* * * * *
Then spake the Sylph of Spring serene,
"'Tis I thy joyous heart, I ween.
With sympathy shall move:
For I with living melody
Of birds in choral symphony,
First waked thy soul to poesy,
To piety and love.
"When thou, at call of vernal breeze,
And beckoning bough of budding trees,
Hast left thy sullen fire;
And stretched thee in some mossy dell,
And heard the browsing wether's bell,
Blithe echoes rousing from their cell
To swell the tinkling choir:
"Or lured by some fresh-scented gale
That wooed the moored fisher's sail
To tempt the mighty main,
Hast watched the dim, receding shore,
Now faintly seen the ocean o'er,
Like hanging cloud, and now no more
To bound the sapphire plain.
"Then, wrapped in night, the scudding bark,
(That seemed, self-poised amid the dark,
Through upper air to leap,)
Beheld, from thy most fearful height,
The rapid dolphin's azure light
Cleave, like a living meteor bright,
The darkness of the deep."
* * * * *
=_John Pierpont, 1785-1866._= (Manual, p. 513.)
=_326._= A TEMPERANCE SONG.
In Eden's green retreats,
A water-brook--that played
Between soft, mossy seats,
Beneath a plane tree's shade,
Whose rustling leaves
Danced o'er its brink--
Was Adam's drink,
And also Eve's.
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