TO THE EYE.
Sublime ambassador from soul to soul!—
By thee Hope sends her passport,—Hate defies,—
Genius a flood ethereal bids roll,
And Love speaks what the treacherous tongue denies.
To thee, all languages of earth are known,
Unbought by student's toil thy science flows,
Alike to thee the hovel or the throne,
The sands of Afric, or the polar snows.—
When Grief her darts of agony doth hurl,
Ruling the heated brain with baneful sway,
Thou, through thy silent, mystic gate of pearl,
Dost kindly give the liquid sorrow way.
When man the weary hours of Pain does tell,
Worn down with sickness or consumed by care,
Thou, to the calmness of thy fringed cell
Dost woo sweet slumber, and his strength repair.
At that dread hour when soul and body part,
When with an icy seal the lip is bound,
Thou bear'st the message of the expiring heart
To lover and to friend, who weep around.
But holiest is thy last deputed care,—
When this frail vesture seeks its native clod,
To pour Devotion's deep and voiceless prayer
In trembling glances to a pardoning God.