Hannah Flagg Gould

“ When the warm soul of new-descended power
Breathed on his heart-strings, lifted up his voice,
Chanting, “Jehovah!”
Since that blessed hour,
While still her home is heaven, Music has ne’er
This darkened world forsaken. She delights,
Though man may lose, or keep the paths of peace,
To soothe, to cheer, to light and warm his heart;
And lends her wings to waft it to the skies.
She throws a lustre o’er Devotion’s face—
Drinks off the tear from Sorrow’s languid eye—
Tames wild Despair—brings Hope a brighter bloom—
Lulls Hate to rest—Love’s ruffled bosom smooths ”

“ Sweetly thy form, that seemed a blissful dreamer,
Told, by its features, how the spirit smiled,
Through the dark, shadowy vale, by thy Redeemer
Led to his mansion, like a little child.
Nature’s full hand, that, on thy natal morning,
Clothed earth to greet thee in the flowers of May,
Brought them renewed; thy burial-spot adorning,
When fourscore years and ten had rolled away.
Now, while the robin, past the window flying,
Leads off her young, forsaking here her nest,
Constant the wild bird, where thy dust is lying,
Sings her sweet hymn, a requiem to its rest. ”

“ On light little wings, as the humming-birds fly,
With plumes many-hued as the bow of the sky,
Suspended in ether, they shine in the light,
As jewels of nature, high-finished and bright.
Their delicate forms are so buoyant and small,
They hang o’er the flowers, as too airy to fall,
Upborne on their beautiful pinions, that seem
Like glittering vapor, or parts of a dream.
The humming-bird feeds upon honey, and so,
Of course, ’t is a sweet little creature, you know:
But sweet little creatures have sometimes, they say,
A great deal that ’s bitter or sour to betray. ”

“ I love to see thy beaming mantle trail
Along the flower-sprent borders of the rill,
With rich, deep shadows stamped, o’erspread the vale,
Or bind the forehead of the silent hill.
I love to see thee through the foliage peep,
Where, one soft hour before, the robin sung
Her vesper song; the while, in downy sleep,
With peaceful breast she guards her callow young.
I love to see thee, when the whip-poor-will
Moans in the hedge behind the cottage-eaves;
And when the plaintive crickets, hidden, trill
Their harvest-hymn among the golden sheaves. ”

“ Know’st thou, tender, beauteous boy,
What ’s thine errand—whence thy joy?
’T was thy name that Gabriel spoke,
By the altar, while the smoke
From thy father’s incense rolled,
When thy being was foretold!
Thou art come, the promised one,
As the dayspring to the sun,
[114] Soon to usher in new light
Through the realms of death and night!
Heavenly innocence is now
Marked upon thy peaceful brow:
God’s own Spirit filleth thee,
Sainted babe; for thou art he,
Who before the Lamb shall go,
Crying, that the world may know
He hath life to give the dead,
In the blood he comes to shed! ”

“ Break not the heart for another so warm,
Stopt in its pulse by a finger so cold.
Time ne’er shall whiten a lock of that hair,
Silken and full, round the forehead, that shines.
Age shall not come, nor the finger of care,
Marking that brow with their deep-going lines.
Ne’er will those lips be unsealed by the sigh:
Anguish will never that bosom invade:
Tears roll no more from that calm sleeping eye:
Peace o’er the clay her smooth mantle has laid.
Plant a young flower, in beauty to spread,
Tender and pure, where the dust shall repose. ”

“ From him who slumbers in the shroud,
As tremblingly they lift the pall,
The moon rends off her veil of cloud,
And o’er him lets her lustre fall.
[127]
She beams her silvery, soft adieu.
And is again in darkness hid;
As if affrighted, thus to view
The name on that dread coffin lid.
For ’t is her lover, now no more—
Her friend, whom they to dust consign!
And ne’er again is she to pour
Her light,—for eyes like his to shine.
’T is done,—the fearful, final rite,
Too sacred for the glare of day,
Has passed beneath the shadowy night—
Earth, earth has closed o’er Schiller’s clay! ”

“ Beneath thy light bark, ever mindful of thee,
The days of thine absence, at home we are telling,
And counting the hours of our William at sea.
And thou, whether cradled to sleep by the billow,
Or watching the sport of the spray and the foam,
If pensive on deck, or in dreams on thy pillow,
We know hast thy soul rapt with visions of home.
We know, when the sun mounts the east in his glory,
Or smiles a “good night,” as the west he descends,
Thy heart, pointing back, to itself tells the story
Of mansion paternal, and kindred and friends. ”

“ Dismayed, hastens back to her home in the wood;
And flags not a wing, till her bosom, affrighted,
Has laid its warm down o’er her own little brood.
And they, since that fond one so quickly has found them,
To shelter their heads from the rain and the blast,
Shall fearless repose, while the bolts burst around them;
And lie calm and safe, till the darkness is past.
Hast thou, too, not felt, when the tempest was drearest,
And rending thy covert, or shaking thy rest,
Thine own blessed angel that moment the nearest—
Thy screen in his pinion—thy shield in his breast? ”

“ Then, but to look abroad on vale and hill,
Where one pale uniform invests the whole,
Though it should make one’s vital current chill,
It must not let in winter to the soul!
It must not bring a frost upon the heart,
To kill affection’s tendrils—friendship’s root,
Where vernal shoots and buds should ever start,
And grow with summer flowers and autumn fruit:
Nor cause the streams of thought to be congealed,
Or, pressed beneath incumbent ice, grow low;
But, like the fount that irrigates the field,
Make bloom and verdure spring, where’er they flow. ”

“ When thy branches shoot and bloom
Through a Saviour’s broken tomb.
Trees, whereof the pilgrim weaves
For his crown the mingled leaves,
Wreaths of you are rich and bright;
Earth ’s the shade, and heaven ’s the light.
[194]
THE MUSHROOM’S SOLILOQUY.
O what, and whence am I, ’mid damps and dust,
And darkness, into sudden being thrust?
What was I yesterday? and what will be,
Perchance, to-morrow, seen or heard of me?
Poor, lone, unfriended, ignorant, forlorn,
To bear the new, full glory of the morn,
Beneath the garden wall I stand aside,
With all before me, beauty, show, and pride. ”

“ Light from the darkness doth thy hand unfold:
Beauty from dust we in thy deeds behold:
The frail, the dimmed, the withered, worn and old
Thy breath dissolves, that they may shine anew.
The city flames, and melts the tottering wall;
Again she rises fairer for the fall.
Thou beckonest back the flood! and at thy call,
From crust-capped mounts, volcanic splendors pour.
The absent sun his way to morning bends;
The waning star to thy command attends,
Fills out and burns; and man to dust descends,
In hope to live, when thou shalt be no more. ”

“ As after evening showers, the morn’s clear beams
Show diamonds hung on grass, and flower and leaf.
Upright and firm, as were the patriot souls,
That from thy native spot arose to God,
Stand thou and hold, long as our planet rolls,
This last high place by Freedom’s martyrs trod.
Let thy majestic shadow walk the ground,
Calm as the sun, and constant as his light;
And by the moon, amid the dews, be found
The sentinel, who guards it through the night.
And may the air around thee ever be
To heaven-born Liberty as vital breath ”

“ That beams on the board where in joy we unite:
And the sparks, which we take to enkindle our mirth,
Are blessings from heaven showering down on the earth.
And now that we meet, and the chain is of flowers,
Which binds us together, may sadness ne’er blight them,
Till those, who must break from a compact like ours,
Ascend where the ties of the blest reunite them!
[226] May each, who is here,
At the banquet appear,
Where Life fills the wine-cup, and Love makes it clear;
And Gilead’s balm in its freshness shall flow
On the wounds, which the pruning-knife gave us below! ”

“ TIME.
Time, with thy kind and never-wearying powers,
Giving whate’er we fondly count as ours;
Life, love, hope, faith, the sun, the stars and flowers;
All that to man is dear to thee we owe!
Yet does he call thee, slayer, robber, thief,
And stern, as of his foes thou wert the chief,
Filling his path with ruins, pain and grief,
Without one tender blessing to bestow!
Nature we laud, when thou, paternal Time,
Hast given maturity, as well as prime,
To all her works, in every age and clime,
Since the first floweret on her bosom grew. ”

“ From turf where I may never stand;
Then yon wild ocean crossed.
A modest foreigner it came,
Bearing a sweet, but humble name;
Yet worthy of a glorious fame
Among the sons of men;
For O the pretty stranger grew:
It drank the ether and the dew,
And from light received its hue
Upon the grave of Penn!
It sprang from out that hallowed ground,
Unclosed its eye, and smiled around,
Upon the verdure of the mound,
Where William’s ashes rest;
Where low the dust in quiet lies
Of him, among the good and wise
On earth, so meek, and in the skies
So high among the blest. ”

“ The spirit, that spanned them, hath passed from the clay!
His form, pale and cold, the dark mansion encloses;
Around it, Philanthropy, Science and Art
Their tears for their friend, as in death he reposes,
Shower warm o’er the hand, and the head, and the heart.
But there, while affection her tribute is giving,
The beauty, the grandeur, the power of his mind
The grave cannot hide! in his deeds he is living;
He shines in the light he diffused for mankind! ”

“ Or if it be some secret sin,
That haunts thy contrite soul with fears;
And here sequesters thee within
The place of fasting, gloom, and tears?
Art thou the guiltiest of thy race?
Why, thou art human, it is true;
Which is alone enough for grace
To have renewing work to do.
But, can devotion, warm and deep,
Thy duty’s bounds so closely set,
That faith may plough, and sow, and reap
By trials shunned, instead of met?
[188]
What ray of truth, revealed, would thus
Make of a tender opening soul
A close, dark blue convolvulus,
And give its bloom this inward roll? ”

“ And gladness around my home.
I saw the form of my dear, lost child!
All kindled with life he came;
And he spake in his own sweet voice, and smiled,
As soon as I called his name.
The garb he wore looked heavenly white,
As the feathery snow comes down,
And warm, as it shone in the softened light
That fell from his dazzling crown.
His eye was bright with a joy serene,
His cheek with a deathless bloom,
That only the eye of my soul hath seen,
When looking beyond the tomb.
The odors of flowers, from the thornless land
Where we deem that our blest ones are,
Seemed borne in his skirts ”

“ True, by man’s wanderings for his tempter’s lure,
Music is often drawn to scenes unmeet
For purity like hers; and made to bear
Unhallowed burdens; or, to join in rites
To turpitude in fellest places held.
Yet, like the sun, whose beaming vesture, trailed
O’er all things staining, still defies a stain;
And is at night withdrawn, and girded up,
Warm and untarnished for the morning skies—
She comes unsullied from her baser walks,
Sighs at the darkness, guilt and wo of earth;
Breathes Zion’s air, and, warmed with heavenly fire,
Mounts to her glorious home! ”

“ Earth in pristine beauty shone,
Like a gem, before his throne,
While he marked thee, as his claim—
And he sealed thee with his name.
Choice of God, thou blessed day!
At thy dawn the grave gave way
To the power of him within,
Who had, sinless, bled for sin.
Thine the radiance to illume
First, for man, the dismal tomb,
When its bars their weakness owned,
There revealing death dethroned.
Then the Sun of righteousness
Rose, a darkened world to bless,
Bringing up from mortal night,
Immortality and light. ”

“ The two fluid worlds thou art tossing between—
The cold deep below, and the skies bending o’er thee,
Alone by their changes will vary the scene.
Or, if a bright isle, on the flood-waste upstarting,
Rude ocean’s green oasis, rest thy glad eye,
’T will fade as a cloud—as a phantom departing,
’T will sink in the circle that bounds sea and sky.
Should some white-winged ship, with her light pennon streaming,
Thy heart on that wide watery desert to cheer,
Arise, like a star through night’s solitude beaming,
With meteor swiftness she ’ll soon disappear. ”

“ Thou ne’er hast told an evil tale
Of falsehood, or of truth.
Thy thoughts are ne’er on malice bent—
Nor hands to mischief prone;
Nor yet thy heart to discontent;
Though spurned, and poor and lone.
No coveting nor envy burns
In thy bright golden eye,
That calm and innocently turns
On all below the sky.
[159]
Thy cautious tongue and sober lip
No words of folly pass,
Nor, are they found to taste and sip
The madness of the glass.
Thy frugal meal is often drawn
From earth, and wood, and stone;
And when thy means by these are gone,
Thou seem’st to live on none. ”