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66  67
MARIA A. BROOKS.

"Though all the earth is wing'd, from bound to bound;
Though heaven desires, and angels watch, and pray
To see their ranks with fair completion crown'd;
So few to bless their utmost search are found,
That half in heaven have ceased to hope the day;
And pensive seraphs' signs, o'er heavenly harps resound.

"And when, long wandering from his blissful height,
One like to thee some quick-eyed spirit views,
He springs to heaven, more radiant from delight,
And heaven's blue domes ring loud with rapture at the news.

"Yet oft the being, by all heaven beloved,
(So doubtful every good, in world like this;)
Some fiend corrupts ere ripe to be removed:
And tears are seen in eyes made but to float in bliss."

MIDNIGHT.
(FROM THE SAME.)

'T IS now the hour of mirth, the hour of love,
The hour of melancholy.  Night, as vain
Of her full beauty, seems to pause above,
That all may look upon her ere it wane.

The heavenly angel watch'd his subject's star
O'er all that's good and fair benignly smiling;
The sighs of wounded love he hears, from far;
Weeps that he cannot heal, and wafts a hope beguiling.

The nether earth looks beauteous as a gem;
High o'er her groves, in floods of moonlight laving,
The towering palm displays his silver stem,
The while his plumy leaves scarce in the breeze are waving.

The nightingale among his roses sleeps;
The soft-eyed doe in thicket deep is sleeping;
The dark green myrrh her tears of fragrance weeps,
And, every odorous spike in limpid dew is steeping.

Proud prickly cerea, now thy blossom 'scapes
Its cell; brief cup of light; and seems to say,
"I am not for gross mortals; blood of grapes—
And sleep for them!  Come spirits, while ye may!"

A silent stream winds darkly through the shade,
And slowly gains the Tigris, where 't is lost;
By a forgotten prince, of old, 't was made,
And, in its course, full many a fragment crost

Of marble fairly carved; and by its side
Her golden dust the flaunting lotus threw
O'er her white sisters, throned upon the tide,
And queen of every flower that loves perpetual dew.

THE GNOME'S SONG.
(FROM THE SAME.)

PRELUDING low, in notes that faint and tremble,
Swelling, awakening, dying, plaining deep,
While such sensations in the soul assemble,
As make it pleasure to the eyes to weep.

Is there a heart that ever loved in vain,
Though years have thrown their veil o'er all most dear,
That lives not each sensation o'er again
In sympathy with sounds like those that mingle here?

Still the fair Gnome's light hand the chime prolongs;
And while his utmost art the strain employs,
Cephroniel's softened son in gushing songs,
Pour'd forth his sad, deep sense of long departed joys.

Transcription Notes:
---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-06-27 16:32:14 ---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-06-27 22:47:56 ---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-06-28 07:23:45