'Tis past—this first, last, only look!—
And now, away, away,
To bear alone in Memory's book
The sunshine of to-day;
Yet oft, 'neath other skies than these,
With other scenes in view,
O isles of beauty, sunny seas,
I shall remember you!
LOOK UP
Christian, lookup? thy feet may slide;
This is a slippery way!
Yet One is walking by thy side
Whose arm should be thy stay,
Thou canst not see that blessed form,
Nor view that loving smile
With eager eyes thus earthward bent—
Christian, look up a while!
Christian, look up!—what seest thou here
To court thy anxious eyes?
Earth is beneath thee, lone and drear,
Above, thy native skies!
Beneath, the wreck of faded bloom,
The shadow, and the clod,
The broken reed, the open tomb,—
Above thee, is THY GOD!
Look up! thy head too long has been
Bowed darkly toward the earth,
Thou son of a most Royal Sire,
Creature of kingly birth!
What! dragging like a very slave
Earth's heavy galling chain,—
And struggling onward to the grave
In weariness and pain?
What wouldst thou with this world?—thy home,
Thy country is not here,
'Mid faded flowers, and perished bloom,
And shadows dense and drear!—
Thy home is where the tree of Life
Waves high its fruitage blest,
'Mid bowers with fadeless beauties rife,—
Look up, and claim thy rest!
FROST-FLOWERS.
Over my window in pencillings white,
Stealthily traced in the silence of night—
Traced with a pencil as viewless as air,
By an artist unseen, when the star-beams were fair,
Came wonderful pictures, so life-like and true
That I'm filled with amaze as the marvel I view.
Like, and yet unlike the things I have seen,—
Feathery ferns in the forest-depths green,
Delicate mosses that hide from the light,
Snow-drops, and lilies, and hyacinths white,
Fringes, and feathers, and half-opened flowers,
Closely-twined branches of dim, cedar bowers—
Strange, that one hand should so deftly combine
Such numberless charms in so quaint a design!
O wondrous creations of silence and night!
I watch as ye fade in the clear morning light,—
As ye melt into tear-drops and trickle away
From the keen, searching eyes of inquisitive Day.
While I gaze ye are gone, and I see you depart
With a wistful regret lying deep in my heart,—
A longing for something that will not decay,
Or melt like these frost-flowers in tear-drops away,—
A passionate yearning of heart for that shore
Where beauty unfading shall last evermore;
Nor, e'en as we gaze, from our vision be lost
Like the beautiful things that are pencilled in frost!