POETRY.

TJ1Rl SONNET.

TO NATURE IN HER. A.SO:RIBED CHARACTER, OF UNMEANING AND .4.‘ToRgAt'PRMTP.ICi VOACB.

0 NATURE ! thou whom I have thought to love, Seeing in thine the reflex of God's face, A loatli'd abstraction-would usurp thy place,.—. While 1E111 they not dethrone, they but disprove.

Weird Nature ! can it be that joy is fled, And bald un-meaning lurks beneath thy smile ?

That beauty haunts the dust but to beguile, And that with Order, Love and Hope are dead ?

Pitiless Force, all-unniov'd, Dread mother of anfather'4:1 worlds, assuage Thy wrath on us, .—be this wild life reprov'd, And trampled into nothing in thy rage !

Vain prayer, although the last of humankind,— Force is not wrath,—she is but deaf and blind. June 19.

Zr.

Dread Force, in whom of old we lov'd to see A nursing mother, clothing with her life The seeds of Love divine, with what sore strife We hold or yield our thoughts of Love and thee !

Thou art net ' but restless as the °Peala Filling with ain)1eaa toil the endless yearei,-, Stumbling on thought, and throwing off the spheres, Churning the ThATerse with mindless motion.

Dull fount of joy, nnhallow'd source of tears, Cold motor of our fervid faith and song,

Dead, but engendering life, love, pangs, and fears, Thou crownedst thy wild work with foulest wrong,—

When first thou lightedst on a seeming goal,

And darkly blunder'd on mfin's suffering soul.

Jane 20.

III.

Blind Cyclop, hurling stones of destiny, And net in fury !,--.werking bootless ill,

In were vacuity of mind and will—

Man's soul revolts against thy work and thee !

Slaves of a despot, conscienceless and nil, Slaves, by mad chance befool'd to think them free, We still might rise, and with one heart agree To in the ruthless " grinding of thy mill !"

Dead tyrant, tho' our cries and groans pass by thee, Man, cutting off from each new " tree of life " Himself, its fatal flower, could still defy thee, In waging on thy work eternal strife,—

The races come and coming evermore, Heaping with hecatonila$ thy dead-sea shore.