Part 1 — TO ——.

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BY GEORGE LUNT.

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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.