The Grape-Vine Swing

LITHE and long as the serpent train,

Springing and clinging from tree to tree,

Now adarting upward, now down again,

With a twist and a twirl that are strange to see;

Never took serpent a deadlier hold,

Never the cougar a wilder spring,

Strangling the oak with the boa's fold,

Spanning the beach with the condor's wing.

Yet no foe that we fear to seek,--

The boy leaps wild to thy rude embrace;

Thy bulging arms bear as soft a cheek

As ever on lover's breast found place;

On thy waving train is a playful hold

Thou shalt never to lighter grasp persuade;

While a maiden sits in thy drooping fold,

And swings and sings in the noonday shade!

O giant strange of our Southern woods!

I dream of thee still in the well-known spot,

Though our vessel strains o'er the ocean floods,

And the Northern forest beholds thee not;

I think of thee still with a sweet regret,

As the cordage yields to my playful grasp,--

Dost thou spring and cling in our woodlands yet?

Does the maiden still swing in thy giant clasp?

William Gilmore Simms

The Lost Pleiad

                I

NOT in the sky,

Where it was seen--

Nor, on the white tops of the glistering wave--

Nor in the mansions of the hidden deep--

However green,

In its enamell'd caves of mystery--

Shall the bright watcher have

A place--nor once again proud station keep!

                II

Gone, gone!

O! never more, to cheer

The mariner, who hold his course alone,

On the Atlantic, thro' the weary night,

When the waves turn to watchers, and do sleep--

Shall it appear--

With the sweet fixedness of certain light,

Shining upon the shut eye of the blue deep!

                III

O! when the shepherd on Chaldea's hills,

Watching his flocks;

Looks forth, in vain for thy first light to come,

Warning him home--

From his deep sleep, among the sky-kiss'd rocks--

How shall he wake, when dewy silence fills

The scene, to wonder at the weight of night,

Without the one strong beam, whose blessed light,

As to the wandering child, his native rills,

Was natural to his sight!

                IV

Vain, vain!

O! less than vain, shall he look forth--

The sailor from his barque--

(Howe'er the North,

Doth raise his certain lamp, when tempests lower)

To catch the light of the lost star again--

The weary hour,

To him, shall be more weary, when the dark

Displays not the lost planet on her tower.

                V

And lone

where its first splendor, shone--

Shall be that pleasant company of stars:--

How should they know that death,

The happy glory of the immortal, mars,

When like the Earth, and all its common breath,

Extinguish'd are the pure beams of the sky,

Fallen from on high--

And their concerted springs of harmony

Snapt rudely, and all pleasant music, gone.

                VI

A strain--a mellow strain,

Of parting music, fill'd the earth and sky--

The stars lamenting, in unborrowed pain,

That one of the selectest one's, must die--

The brightest of their train!

Alas! it is the destiny--

The dearest hope is that which first is lost,

The tenderest flower is soonest nipt by frost--

Are not the shortest-lived, the loveliest--

And like the wandering orb that leaves the sky,

Look they not brightest, when about to fly,

The desolate spot they blest?

William Gilmore Simms

By the Swanannoa

IS it not lovely, while the day flows on

  Like some unnoticed water through the vale,

  Sun-sprinkled,--and, across the fields, a gale,

  Ausonian, murmurs out an idle tale,

Of groves deserted late, but lately won.

How calm the silent mountains, that, around,

  Bend their blue summits, as if grouped to hear

Some high ambassador from foreign ground,--

To hearken, and, most probably confound!

  While, leaping onward, with a voice of cheer,

Glad as some schoolboy ever on the bound,

  The lively Swanannoa sparkles near;--

A flash and murmur mark him as he roves,

Now foaming white o'er rocks, now glimpsing soft through groves.

William Gilmore Simms

The New Moon

"BEND thy bow, Dian! shoot thy silver shaft

Through the dark bosom of yon murky cloud,

That, like a shroud,

Hangs heavy o'er the dwelling of sweet night!"

And the sky laugh'd,

Even as I spake the words; and, in the west,

The columns of her mansion shone out bright!

A glory hung above Eve's visible brow,

The maiden empress!--and she glided forth

In beauty, looking down on the tranced earth,

So fondly, that its rivulets below

Gush'd out to hail her, as if then first blest

With the soft motion of their voiceless birth.

A sudden burst of brightness o'er me broke--

The rugged crags of the dull cloud were cleft

By her sharp arrow, and the edges left,--

How sweetly wounded!--silver'd with the stroke;

Thus making a fit pathway for her march

Through the blue arch!

William Gilmore Simms