Identifier: poetspoetryiname00gris (find matches)
Title: The poets and poetry in America, to the middle of the nineteenth century
Year: 1850 (1850s)
Authors: Griswold, Rufus W. (Rufus Wilmot), 1815-1857
Subjects: American poetry
Publisher: Philadelphia, Carey and Hart
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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ny a floral gem:Those simple ornaments about Her candid brow, discloseThe loitering springs last violet, And summers earliest rose ;But not a flower lies breathing thereSweet as herself, or half so fair.Exchanging lustre with the sun, A part of day she strays—A glancing, living, human smile On Natures face she plays.Can none instruct me what are theseCompanions of the lofty trees 1 Intent to blend her with his lot,Fate formd her all that he was not;And, as by mere unlikeness, thoughts Associate we see,Their hearts, from very difference, caught A perfect sympathy.The household goddess here to beOf that one dusky votary,She left her pallid countrymen, An earthling most divine,And sought in this sequesterd wood A solitary shrine.Behold them roaming hand in hand,Like night and sleep, along the land ;Observe their movements:—he for her Restrains his active stride,While she assumes a bolder gait To ramble at his side;Thus, even as the steps they frame,Their souls fast alter to the same.
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::j)So EDWARD C. PINKNEY. 255 The one forsakes ferocity, And momently grows mild; The other tempers more and moreThe artful with the wild. She humanizes him, and he Educates him to liberty. 0, say not they must soon be old,— Their limbs prove faint, their breasts feel cold ! Yet envy I that sylvan pair More than my words express,—The singular beauty of their lot, And seeming happiness.They have not been reduced to shareThe painful pleasures of despair;Their sun declines not in the sky, Nor are their wishes cast,Like shadows of the afternoon, Repining towards the past:With nought to dread or to repent,The present yields them full content.In solitude there is no crime ; Their actions all are free,And passion lends their way of life The only dignity;And how can they have any cares 1—Whose interest contends with theirs 1 The world, for all they know of it,Is theirs:—for them the stars are lit;For them the earth beneath is green, The heavens above are bright;For them the moon doth

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