fairer charms for my musing eye
For my heart a deeper spell.

Dear fount! what memories rush
Through the heart and wildered brain,
As beneath the old beech I list to the gush
Of thy sparkling waves again;
For here in a fairy dream
With friends, my childhood's hours
Glided on like the flow of thy beautiful stream,
And like it were wreathed with flowers:
Here we saw on thy waves, from the shade,
The dance of the sunbeams at noon;
Or heard, half-afraid, the deep murmurings made
In thy cavernous depths, 'neath the moon.

I have heard thy waves away
From thy scenes, dear fount, apart;
And have felt the play, in life's fevered day,
Of thy waters through my heart;
But oh! thou art not the same:
Youth's friends are gone--I am lone--
Thy beeches are carved with many a name
Now graved on the funeral stone.
As I stand and muse, my tears
Are troubling the stream whose waves
The lullaby sang to their infantile years,
And now murmur around their graves.

DEATH OF SAMSON.

Within Philistia's princely hall
Is held a glorious festival,
And on the fluctuant ether floats
The music of the timbrel's notes,
While living waves of voices gush,
Echoing among the distant hills,
Like an impetuous torrent's rush
When swollen by a thousand rills.

The stripling and the man of years,
Warriors with twice ten thousand spears,
Peasants and slaves and husbandmen,--
The shepherd from his mountain glen,
Vassal, and chief arrayed in gold
And purple robes--Philistines all
Are drawn together to behold
Their mighty foeman held in thrall.

Loud pealed the accents of the horn
Upon the air of the clear morn,
And deafening rose the mingled shout,
Cleaving the air from that wild rout,
As, guarded by a cavalcade
The illustrious prisoner appeared
And, 'mid the grove the dense spears made,
His forehead like a tall oak reared.

He stood with brawny shoulders bare,
And tossed his nervous arms in air--
Chains, leathern thongs, and brazen bands
Parted like wool within his hands;
And giant trunks of gnarled oak,
Splintered and into ribbons rent,
Or by his iron sinews broke,
Increased the people's wonderment.

The amphitheatre, where stood
Spell-bound the mighty multitude,
Rested its long and gilded walls
Upon two pillars' capitals:
His brawny arms, with labor spent,
He threw around the pillars there,
And to the deep blue firmament
Lifted his sight