Virginia Free Press & Farmers' Repository

POETICAL.

The following beautiful lines, by Nathan W. Taylor, of Yale College, Connecticut, obtained the prize offered by the editors of the Boston Recorder and Telegraph, for the best poetical production furnished for that paper during the year 1825:

MISANTHROPIC HOURS.

I sometimes feel as if I could blot
All traces of mankind from earth—
As if 'twere wrong to blast them not,
They so degrade, so shame their birth:
To think that earth should be so fair,
So beautiful and bright a thing:
That nature should come forth and wear
Such glorious appareling:
That sky, sea, air, should live and glow
With light and love and holiness,
And yet men never feel or know
How much a God of love can bless—
How deep their debt of thankfulness.

I've seen the sun go down, and light
Like floods of gold poured on the sky—
When every tree and flower was bright,
And every pulse was beating high,
And the full soul was gushing love,
And longing for its home above—
And then when men would soar if ever,
To the high homes of thought and soul!—
When life's degrading ties shall sever,
And the free spirit spurn control
Then have I seen, oh how my cheek
Is burning with the shame I feel—
That truth is in the words I speak;—
I've seen my fellow creatures steal
Away to their unhallowed mirth,
As if the revelries of earth
Were all that they could feel or share:
And glorious heavens were scarcely worth
Their passing notice or their care.

I've said I was a worshipper
At woman's shrine—yet even there
I found unworthiness of thought:
And when I deemed I just had caught
The radiance of that holy light,
Which makes earth beautiful and bright,
When eyes of fire their flashes sent
And rosy lips looked eloquent:
Oh! I have turned and wept to find
Beneath it all a trifling mind.

I sat in one of those high halls
Where genius breathes in sculptured stone,
Where shaded light in softness falls
On pencilled beauty.
"They were gone,
Whose hearts of fire and hands of skill
Had wrought such power: but they spoke
To me in every feature still,
And fresh lips breathed, and dark eyes woke,
And crimson cheeks flushed glowingly
To life and motion, I had laughed
And wept with Mary at the tomb
Where Jesus suffered—I had felt
The warm blood rushing to my brow
At the stern buffets of the Jew—
Had seen the Son of Glory bow
And bleed for sins he never knew:
And I had wept
I thought that all
Must feel like me—and when there came
A stranger bright and beautiful,
With steps of grace and eye of flame
And tone and look most sweetly bent
To make her presence eloquent
Oh! then I looked for tears
We stood
Before the scene on Calvary
I saw the piercing spear—the blood—
The gall—the wreath of agony—
I saw his quivering lips in prayer,
"Father forgive them”—ah! was there
I turned in bitterness of soul
And spoke of Jesus. I had thought
Her feelings would refuse control:
For woman's heart I knew was fraught
With gushing sympathies. She gazed
A moment on in carelessness,
And coldly curled her lip, and praised
The high priest's garments, "Could it be
That look was meant, dear Lord, for thee?
Oh! what is woman—what her smile—
Her lips of love—her eyes of light,
What is she, if her lips revile
The lovely Jesus"
Love may write
His name upon her marble brow.
And linger in her curl of jet—
The bright spring flower may scarcely bow
Beneath her step, and yet—and yet
Without that meek and gentle grace, she'll be
A lighter thing than vanity.