I call upon the waves and they reply, But not the voice I fain would hear replied, Vainly I seek it in the wind’s deep sigh, Earth, air, the sky’s blue depths and ocean’s tide. These have their various voices, soft or stern, Moulding our feelings to the varied hour, And the wrung heart will hear them and return To claim on Nature’s breast a mother’s power. The dewy freshness of earth’s vernal prime, Her budding promise lapp’d in fragrant showers, The sacred sweetness of her summer time, And her bright bosom cover’d o’er with flowers; The viewless music of the breathing air, The rushing wind that sweeps across the plain, The breeze that dallies with the brow of care And stirs the languid pulse to life again; Heaven’s glorious arch, when morning through the skies Skirts all its blue with gold, or sweeter far At the dim twilight, or when softly rise The new-born moon and glittering star on star; And the dark-rolling voiceful sea, whose moan, On the wide waste or by the storm-beat shore, Asks the soul’s answer like a spirit tone, And the deep soul speaks inly to its roar; These have their language, mirthful, sad, or wild, Like changing passion in the human breast; We call them to us, as a wilder’d child His home’s companions, and they give us rest; Yet though they speak, I cannot hear—no more Comes the sweet music of the one loved tone, And standing lonely by the lone sea-shore Sad as my heart falls its perpetual moan. * * * * * THE STAGE. BY WILLIAM WALLACE. Oh! I could weep when I perceive the cloud Of dark impurities around our Stage, Where those creations, gay, or sad, or proud— Hamlet’s strange wo, or wronged Othello’s rage Hallowed fair Albion’s selectest age: Yet would I not, like certain ones, behold Theatric pomp proscribed in liberal land, While pale Contempt (as once in ages old) Kills with a single look the buskin band. A beauty sparkles yet around the Place— A mystic charm—a fairy-beaming grace— Appealing loudly to the coldest heart: These boards once held the glory of our race, And still they reverence a Shakspeare’s Art. * * * * * “TO WIN THE LOVE OF THEE.” BALLAD. DEDICATED TO MISS LEO M. CASSIN, OF GEORGETOWN, D. C. BY J. G. E. John F. Nunns, _184 Chesnut Street: Philadelphia_. [Illustration: musical score] [Illustration: musical score]