APPENDIX.

A MESSAGE FROM THE MOON:

A THOUGHT AT EXETER, DURING THE GREAT ECLIPSE OF THE SUN, MAY 15, 1836.

THE evening star peep'd forth at noon,
To learn what ail'd the sun, her sire,
When, lo! the intervening moon

Plunged her black shadow through his fire,

Of ray by ray his orb bereft,

Till but one slender curve was left,
And that seem'd trembling to expire.

The sickening atmosphere grew dim,
A faint, chill breeze crept over all;
As in a swoon, when objects swim
Away from sight,—a thickening pall
Of horror, boding worse to come,
That struck both field and city dumb,

O'er man and brute was felt to fall.

"Avaunt, insatiate fiend!" I cry, —
"Like vampire stealing from its grave
To drain some sleeper's life-springs dry,
Back to thine interlunar cave;
Ere the last glimpse of fountain-light,
Absorpt by thee, bring on a night

From which nor moon nor morn can save."

While yet I spake, that single beam
(Bent like Apollo's bow half-strung)
Broaden'd and brighten'd;-gleam o'er gleam,
Splendours that out of darkness sprung,

The sun's unveiling disk o'erflow'd,

Till forth in all his strength he rode,
For ever beautiful and young.

Reviving Nature own'd his power;

And joy and mirth with light and heat,
Music and fragrance, hail'd the hour,
When his deliverance was complete ;
Aloft again the swallow flew,

The cock, at second day-break crew;
When suddenly a voice most sweet;

A voice, as from the ethereal sphere,
Of one unseen yet passing by,
Came with such rapture on mine ear,

My soul sprang up into my eye,
But nought around could I behold,
No "mortal mixture of earth's mould,"

Breathed that enchanting harmony.

"How have I wrong'd thee, angry bard!
What evil to your world have done?
That I, the moon, should be debarr'd
From free communion with the sun?
If, while I turn❜d on him my face,
Yours was o'ercast a little space,
Already are amends begun.

"The lustre I have gather'd now,
Not to myself I will confine;
Night after night, my crescent brow,
My full and waning globe shall shine
yours, -till every spark is spent,
Which for us both to me was lent;
-Thus I fulfil the law divine.

On

"A nobler sun on thee hath shone, On thee bestow'd benigner light;

Walk in that light, but not alone,

Like me to darkling eyes give sight: This is the way God's gifts to use,

First to enjoy them, then diffuse,

-Learn from the moon that lesson right.

EMBLEMS.

An evening cloud, in brief suspense,
Was hither driven and thither,

It came I saw not whence,

It went, I knew not whither;
I watch'd it changing, in the wind,
Size, semblance, form, and hue,
Lessening and fading, till behind

It left no speck on heaven's pure blue.

Amidst the marshall'd host of night
Shone a new star supremely bright;
With marvelling eye, well pleased to err,
I hail'd that prodigy ;-anon,

It fell, it fell like Lucifer,

A flash, —a blaze, -a train,—'twas gone; And then I sought in vain its place, Throughout the infinite of space.

Dew-drops, at day-spring, deck'd a line
Of gossamer so frail, so fine,

A gnat's wing shook it:-round and clear
As if by fairy-fingers strung,
Like orient pearls at beauty's ear,
In trembling brilliancy they hung
Upon a rosy brier, whose bloom

Shed nectar round them, and perfume.

Ere long exhaled in limpid air,

Some mingled with the breath of morn, While some slid singly, here and there,

Like tears by their own weight down borne, At length the film itself collapsed, and where The pageant glitter'd, lo! a naked thorn.

What are the living?—hark! a sound
From grave and cradle crying,
By earth and ocean echoed round,
-"The living are the dying!"

From infancy to utmost age,
What is man's scene of pilgrimage?
The passage to death's portal!
The moment we begin to be,

We enter on the agony,

-The dead are the immortal;

They live not on expiring breath,
They only are exempt from death.

Cloud-atoms, sparkles of a falling star,
Dew-drops on gossamer, all are:

What can the state beyond us be?

Life?-Death?-Ah! no,- a greater mystery; What thought hath not conceived, ear heard, eye

seen;

Perfect existence from a point begun;

Part of what GOD's eternity hath been, Whole immortality belongs to none,

But Him, the First, the Last, the Only One.