The Moment.

Once more, then, we meet
In the circles of yore;
Let our song be as sweet
In its wreaths as before,
Who claims the first place
In the tribute of song?
The God to whose grace
All our pleasures belong.
Though Ceres may spread
All her gifts on the shrine,
Though the glass may be red
With the blush of the vine,
What boots if the while
Fall no spark on the hearth;
If the heart do not smile
With the instinct of mirth?
From the clouds, from God's breast
Must our happiness fall,
'Mid the blessed, most blest
Is the moment of all!
Since creation began
All that mortals have wrought,
All that's godlike in man
Comes the flash of a thought!
For ages the stone
In the quarry may lurk,
An instant alone
Can suffice to the w...

Time flies on restless pinions constant never.
Be constant and thou chainest time forever.

Yes, my friends! that happier times have been
Than the present, none can contravene;
That a race once lived of nobler worth;
And if ancient chronicles were dumb,
Countless stones in witness forth would come
From the deepest entrails of the earth.
But this highly-favored race has gone,
Gone forever to the realms of night.
We, we live! The moments are our own,
And the living judge the right.

Brighter zones, my friends, no doubt excel
This, the land wherein we're doomed to dwell,
As the hardy travellers proclaim;
But if Nature has denied us much,
Art is yet responsive to our touch,
And our hearts can kindle at her flame.
If the laurel will not flourish here
If the myrtle is cold winter's prey,
Yet the vine, to crown us, year by year,
Still pu...

Where will a place of refuge, noble friend,
For peace and freedom ever open lie!
The century in tempests had its end,
The new one now begins with murder's cry.

Each land-connecting bond is torn away,
Each ancient custom hastens to decline;
Not e'en the ocean can war's tumult stay.
Not e'en the Nile-god, not the hoary Rhine.

Two mighty nations strive, with hostile power,
For undivided mastery of the world;
And, by them, each land's freedom to devour,
The trident brandished is the lightning hurled.

Each country must to them its gold afford,
And, Brennus-like, upon the fatal day,
The Frank now throws his heavy iron sword,
The even scales of justice to o'erweigh.

His merchant-fleets the Briton greedily
Extends, like polyp-limbs, on eve...

    THE EPIC HEXAMETER.

Giddily onward it bears thee with resistless impetuous billows;
Naught but the ocean and air seest thou before or behind.


    THE DISTICH.

In the hexameter rises the fountain's watery column,
In the pentameter sweet falling in melody down.


    THE EIGHT-LINE STANZA.

Stanza, by love thou'rt created, by love, all-tender and yearning;
Thrice dost thou bashfully fly; thrice dost with longing return.


    THE OBELISK.

On a pedestal lofty the sculptor in triumph has raised me.
"Stand thou," spake he, and I stand proudly and joyfully here.


    THE TRIUMPHAL ARCH.

"Fear not," the builder exclaimed, "the rainbow that stands in the heavens;
I will extend thee, like it, into infini...

"Do I believe," sayest thou, "what the masters of wisdom would teach me,
And what their followers' band boldly and readily swear?
Cannot I ever attain to true peace, excepting through knowledge,
Or is the system upheld only by fortune and law?
Must I distrust the gently-warning impulse, the precept
That thou, Nature, thyself hast in my bosom impressed,
Till the schools have affixed to the writ eternal their signet,
Till a mere formula's chain binds down the fugitive soul?
Answer me, then! for thou hast down into these deeps e'en descended,
Out of the mouldering grave thou didst uninjured return.
Is't to thee known what within the tomb of obscure works is hidden,
Whether, yon mummies amid, life's consolations can dwell?
Must I travel the darksome road? The thought makes me tremble...