The ancient skies look young; the fresh-born air
Is all alive with sound and fragrance rare;
And e'en the moss-clad ruins look less hoary!
I know not how it is, but at this season
I feel an overpowering sense of sadness,
And walk oppress'd beneath a weight of care:
Yet, such is the o'ermastering might of Beauty,
And so divinely loyal every creature,
That I, a mourner, dare not breathe my treason
Before the gentle majesty of Nature;
But tune my accents to the song of duty,
And say, while tears flow from me while I sing, "The beauty and the blessedness of Spring!"
THE glories of a perished race arise
Upon my spirit, as I gaze at thee,
Cold, senseless, withered, chill mortality!
Unconscious form! a type of obsequies,
Lost in the darkness of the mighty past—
That great abyss, on which the human heart
Looks back intensely pondering, till aghast
It deems it reads some awful mysteries
Reflecting on itself-then with a start
Of horror, such as human nature feels
When she beholds her own dread image stand
Before her, staring with self-searching eyes!
Till the whole soul convulsed and o'erwrought reels :
Such feel I, as upon thy shrouded form
I look; and marvel, that the insatiate worm
Has been despoiled of its accustomed prey!
Defied by thee, thou dweller in the grave,
How was it, when the myriads came to crave
Their natural food, that backward they recoil'd,
By some invisible instinct stopped and foil'd?
But all things quake around me. I behold
Great Nature laid, without the power to die,
And pass to final nothingness, and rest!
O! hapless state of weak humanity,
Youth leaves thee, and perennially old,
Withered and shrouded is thy once gay breast.
Thou canst not pass away by slow degrees,-
Ever rests motionless thy stiffened hand,-
Those eyeless sockets have no fresh illume!
Thy withered heart is shreds!-thy sympathies
Have died, like harps, with music on their strings!
No sounds again will issue from thy tongue,
On which the frost of marvellous death has hung
Three thousand years! That voice perchance has sung
Hymns to Anubis, Apis, and the Snakes
That coil around the sunny banks of Nile!
Thou wert perchance the greatest, or most vile
Of Ammon's priests. Yea, the Egyptian
Smote by Jew Moses, the Impetuous Man!
NAY, triumph not! that brow of thine, Where now thy smiles like sunlight shine, May yet be wrung, as mine has been, And wither, lady, e'en as mine
There's time enough for drear despair! Once I was e'en as thou art now-serene!
That dream is past: 't was but a dream,
And waking from that sleep, I deem,
Itwas as all reality
In future days to us will seem!
The dream is gone,—it pangs no more, The deed is done, its anguish o'er !— Vain reasoning, a deed can never die!
Amid the noontide glare of day,
A form more subtle than the ray
Of the bright sun in thinnest air,
Is ever standing in my way-
I do not see-I feel it nigh
By keener sense than that of
eyeAnd 't is a form most exquisitely fair!
That form is thine! could we have deemed (When all a peaceful rapture beamed,
And love was as the star of morn,
Which with a glorious promise teemed)
That days would come when we should shun
Each other as a cursed one?
Love from each heart in rudest fashion torn!
That time is now! thy scornful look
Of triumph full, each fibre shook,
As o'er my frame thy wild glance passed-
Thy hate thy triumph I can brook—
Pride and despair!-Oh! bear me up
To quaff to the last dregs this cup,
And this sad prayer to ye shall be my last.
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