Sweet to the gay of heart is Summer's smile, Sweet the wild music of the laughing Spring; But ah! my soul far other scenes beguile, Where gloomy storms their sullen shadows fling. Is it for me to strike the Idalian string-- Raise the soft music of the warbling wire, While in my ears the howls of furies ring, And melancholy waste the vital fire? Away with thoughts like these--To some lone cave Where howls the shrill blast, and where sweeps the wave, Direct my steps; there, in the lonely drear, I'll sit remote from worldly noise, and muse Till through my soul shall Peace her balm infuse, And whisper sounds of comfort in mine ear. SONNET. Quick o'er the wintry waste dart fiery shafts-- Bleak blows the blast--now howls--then faintly dies-- And oft upon its awful wings it wafts The dying wanderer's distant, feeble cries. Now, when athwart the gloom gaunt Horror stalks, And midnight hags their damned vigils hold, The pensive poet 'mid the wild waste walks, And ponders on the ills life's paths unfold. Mindless of dangers hovering round, he goes, Insensible to every outward ill; Yet oft his bosom heaves with rending throes, And oft big tears adown his worn cheeks trill. Ah! 'tis the anguish of a mental sore, Which gnaws his heart, and bids him hope no more. BALLADS, SONGS, AND HYMNS. GONDOLINE A BALLAD. The night it was still, and the moon it shone Serenely on the sea, And the waves at the foot of the rifted rock They murmur'd pleasantly, When Gondoline roam'd along the shore, A maiden full fair to the sight; Though love had made bleak the rose on her cheek, And turn'd it to deadly white. Her thoughts they were drear, and the silent tear It fill'd her faint blue eye, As oft she heard, in fancy's ear, Her Bertrand's dying sigh. Her Bertrand was the bravest youth Of all our good king's men, And he was gone to the Holy Land To fight the Saracen. And many a month had pass'd away, And many a rolling year, But nothing the maid from Palestine Could of her lover hear. Full oft she vainly tried to pierce The ocean's misty face; Full oft she thought her lover's bark She on the wave could trace. And every night she placed a light In the high rock's lonely tower, To guide her lover to the land, Should the murky tempest lower. But now despair had seized her breast, And sunken in her eye; "Oh tell me but if Bertrand live, And I in peace will die." She wander'd o'er the lonely shore, The curlew scream'd above, She heard the scream with a sickening heart, Much boding on her love. Yet still she kept her lonely way, And this was all her cry. "Oh! tell me but if Bertrand live, And I in peace shall die." And now she came to a horrible rift All in the rock's hard side, A bleak and blasted oak o'erspread The cavern yawning wide. And pendant from its dismal top The deadly nightshade hung; The hemlock and the aconite Across the mouth was flung.