Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/431

 1840-50.] PETER F. REED. 415 GLOOM AND BLOOM. The day is dark, and cloud and gloom Are sadly shadowed through my room. The music of the gentle rain Has ceased its patter on the pane, Fer shriller shrieks and wilder song, As swept by borean winds along — But still the sun is shining high Above the melancholy sky. The angry clouds are floating low. The trees are swaying to and fro, A deeper gloom a deeper shade, Is on the meadow, hill and glade, I feel, though dark the shadows fall, My heart is sadder than them all — Yet there's a sunny summer day Whose bloom can drive the gloom away. The world is dark, its hearts are cold. And to and fro are swayed with gold. And shadows, from the mammon gale, Around my moody spirits trail Until I fear that earth, for gain, "Will be dissolved in golden rain : But there's a Sun of living light Above this melancholy night. DOLLARS AND DIMES. There is music in the tinkling of the dol- lars and the dimes ; For the root of every evil, the mighty dol- lar of all climes. At all times, Is the idol of the people ; it is made The scepter that has swayed All the earth ; and its music is the fiat that has given All the power under heaven ! Aye, nations have been traitorously sold For another nation's gold. Blood is spilled, and lives are wasted. Love, and joy, and peace, and friendship, all are blasted, Through the music of the dollars and the dimes. But Oh ! the joys that intermingle With the music of their jingle. Are the phantoms of the sweet anticipa- tions Of the morrows, That come loaded down with sorrows. And are swallowed up with strange infat- uation ; And the gnawing and the burning, Of the bosom, in the yearning After gold, is the earning. For its votaries, a trouble that shall never Cease to curse them and their progeny, — never ! TRUTH. Truth is a flaming target ; broad and bright Its beams refulgent glance athwart the night — The night of Error, that has gloomed the land Since first Creation came from God's good hand — And every mortal since the world be- gan. An ill-trained Archer of an ignorant clan.