More angry tempests drove the midnight clouds, shrouds; Far darker billows seemed, in ranks, to roll, And even the lying needle left the pole; Oft, oft looked out the eye, and nothing ken'd, And none could gather where the voyage could end; Till just as watery ruin threatened there, And Hope deferred was changing to despair, Eternal Father, whose pervading breath Awakes the blossoms from the dust of death, Whose influence trembles in the morning beam, Rolls on the cloud and murmurs in the stream ; All objects speak thy power-below-above, Power ruled by wisdom and combined with love; When winter drives his angry car along, Thy praise is uttered in the dreadful song; When Spring returning, decks her grassy shrine, Her flowers, her breezes, and her blooms are thine; Whatever glories in the heavens we trace, Are faint reflections of thy brighter face; Could these illumined eyes, more vigorous grown, Pierce through the veil of heaven and see thy throne, Could I, replenished with a saint's delight, Behold the object, not of faith, but sight; Not more conviction would be then impressed, Than now possesses this believing breast; Nor is thy goodness less than being proved, When wretched man on ruin's waves was tossed, Then, if thou findest Religion's path obscure, O precious system! blessed, bleeding tree ! * Pope. Life's disappointments, agonies and stings, So, in the cell, where stern afflictions' prey, The prisoner weeps his lingering nights away; Through the dark grate, whose iron chords so fast, Have been the lyre to many a midnight blast; Through that dark grate, the evening sun may shine, And gild his walls with crimson light divine; Some mournful melody may soothe his pain ; Some radiant beam may sparkle round his chain; Some wandering wind in mercy may repair, And waft the spirit of the blossoms there. THE PURITAN. No. 14. Oh! then the longest Summer's day Seemed too, too much in haste; still the full heart The Grave. GREAT and manifold is the grief, which I have been compelled to feel, O candid reader, in being obliged to spend so much time in talking on paper concerning myself and family. How distressing this must be to a modest man, thou canst better conceive than I describe. It is an act of self-denial to which I have submitted for thy advantage. Pride, I abjure; egotism, I detest; and the very sin I have committed, I have been witness against and lament. And thus, having used no less than seven great I's in this very paragraph, and groaned over my own sin with a hearty sorrow; like other offenders, I now return to it again, and proceed to tell thee more about my family and myself. My uncle Gideon was a little spindle-shanked man, whom the wind might have blown away. In his early youth, he was supposed to be in a consumption, and spent most of his time in visits to a certain botanical doctor, in a town about ten miles off, who kept him along between wind and water, never permitting him to be well, and never to die, until my grandfather's purse, as well as patience, was almost exhausted; for he held that neither to kill or cure was the great reproach of medicine. Some of the prescriptions of this famous doctor, I remember; and will here record them for the benefit of all my readers, who happen to be in a consumption. They are such as these: - the last strippings of a red cow's milk, taken morning and night, (the cow must be red ;) the root of elecampane, coddled in sugar-baker's molasses, to be taken at night whenever you wake up and cough; ground-ivy tea, sweetened with loaf-sugar, to be drank any time whenever your imagination is thirsty, (much better than brandy;) and a conserve made of red roses, very healing to the stomach, when overloaded with repletion; especially if accompanied with fasting. These prescriptions I have heard my uncle Gideon praise so much, that I thought it my duty to preserve them; and who knows, but my book may be famous for medicine, as well as morality; sothat if I fail in one object, I may succeed in another. No man need to starve in New England, who has abilities enough to become a botanical doctor. |