Book 2 — TO MISS LIGHT UNDERWOOD.

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BY J. R. BARRICK.

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I have been out this lovely eve,

With Nature’s self to muse,

While pleasant thoughts fell gently on

My heart like falling dews;

And every star and every flower

That gave their presence to the hour,

And every voice of melody,

Seemed laden with sweet thoughts of thee.

I mused upon thy deep, high soul

Of intellect and grace:

I mused on all the loveliness

Of thy fair form and face:

And thy bright smile unto my dreams

Came stealing like the glow that beams

From sky and star, in waves of light

Upon the far, dim shades of night.

With every tone of moonlight sound,

With every breeze of balm,

With every fountain, lake and stream,

So beautiful and calm,

With every cloud, with every star,

And every sound borne from afar,

Thy voice seemed mingling with the whole,

Of Music’s self the life and soul.

And as I gazed up to the sky,

And on the earth below,

My thoughts went back a few brief months,

’Mid saddening scenes of wo:

When thou wert lost in rayless night,

A wanderer from the sense of sight,

When Nature’s self had ceased to cheer

Thy high heart with her beauty dear,

I mused on the long night of wo

That thou wert doomed to share,

When not a hope was left to beam

Upon thy dark despair:

I thought how sad it was to be

From earth and sky shut out like thee,

To pine beneath a cloud of gloom,

Hung o’er thee, like a raven’s plume.

But now thou art restored again,

To former sense of sight,

And lookest back with fearful gaze

On that remembered night:

And happy in thy mind’s high powers

Thou rangest Thought’s Elysian bowers,

And canst behold with joyous eyes,

The wide, green earth, and free blue skies.