On a View of Mont Blanc [pp. 177]

THE TOKEN-BIRD.
THE TOKEN-BIRD.
THE distaff trembles within my hand;
Margaret, set the wheel away;
Loosen the spindle, and slip the band,
For granny will spin no more to-day.
It was never my habit to lounge in the sun,
And surely my work is almost done,
For how to live idly were hard to learn:
Well, well, we have never our ways to choose,
When God sends the darkness we can not lose
The glimmer of stars that He makes to burn.
He sent me a token but yesternight;
As I sat by my wheel, in the twilight dim,
A gray, gray bird, with an eye of light,
Flew in, and perched on its quiet rim:
It perched, and ever it looked at me.
I waited as still, with my hands on my knee,
Till it wandered away on a noiseless wing;
And I knew, with a quiver of sweet content,
Ere many more days and nights were spent,
Slowly, for me, the bells would ring.
Let them ring! the village was poor and new,
And no bells were a-chiming, when I was wed;
They will ring for my marriage and burial, too,
The bells that ring over me when I am dead.
I measured the linen, long years ago,
For a shroud, and a sheet as white as snovw There is rosemary in it to make it sweet:
I would like to lie at the window west,
Where the chirping of swallows is heard the best,
And the voices of children in the street.
They will carry me down the church-yard rows,
To the place which has long been kept for me;
XWhere the feverfew, in the long grass, blows,
And the locust pipes right merrily.
I shall lie with my nearest, my dearest kin,
Husband and children will close me in,
With the baby, that lived but a year, at my head;
Ah, I wonder if she has outstripped us quite,
Reached to a full-grown angel's hight The little one garnered away with the dead?
'Sturtiums and buttercups over me sow,
Such as your father, when I was a lass,
Coming to meet me at sunset's glow,
Gathered for me, in the meadow grass:
In the harvest sun, and in April rain,
The flowers shall be for a sign, to us twain,
That the world has not spotted our love with grime;
And under the bitterest snows and sleet,
Like us, they'11 be waiting, to rise complete,
With glistening raiment, in God's good time.
T1 he flails in the barn are a-dropping fast,
But the first of the wheat will not go to the mill
Till my season of labor and life is past,
Till my wheel, in the garret, is standing still.
Where's little Ruth? hold her up for a kiss,
'T is the last I ever will give her, I wis;
For the end, that the token foreshadowed, is nigh —
VOL. XXVIII.-2
Hark! there's a footstep upon the floor,
Some one is calling me at the door Yes, Father!-Margaret-Ruth-good-by.
ON A VIEW OF MONT BLANC.
A THOUSAND ages past the mighty seal
Of God, the universal Father, stamped
The indelible glory of his majesty
Upon thy shining brow; since then how oft
Adown thy bleak and rugged cheeks have rolled
The icy tear-drops of the clouds! how oft
Have pitilessly, pelting tempests beaten
Upon thine aged, thin, and wint'ry locks,
And in their mocking fury crown'd thy head
With crowns of flame, that thro' the howling night
Fell flickering! how oft, 0, giant frame,
Hast thou been racked with the fierce pain that shoots
Along thine iron ribs, when earthquakes stir
The central fires of the deep-groaning earth,
And from the slimy bottom of the deep
Wonderful islands rear their smoky front
To the astonished stars! how oft hast thou
Been stunned with avalanches, whose dull roar,
Like muffled thunder heard among the hills,
Rolled o'er the answ'ring valleys at thy foot!
How oft-how oft? No human tongue may tell.
Upon thy glinting, cloud-o'ertopping peaks
The feet of passing ages fell, and fall,
As oft as twilight dew drops on the flowersWhose blushing cheeks have felt the Summer's touch,
And gayly turn their young lips to the moonImpairing not, but nourishing thy strength,
While at thy base proud empires rise and fall,
And thrones sink noiseless in the waves of time.
Oblivion, like the wing of some dread Fate,
Shall cast its shadow o'er the rayless past;
And names of heroes, that were once the wonder
Of gaping millions, and the theme of bards,
Shall be effaced as utterly from earth
As frost-work fading in the fiery sun.
But thou, stern watcher of the cloudless stars,
That never hide from thine unflinching eye,
Shall stand unmoved amid the mingling wreck,
Nor dread the mandate of the passing years.
One thing, alone, on earth, can be thy peer,
And is by God's omnipotence decreed
Sublimer, and more glorious than thou
In all thy massive majesty canst beMy soul! the immortal Spirit, which is part
Of the eternal essence that created
Thyself and me; that spark of vivid flame,
Whose parent and interminable fire
Warms with sweet life and beauty yon wide world;
Whose wond'rous tones, on echoing winds upborne,
Amid thy soundless chasms faint and die;
This shall be throned among the stars when thou
Art like the dust I trampled'neath my feet;
This shall sing praises to eternal God
When all thy greatness, like an echo, drifts
Away from the dead glory of the world!
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