TO STELLA *

Stella! see the smiling spring
Spreads abroad her plumy wing,
Spotted o’er with blushing flowers,
Radiant with the sunny hours,
From the chambers of the sky,

Where hoar winter comes not nigh,
From her glowing chambers, where
Summer fills the circling year; —
Forth she comes: —with tardy wing,
Winter yields his place to spring

That comes, reviving suns to roll,

In spiral circuits, round the utmost pole.

Stella! lo! the blooming thorn
Scents the breath of ruddy morn,
While gay spring her carpet spreads,

Soft as velvet, o’er the meads,
Deeply tinged with purest green,
Sweet, luxuriant, mossy, clean,
Spotted  round with flowerets gay,
Gifts of bland floriferous May —

May that sheds reviving showers,
Lights up heaven with lightest hours,
And decks the earth with foliage new

Of texture fine, and every varied hue.

Stella, lo! the leafy shade,

Broad in yonder grove is spread: —
Wide the maple bough expands,
Dark with leaves the elm-tree stands,
And the oak, with honours crown’d,
Throws its shade along the ground,

Cool and grateful as the rill
Bursting fresh from yonder hill,
Winding thro’ the solemn glade,
’Twixt the banks itself hath made,
Deck’d with tufts of grass and brake,

There is seen the slender vine
Close its tendril arms to twine
Round the boughs, while, overhead,
Thick its matted roof is spread.

Thither, Stella! while the day
Glows with noon, we’ll hie away,
And hide us in the cooling shade, [Page 56]
By the climbing wild vines made,
And the bitter-sweet * that chief

Spreads its broad and glassy leaf; —
There let me tell thee how my soul

Yields to thy charms, and love’s divine controul; —

How my throbbing heart, on fire,
Swells with strong, yet chaste, desire;

How the stealing rapture flows
Thro’ my veins with burning throes;
How the dear, delicious, pest
Ranges thro’ my captive breast;
How his every art he tries,

While his rapid arm he plies,
How my conscious orbs of light,
That, like lightning, strikes my heart

And tingling, forceful, shoots thro’ every part.

* This poem appeared in The Scribbler (Montreal). III, 380-381, (12 June, 1823). [back]

* [A note in The Scribbler]: “The general country name of the Solanum dulcamarum of the American botanists.” [back]