Want [pp. 224]

[MARCH
door employments of the season. He
says of Winter,
" The flowers themselves, whate'er their hue
With all their fragrance, all their glistening,
Call to the heart for inward listening."
"I crown thee king of intimate delights,
Fire-side enjoyments, home born happiness,
And all the comforts that the lowly roof
Of undisturb'd retirement, and the hours
Of long uninterrupted ev'ning know."
It is the want of this "inward listening"
that deprives the material world of half
its charms, and life of one of the purest
sources of happiness. We know that
nature becomes interesting to us from her
association with past feelings and persons, yet her beauty has power over the
heart quite independent of times and circumstances, and while we acknowledge
that human emotion must often color all
the eye looks upon, we still believe that
the love of Beauty may be disconnected
from self-she may be loved as the reflector of some of the qualities of the
Divine Mind, and thus as the awakener
of noble aspirations, and as one among
the many influences designed to lead man
back to the source of all purity and perfection.
C(ECILIA.
We are far from thinking lightly of
the opportunity that winter affords for intellectual improvement, and for the cult,' vation of the home affections, but the
enjoyments of the family circle should
not lead us to forget that nature still offers delights to the eye, and as a consequence lessons to the heart. The office
of Beauty is not to please alone, but to
purify, and elevate to the contemplation
of One whose messenger she is, and
whose infinitude she imperfectly teaches
by that mysterious and subtle influence
which all feel she exerts, but whose cause
escapes our analysis. What Wordsworth
says of one of her manifestations, we say
of all,
WANT.
I.
You swore you lov'd me all last June;
And now December's come and gone,
The Summer went with you too soon,
The Winter goes-alone.
II.
Next Spring the leaves will all be green:
But love like ours, once turned to pain,
Can be no more what it hath been,
Tho' roses bloom again.
III.
Return, return the unvalued wealth
I gave, which scarcely profits youThe heart's lost youth-the soul's lost health In vain I... false friend, adieu!
IV.
I keep one faded violet
Of all once ours-you left no more,
What I have lost I may forget,
But you cannot restore.
Poems of Owen Meredith.
Want.
224
February, 1856.
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