh! what a wave of gladsome sound
Runs rippling round the shores of space,
As the requicken'd earth upheaves
The swelling bosom of the ground,
And Death's cold pallor, startled, leaves
The deepening roses of her face.
Up from their graves the dead arise--
The dead and buried flowers of spring;--
Up from their graves in glad amaze,
Once more to view the long-lost skies,
Resplendent with the dazzling rays
Of their great coming Lord and King.
And lo! even like that mightiest one,
In the world's last and awful hour,
Surrounded by the starry seven,
So comes God's greatest work, the sun,
Upborne upon the clouds of heaven,
In pomp, and majesty, and power.
The virgin snowdrop bends its head
Above its grave in grateful prayer;
The daisy lifts its radiant brow,
With a saint's glory round it shed;
The violet's worth, unhidden now,
Is wafted wide by every air.
The parent stem reclasps once more
Its long-lost severed buds and leaves;
Once more the tender tendrils twine
Around the forms they clasped of yore
The very rain is now a sign
Great Nature's heart no longer grieves.
And now the judgment-hour arrives,
And now their final doom they know;
No dreadful doom is theirs whose birth
Was not more stainless than their lives;
'Tis Goodness calls them from the earth,
And Mercy tells them where to go.
Some of them fly with glad accord,
Obedient to the high behest,
To worship with their fragrant breath
Around the altars of the Lord;
And some, from nothingness and death,
Pass to the heaven of beauty's breast.
Oh, let the simple fancy be
Prophetic of our final doom;
Grant us, O Lord, when from the sod
Thou deign'st to call us too, that we
Pass to the bosom of our God
From the dark nothing of the tomb!
THE FIRST OF THE ANGELS.
Hush! hush! through the azure expanse of the sky
Comes a low, gentle sound, 'twixt a laugh and a sigh;
And I rise from my writing, and look up on high,
And I kneel, for the first of God's angels is nigh!
Oh, how to describe what my rapt eyes descry!
For the blue of the sky is the blue of his eye;
And the white clouds, whose whiteness the snowflakes outvie,
Are the luminous pinions on which he doth fly!
And his garments of gold gleam at times like the pyre
Of the west, when the sun in a blaze doth expire;
Now tinged like the orange, now flaming with fire!
Half the crimson of roses and purple of Tyre.
And his voice, on whose accents the angels have hung,
He himself a bright angel, immortal and young,
Scatters melody sweeter the green buds among
Than the poet e'er wrote, or the nightingale sung.
It comes on the balm-bearing breath of the breeze,
And the odours that later will gladden the bees,
With a life and a freshness united to these,
From the rippling of waters and rustling of trees.
Like a swan to its young o'er the glass of a pond,
So to earth comes the angel, as graceful and fond;
While a bright beam of sunshine--his magical wand,
Strikes the fields at my feet, and the mountains beyond.
They waken--they start into life at a bound--
Flowers climb the tall hillocks, and cover the ground
With a nimbus of glory the mountains are crown'd,
As the rivulets rush to the ocean profound.
There is life on the earth, there is calm on the sea,
And the rough waves are smoothed, and the frozen are free;
And they gambol and ramble like boys, in their glee,
Round the shell-shining strand or the grass-bearing lea.
There is love for the young, there is life for the old,
And wealth for the needy, and heat for the cold;
For the dew scatters, nightly, its diamonds untold,
And the snowdrop its silver, the crocus its gold!
God!--whose goodness and greatness we bless and adore--
Be Thou praised for this angel--the first of the four--
To whose charge Thou has given the world's uttermost shore,
To guide it, and guard it, till time is no more!