Oh, mercy! what can ail me?
I'm growing wan and very lean;
My spirits often fail me!
What can it mean—what can it mean?
I'm not in love!—No!—Smother
Such a thought at seventeen!
I'll go and ask my mother—
"What can it mean—what can it mean?"
Where Hudson's Wave.
Where Hudson's wave o'er silvery sands
Winds through the hills afar,
Old Cronest like a monarch stands,
Crowned with a single star!
And there, amid the billowy swells
Of rock-ribbed, cloud-capped earth,
My fair and gentle Ida dwells,
A nymph of mountain-birth.
The snow-flake that the cliff receives,
The diamonds of the showers,
Spring's tender blossoms, buds, and leaves,
The sisterhood of flowers,
Morn's early beam, eve's balmy breeze,
Her purity define;
Yet Ida's dearer far than these
To this fond breast of mine.
My heart is on the hills. The shades
Of night are on my brow;
Ye pleasant haunts and quiet glades,
My soul is with you now!
I bless the star-crowned highlands where
My Ida's footsteps roam:
O for a falcon's wing to bear
Me onward to my home!
Au Revoir.
Love left one day his leafy bower,
And roamed in sportive vein,
Where Vanity had built a tower,
For Fashion's sparkling train.
The mistress to see he requested,
Of one who attended the door:
"Not home," said the page, who suggested
That he'd leave his card.—"Au Revoir."
Love next came to a lowly bower:
A maid who knew no guile,
Unlike the lady of the tower,
Received him with a smile.
Since then the cot beams with his brightness
Though often at Vanity's door
Love calls, merely out of politeness,
And just leaves his card.—"Au Revoir."
To My Absent Daughter.