Viewing page 252 of 309

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

454 ANNE CHARLOTTE LYNCH.

Rises upon my path to light and bless,
The bright Shekinah of the wilderness,
The polar star upon a trackless sea,
The beaming Pharos of the unreach'd shore;—
It spans the clouds that gather o'er my way,
The rainbow of my life's tempestuous day.
Oh blessed thought! stay with me evermore,
And shed thy lustrous beams where midnight glooms,
As fragrant lamps burn'd in the ancient tombs.

SONNET.

As some dark stream within a cavern's breast
Flows murmuring, moaning for the distant sun,
So, ere I met thee, murmuring its unrest,
Did my life's current coldly, darkly run.
And as that stream beneath the sun's full gaze
Its separate course and life no more maintains,
But now absorb'd, transfused, far o'er the plains
It floats, etherialized in those warm rays—
So, in the sunlight of thy fervid love,
My heart so long to earth's dark channels given,
Now soars, all doubt, all pain, all ill above,
And breathes the æther of the upper heaven;
So thy high spirit holds and governs mine,
So is my life, my being lost in thine.

SONNET.

The mountain lake, o'ershadow'd by the hills,
May still gaze heavenward on the evening star,
Whose distant light its dark recesses fills,
Though boundless distance must divide them far.
Still may the lake the star's bright image wear;
Still may the star, from its blue ether dome,
Shower down its silver beams across the gloom

ANNE CHARLOTTE LYNCH. 455

And light the wave that wanders darkly there
Oh, my life's star! thus do I turn to thee,
Amid the shadows that above me roll,
Thus from my distant sphere thou shin'st on me,
Thus does thine image float upon my soul,
Through the wide space that must our lives dissever
Far as the lake and star, ah! me, for ever!

DAY-DAWN IN ITALY.

ITALIA! in thy bleeding heart
I thought e'er hope was dead,
That from thy scarr'd and prostrate form
The spark of life had fled.

I thought as memory's sunset glow
Its radiance o'er thee cast,
That all thy glory and thy fame
Were buried in the past.

Twice mistress of the world! I thought
Thy star had set in gloom,
That all thy shrines and monuments
Were but thy spirit tomb;

The mausoleum of the world
Where Art her spoils might keep;
Where pilgrims from all shrines might come
To wander and to weep.

The thunders of the Vatican
Had long since died away,
Saint Peter's chair seem'd tottering,
And crumbling to decay.

Thy ancient line of Pontiff kings
Were to the past allied;
And oft in Freedom's holy ward
They fought not on her side.

Transcription Notes:
---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-06-30 10:54:05 ---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-06-30 10:07:53