The bright Evangel came, girt round with mirth,
And garlanded with youth, and crown'd with flowers
"Awake! arise! ye sons of the new birth,
And move to the quick measure of the hours!
Summer is coming—go ye forth to meet her,
With sweetest hymeneal songs to greet her."
So there arose straightway a joyous train,
Gather'd by every nook and hedgerow shade,
That in its passage o'er the verdant plain,
'Still in the heart a thrilling music made—
Sweet pilgrims they of Love in youth's gay time,
Leading the year on to its golden prime.
The birds sang homage to her evermore;
And myriad wingèd things, whose radiant dyes
Made sunshine beautiful, still hover'd o'er,
And bore her witness in the sunlit skies;
And rising from the tomb in glad amaze,
Came many a sainted flower to hymn her praise.
Thus from the streams, and rivers, from the sea,
From the stirr'd bosom of the mighty hills,
From every glade there rose continually
A blessing for her, till with joyous thrills
Earth's bosom heaved, and in man's heart a voice
Echoed the anthem—"Spring is come! Rejoice!"
THE BITTERN.
The reeds are idly waving o'er the marshy ground,
The rank and ragged herbage rots on many a mound,
And desolate pools and marshes deadly lie around.
There is no life nor motion, save the winds that fly
With the close-muffled clouds in silence through the sky,
There is no sound to stir it, save the Bittern's cry;
The Bittern, sitting sadly on the fluted edges
Of pillars once the prop and pride of palace ledges,
Now smear'd with damp decay and sunk in slimy sedges;
Shatter'd and sunken, with the sculptured architrave
Peering above the surface of the sluggish wave,
Like a gaunt limb thrust fleshless from a shallow grave.
The Bittern sitteth sadly on the time-worn stone,
Upon life's mouldering relics, fearfully alone,
Searing the silence ofttimes with his solemn tone.