While all the scene of life would seem Waste as a winter day, And what this vale hath been to me, Again-again it ne'er can be! For my thought is in another land, And my hope beyond another sky Than this, where the vilest weeds expand, If woman's gentle soul may prove When feelings have their warmest power, A bosom that unalter'd glows, With faith such as her own bestows, Time can no future ills impart To wreck her peace or break her heart; That heart will still surmount them all. Thus Japheth's wife had never known As e'er the heart of mortal knew; And she could share its bliss the same, Through all the woes that went and came, Alike, amid her native glee, From all their shades of suffering free. Though Noah often would her chide Or match resistance with the art And she, despite of good or ill, Was wayward, and the favourite still. She said she had no song that e'er A pleasure to her heart could bring, Had ask'd her, 'mid her warblings clear, And if it was, that he would cast A cold restraint as in the past, To anthems of the holiest kind, Her strain would, haply, please the more The sooner that it should be o'er: And yet, while thus she seem'd to chide, And with her fingers drew aside The wilderness of ringlets fair, That round her snow-white forehead hung, As, lifting up her voice, she sung, Still pouring forth the mystic words In warblings wilder than a bird's. SONG OF THE WIFE OF JAPHETH. It is not for those who are light of heart To such as have found, and may find, no part And all that can bring or can bid depart The light of the mind and the glow of the heart, And banish the feelings, by which are known The star yet shall smile, though the clouds of gloom Awhile may hang darkly o'er it, And earthly joy to the spirit will come, Though the world lie waste before it ; For there is a Being, who liveth for aye, O'er the changes of time, and of man's decay,Who can weigh the dust though the heart be dead, And know of the life when the life is fled,— Can trace the path of the wand'ring will, And the way of its thought, that is wilder still, That beams on our being, by night and by day. My brothers are heaving the hollow sigh, And my father hath lifted his voice on high, 'Mid the darkness of sorrow stooping; But why, though the night-storm be wild and cold, |