THE TELEGRAPH SPIRIT.

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BY JNO. S. DU SOLLE.

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The telegraph-wires utter, when the wind blows, certain singularly sad, yet spirited music-tones. When they pass through the leaves of a tree the effect is strangely beautiful.

Mysterious Spirit! hark! I hear thee voicing,

Up where the wind-breath woos thee, with its tone

Of mingled mournfulness and strange rejoicing —

As though ’twould fear thee, yet to love were prone.

What doth it whisper ’mid the green tree’s shading?

Or art thou trembling, not with hope but ire?

Chid’st thou its love? Or is it thee upbraiding

With thine inconstant tongue of living fire?

Is it some life-tale thou art subtly telling?

Some tale of dark and passionate romance —

That the young leaflets seem with wonder swelling,

Shrink at thy touch, and eye thee so askance?

Or are they timid only with emotion?

And pout their tiny lips up but for show,

O’er some new story of the heart’s devotion,

That thou art murmuring to the earth below?

Or, ravished from the grasp of Time and Distance,

Com’st thou with News, to gift, with sudden joy,

The sad heart with a sense of fresh existence —

Making the old man feel once more a boy?

Or bear’st thou words to soothe not, but to sunder?

Quietly rupturing the holiest ties —

Just as the lightning’s flash, without its thunder,

Blasts what it looks on with its venomous eyes!

Or is’t, oh, Captive One! thy life-voice fretting,

That, like a caged-bird wrested from its home,

(Thy fluttering wing its sky paths unforgetting,)

Along thy prison-wires such murmurs come?

I hear thee now! And chafing, ah, how vainly!

For they have chained the death-glance of thine eye —

Sightless as Samson—struggling more insanely —

Thou couldst not if thou wouldst, lie down and die!