Parent!--who with speechless feeling
O'er thy cradled treasure bent,
Every year, new claims revealing,
Yet thy wealth of love unspent,--
Hast thou seen that blossom blighted,
By a drear, untimely frost?
All thy labor unrequited?
Every glorious promise lost?
Wife!--with agony unspoken,
Shrinking from affliction's rod,
Is thy prop,--thine idol broken,--
Fondly trusted,--next to God?
Husband!--o'er thy hope a mourner,
Of thy chosen friend asham'd,
Hast thou to her burial borne her,
Unrepentant,--unreclaimed?
Child!--in tender weakness turning
To thy heaven-appointed guide,
Doth a lava-poison burning,
Tinge with gall, affection's tide?
Still that orphan-burden bearing,
Darker than the grave can show,
Dost thou bow thee down despairing,
To a heritage of woe?
Country!--on thy sons depending,
Strong in manhood, bright in bloom,
Hast thou seen thy pride descending
Shrouded,--to th' unhonor'd tomb?
Rise!--on eagle-pinion soaring,--
Rise!--like one of Godlike birth,--
And Jehovah's aid imploring,
Sweep the Spoiler from the earth.
L. H. S.
The following beautiful lines have been very generally ascribed to the
pen of the Hon. R. H. Wilde, a member of the present House of
Representatives from the State of Georgia. We do not know that Mr. W.
has ever confessed the authorship, but we think that they would not
discredit even their supposed origin. We have had the pleasure to read
some of Mr. Wilde's brilliant speeches in Congress, and we are
confident that they are the emanations of a mind deeply imbued with the
spirit of poesy. Not that we thence necessarily infer that these lines
are the genuine offspring of his muse--but merely allude to the
character of his parliamentary efforts, in connexion with the common
opinion that the poetry is from the same source. One of our present
objects is to give what we conceive to be a correct version of these
admired lines; for in almost all the copies we have seen, we have been
struck with several gross errors, alike injurious to their sense and
harmony. Not the least remarkable of these errors has been the uniform
substitution of _Tempè_ for some other word,--thereby imputing to the
author the geographical blunder of converting the delightful and
classic valley of Greece, into a desert shore or strand. We have no
doubt that _Tampa_ is the word originally written by the author, there
being a bay of that name in Florida sometimes described on the maps as
the bay of Espiritu Santo.