Fair wert thou, with the light

On thy blue hills and sleepy waters cast,
From purple skies ne'er deepening into night,
Yet soft, as if each moment were their last
Of glory, fading fast

Along the mountains!-but thy golden day
Was not as those that warn us of decay.

And ever, through thy shades,

A swell of deep Eolian sound went by,
From fountain voices in their secret glades,
And low reed-whispers, making sweet reply
To summer's breezy sigh!

And young leaves trembling to the wind's light breath,
Which ne'er had touched them with a hue of death!

And the transparent sky

Rung as a dome, all thrilling to the strain
Of harps that, midst the woods, made harmony
Solemn and sweet; yet troubling not the brain
With dreams and yearnings vain,

And dim remembrances, that still draw birth
From the bewildering music of the earth.

And who, with silent tread,

Moved o'er the plains of waving Asphodel?
Who, called and severed from the countless dead,
Amidst the shadowy amaranth-bowers might dwell,
And listen to the swell

Of those majestic hymn-notes, and inhale
The spirit wandering in the immortal gale?

They of the sword, whose praise,

With the bright wine at nation's feasts, went round!
They of the lyre, whose unforgotten lays,

On the morn's wing, had sent their mighty sound,
And, in all regions, found

Their echoes midst the mountains!—and become,
In man's deep heart, as voices of his home!

They of the daring thought!

Daring and powerful, yet to dust allied,

Whose flight through stars, and seas, and depths, had sought The soul's far birth-place-but without a guide!

Sages and seers, who died,

And left the world their high mysterious dreams,
Born midst the olive-woods, by Grecian streams.

But they, of whose abode,

Midst her green valleys, earth retained no trace,
Save a flower springing from their burial-sod,
A shade of sadness on some kindred face,
A void and silent place

In some sweet home;-thou hadst no wreaths for these,
Thou sunny land! with all thy deathless trees!

The peasant, at his door,

Might sink to die, when vintage-feasts were spread,
And songs on every wind!-From thy bright shore
No lovelier vision floated round his head;

Thou wert for nobler dead!

He heard the bounding steps which round him fell,
And sighed to bid the festal sun farewell!

The slave, whose very tears

Were a forbidden luxury, and whose breast
Shut up the woes and burning thoughts of years,
As in the ashes of an urn comprest;

-He might not be thy guest!

No gentle breathings from thy distant sky
Came o'er his path, and whispered, "Liberty !"

Calm, on its leaf-strown bier,

Unlike a gift of nature to decay,

Too rose-like still, too beautiful, too dear,
The child at rest before its mother lay;

E'en so to pass away,

With its bright smile!-Elysium! what wert thou,
To her, who wept o'er that young slumberer's brow?

Thou hadst no home, green land,

For the fair creature from her bosom gone,
With life's first flowers just opening in her hand,
And all the lovely thoughts and dreams unknown,
Which in its clear eye shone,

Like the spring's wakening!-But that light was past.
-Where went the dew-drop, swept before the blast?

Not where thy soft winds played,

Not where thy waters lay in glassy sleep!—
Fade, with thy bowers, thou land of visions, fade!
From thee no voice came o'er the gloomy deep,
And bade man cease to weep!

Fade, with the amaranth plain, the myrtle grove,
Which could not yield one hope to sorrowing love!

For the most loved are they,

Of whom Fame speaks not with her clarion-voice
In regal halls! the shades o'erhang their way;
The vale, with its deep fountains, is their choice,
And gentle hearts rejoice

Around their steps!-till silently they die,
As a stream shrinks from summer's burning eye.

And the world knows not then,

Not then, nor ever,-what pure thoughts are fled !
Yet these are they, that, on the souls of men,
Come back, when Night her folding veil hath spread,
The long-remembered dead!

But not with thee might aught save glory dwell—
-Fade, fade away, thou shore of Asphodel!

LESSON XXVIII.

Better Moments.-WILLIS.

My mother's voice! how often creep
Its accents o'er my lonely hours!
Like healing sent on wings of sleep,
Or dew to the unconscious flowers.

I can forget her melting prayer,
While leaping pulses madly fly;
But in the still, unbroken air,

Her gentle tones come stealing by,
And years, and sin, and manhood, flee,
And leave me at my mother's knee.

The book of nature, and the print
Of beauty on the whispering sea,
Give aye to me some lineament

Of what I have been taught to be.
My heart is harder, and perhaps

My manliness hath drunk up tears,
And there's a mildew in the lapse
Of a few miserable years;
But nature's book is even yet
With all my mother's lessons writ.

I have been out, at eventide,
Beneath a moonlit sky of spring,
When earth was garnished like a bride,
And night had on her silver wing-
When bursting leaves, and diamond grass,
And waters leaping to the light,

And all that make the pulses pass

With wilder fleetness, thronged the night.

When all was beauty-then have I,

With friends on whom my love is flung,

Like myrrh on winds of Araby,

Gazed up where evening's lamp is hung.

And, when the beauteous spirit there
Flung over me its golden chain,
My mother's voice came on the air,

Like the light dropping of the rain,
Showered on me from some silver star:

Then, as on childhood's bended knee, I've poured her low and fervent prayer That our eternity might be,

To rise in heaven, like stars at night,
And tread a living path of light.

I have been on the dewy hills,

When night was stealing from the dawn,
And mist was on the waking rills,

And tints were delicately drawn

In the gray east,—when birds were waking,—
With a slow murmur, in the trees,
And melody by fits was breaking

Upon the whisper of the breeze,-
And this when I was forth, perchance,
As a worn reveller from the dance ;-

And when the sun sprang gloriously
And freely up, and hill and river

Were catching, upon wave and tree,
The subtile arrows from his quiver,—

I say, a voice has thrilled me then,
Heard on the still and rushing light,
Or creeping from the silent glen,

Like words from the departing night-
Hath stricken me, and I have pressed
On the wet grass my fevered brow,
And, pouring forth the earliest,

First prayer, with which I learned to bow,

Have felt my mother's spirit rush

Upon me, as in by-past years,
And, yielding to the blessed gush
Of my ungovernable tears,
Have risen up the gay, the wild—
As humble as a very child.

LESSON XXIX.

The Mountain of Miseries.-ADDISON.

Ir is a celebrated thought of Socrates, that, if all the misfortunes of mankind were cast into a public stock, in