Shall it be of the fair maiden's voice?
Of the beautiful music through twilight shades stealing From her bosom the all-hallow'd fountain of feeling, The secret-shrined thoughts of her spirit revealing? Say, what shall it be?
Shall it be of the generous youth?
Of the elegant girl with her bright brow, or blushing
When fond Love's first whisper her fair cheek is flushing,
Of the boy with the pride of his happiness gushing?
Say, what shall it be?
Not such shall our sacrifice be!
It is writ in the Book that to man hath been given,
If contrite he offer his whole heart to Heaven,
prayers shall be heard and his sins be forgiven:
Such shall our sacrifice be.
THE RECANTATION.
Published anonymously in one of the Annuals.
WORLD take thy vanities back!-I would be
Divorced by thy follies, unfetter'd and free;
For conscience, awaken'd, has taught me to feel
Too long I have knelt where thy votaries kneel,
And the homage I gave thee has darken'd the shrine
That was rear'd for a service more pure and divine.
Shall that altar be stain'd by a worship abhorr'd,
That temple defiled that was raised for the Lord,
That tablet defaced on which God had engraved
The precepts of truth-ere, by error enslaved,
The spirit had yielded obedience to sin,
And extinguish'd the flame that was kindled within ?
Shall the world's selfish maxims my reason control,
Shall I yield up the freedom and life of the soul,
Shall I cease in the arm of Jehovah to trust,
Shall I bow down and worship frail creatures of dust,
Shall I give up the hope I received at my birth,
The promise of heaven-for the trifles of earth?
Ah no!--though by sin and temptation beguiled,
Thou still art my Father!-I still am thy child;
And the footstool of mercy in anguish I steep
With tears such as heart-broken penitents weep,
When trembling they own that Thou only canst save
Th lost from destruction—the soul from the grave!
A FADING SCENE,
By the Rev. R. MONTGOMERY.
A FADING Scene, a fading scene,
Is this false world below;
And not a heart has ever been
That hath not proved it so!
The clouds are dying while we gaze
Upon them, young and warm;
And sweet flowers in the summer rays
But perish while they charm.
The trees that woo'd us as we pass'd
With many a leafy strain,
Perchance, bow wither'd by the blast
When visited again.
The music that the soul doth melt,
Like magic from the skies,
Though sweetly heard, and softly felt,
In swiftest echo flies.
Our pleasures are but fainting hues
Reflected o'er the waves,-
Our glories-they are phantom views
That lure us to our graves!
And Beauty,-see her 'mid the crowd,
A night-queen in her bloom;
To-morrow in her maiden shroud,
A martyr for the tomb!
And Love--how frequent does it mourn
For some remember'd scene;
Or doom'd in darkness reft or lorn,
To live on what hath been!
And friends,-alas! how few we find
That consecrate their name,
With glowing heart and gen'rous mind
To feed the hallow'd flame.
But should there be some blessed one,
However sad or lone,
Whom dearly we can look upon,
And feel that friend our own,-
The blasting wings of Fate unfold,
They bear him far away;
Or else we mourn him dead and cold,
Companion of the clay !
Oh no! there's nothing on this earth
We fashion or we feel,
But death is mingled with its birth,
And sorrow with its weal.
Then, hail the hour of glorious doom!
That wings my soul away
To regions radiant with the bloom
Of everlasting day!
By MOIR, the Delta of Blackwood's Magazine, whence this is extracted.
This ode, composed by Judas Hallevy bar Samuel, a Spanish Rabbi of the twelfth century, is said to be still recited every year, during the Fast observed in commemoration of the Destruction of Jerusalem. The versifier has been much indebted to a very literal translation, from the original necessarily obscure Spanish of the Rabbi, into excellent French, by Joseph Mainzer, Esq., a gentleman to whom the sacred music of this country is under great and manifold obligations.
CAPTIVE and sorrow-pale, the mournful lot
Say, hast thou, Sion, of thy sons forgot?
Hast thou forgot the innocent flocks, that lay
Prone on thy sunny banks, or frisk'd in play
Amid thy lilied meadows? Wilt thou turn
A deaf ear to thy supplicants, who mourn,
Downcast in earth's far corners? Unto thee
Wildly they turn in their lone misery;
For wheresoe'er they rush in their despair,
The pitiless Destroyer still is there!
Eden of earth! despisest thou the sighs
From the slave's heart that rise
To thee, amid his fetters-who can dare
Still to hope on in his forlorn despair-
Whose morn and evening tears for thee fall down
Like dews on Hermon's thirsty crown-
And who would blessed be in all his ills,
Wander'd his feet once more even on thy desert hills!
But not is Hope's fair star extinguish'd quite In rayless night;
And, Sion, as thy fortunes I bewail,
Harsh sounds my voice, as of the birds that sail
The stormy dark. Let but that star be mine,
And through the tempests tremulously shine;
So, when the brooding clouds have overpast,
Rejoicing, with the dawn, may come at last,
Even as an instrument, whose lively sound
Makes the warm blood in every bosom bound,
And whose triumphant notes are given
Freely in songs of thanksgiving to Heaven!
Bethel !—and as thy name's name leaves my tongue,
The very life-drops from my heart are wrung!
Thy sanctuary-where, veil'd in mystic light,
For ever burning, and for ever bright,
Jehovah's awful majesty reposed,
And shone for aye heaven's azure gates unclosed-
Thy sanctuary!-where from the Eternal flow'd
The radiance of his glory, in whose power
Noonday itself like very darkness show'd,
And stars were none at midnight's darkest hour-
Thy sanctuary! oh there! oh there! that I
Might breathe my troubled soul out, sigh on sigh,
There, where thine effluence, mighty God, was pour'd
On thine elect, who, kneeling round, adored!
Stand off! the place is holy. Know ye not,
Of potter's clay the children, that this spot
Is sacred to the Everlasting One-
The Ruler over heaven, and over earth?
Stand off, degraded slaves, devoid of worth!
Nor dare profane again, as ye have done,
This spot-'tis holy ground--profane it not!
Oh, might I cleave, with raptured wing, the waste
Of the wide air, then, where in splendour lie
Thy ruins, would my sorrowing spirit haste,
Forth to outpour its flood of misery !—
There, where thy grandeur owns a dire eclipse,
Down to the dust as sank each trembling knee,
Unto thy dear soil should I lay my face,
Thy very stones in rapture to embrace,
And to thy smouldering ashes glue my lips!
And how, O Sion! how should I but weep,
As on our fathers' tombs I fondly gazed,
Or, wistfully, as turn'd mine eye
To thee, in all thy desolate majesty,
Hebron, where rests the mighty one in sleep,
And high his pillar of renown was raised!
There-in thine atmosphere-'twere blessedness
To breathe a purer ether. Oh! to me
Thy dust than perfumes dearer far should be,
And down thy rocks the torrent streams should roam
With honey in their foam!
Oh, sweet it were-unutterably sweet
Even though with garments rent, and bleeding feet, To wander over the deserted places
Where once thy princely palaces arose,
And 'mid the weeds and wild-flowers mark the traces,
Where the ground, yawning in its earthquake throes,
The ark of covenant and the cherubim
Received, lest stranger hands, that reek'd the while
With blood of thine own children, should defile
Its heaven-resplendent glory, and bedim :
And my dishevell'd locks, in my despair,
All madly should I tear;
And as I cursed the day that dawn'd in heaven-
The day that saw thee to destruction given,
Even from my very frenzy should I wring
A rough, rude comfort in my sorrowing.
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