Dost thou recall it? ’twas a glorious eve!

By heaven! I hear the waving of its woods,

Kissed into sighing; and its few faint stars

Look, yet, upon me, through the mist of years,

As, then, they looked, to listen to our vows!

The air was precious with the breath of flowers,

That had been weeping;—and the harps of eve

Played vespers to the stars!—and in the blue,

The deep-blue sky, (how beautiful she looked!)

Stood the young moon!—her cheek was very pale,

As thine is now, Floranthe! or as hers,

The night she sought her shepherd, on the hill,

And could not lift his eyelid, with her kiss!

Beautiful mourner!—oh! they wrong her truth

Who call her changeful!—many a live-long night,

She sits, alone, upon the hill-top, still,

To look for him who comes not;—unlike thee,

Oh, fair Floranthe!—save that both are sad,

And widowed, now,—the false one and the true!

 

And thou, bright dreamer! thou to whom the stars

Of night were ministers, and whom their queen

Lulled, with immortal kisses, to thy rest!

Thou, whose young visions gather’d into one,

One dream of love and loveliness and light!

Thou, to whose soul a brighter thought was given

Than his for whom Egeria sat, alone,

By the cool gushing fount!—Endymion!

Oh! not for thee—no, not for thee alone

Have been such visitings!—Floranthe, hear!

(But weep not!) thou dost know how many years,

How long and well my soul has worshipped thee,

Till my mind made itself a solitude

For only thee to dwell in,—and thou wert

The spirit of all fountains in my breast!

 

We will not speak of that!—but oh! that eve,

Amid the pines—our fondest and our last!

How it has haunted me, with all the sounds

That made it silent,—and the starry eyes

And flitting shapes that made it solitude!

Did I not love thee!—oh! for but one throb,

One pulse of all the pulses beating then!

One feeling, though the feeling were a pang!

One passion, though the passion spoke in tears!

Perhaps, we loved too well;—the burning thoughts

That should have fed the heart for many years,

Methinks, were wasted in a single night!

(Young spirits are so prodigal of joy!)

I deemed thy love was boundless:—oh! the queen,

The eastern queen, who melted down her pearl,

And drank the treasure in a single draught,

Was wiser far than hearts that love too well,

If love be finite!—In that last adieu,

Our young and passionate spirits burned away,

And flung their ashes on the winds of heaven!

Our love has perished, like the sound that dies,

And leaves no echo,—like the eastern day,

That has no twilight,—like the lonely flower,

Flung forth to wither on the wind, that wastes

Even its perfume;—dead, Floranthe! dead,

With all the precious thoughts on which it fed,

And all the hopes which made it beautiful,—

Sound, light, and perfume gone,—and gone for ever!

 

And art thou come again!—it may not be!

Oh! beautiful thou art!—but on thy brow

Sits the dim, shadowy thing which only haunts

Where hearts are wasted; and thine eye is sad

As moonlight, when it looks upon a grave!

And thy soft bosom—where my head has lain,

And dreamt youth’s dream,—heaves with unquiet motion!

And thou art weeping! (there are those who weep

In joy,—but then, they never look as thou dost!)

Why hast thou come so late!—I waited long,

How very long!—and thou wert by my side,

Sometimes in dreams!—(how sad it is to dream,

And play with shadows—flung, perhaps, from graves!

Why come by night, who may not come by day!

Why mock for moments, who were true for years!)

—How long and heavily, from day to day,

I hung upon the hope that grows from fear!

But thou hast come, at last!—it is too late!

I cannot love again!—thou still art young,

And fair—but as a vestal!—and the vow,

My pale Floranthe! is upon thy heart!

Thou canst not love again!—’tis all too late!

 

Sit here, Floranthe!—come to me, mine own!

My friend! (why dost thou start?) and I will sing

The air I used to sing thee, long ago,

And touch our old guitar;—the strings are new!

I would not that the chords which told of love

Should tell its death!—they have been broken long,

And other hands than thine have strung my lyre,

Since thou didst leave me.—Listen to my lay!

 

        We meet!—but not as, once, we met!

          Our better days are o’er,

        And, dearly as I prize thee, yet,

          I cannot love thee more:—

        My young and precious hopes were wept,

          With many tears, away,

        And, since thy faith so long has slept,

          It wakes too late, to-day!

 

        Oh! sighs and smiles are idle, all,

          To raise the thoughts of youth,

        They come and go, without a call,

          They linger but with truth;—

        Like roses—if to-night they die,

          To-morrow’s sun is vain;

        And oh! like birds—if once let fly,

          They never come again!

 

        My heart has found no treasure, yet,

          Like what it lost with thee,

        And years of long and lone regret

          Have made me what you see!—

        Then, dearly welcome back again,

          But ask no lover’s vow;

        The world—that had not won it, then,—

          May not restore it now!

Morn on the waters!—and, purple and bright,

Bursts on the billows the flushing of light!

O’er the glad waves, like a child of the sun,

See the tall vessel goes gallantly on;

Full to the breeze she unbosoms her sail,

And her pennant streams onward, like hope, in the gale!

The winds come around her, in murmur and song,

And the surges rejoice, as they bear her along!

Upward she points to the golden-edged clouds,

And the sailor sings gaily, aloft in the shrouds!

Onwards she glides, amid ripple and spray,

Over the waters—away, and away!

Bright as the visions of youth, ere they part,

Passing away, like a dream of the heart!—

Who—as the beautiful pageant sweeps by,

Music around her, and sunshine on high,—

Pauses to think, amid glitter and glow,

Oh! there be hearts that are breaking, below!

 

Night on the waves!—and the moon is on high,

Hung, like a gem, on the brow of the sky;

Treading its depths, in the power of her might,

And turning the clouds, as they pass her, to light!

Look to the waters!—asleep on their breast,

Seems not the ship like an island of rest?

Bright and alone on the shadowy main,

Like a heart-cherished home on some desolate plain!

Who—as she smiles in the silvery light,

Spreading her wings on the bosom of night,

Alone on the deep,—as the moon in the sky,—

A phantom of beauty!—could deem, with a sigh,

That so lovely a thing is the mansion of sin,

And souls that are smitten lie bursting, within!

Who—as he watches her silently gliding,—

Remembers that wave after wave is dividing

Bosoms that sorrow and guilt could not sever,

Hearts that are parted and broken for ever!

Or deems that he watches, afloat on the wave,

The death-bed of hope, or the young spirit’s grave!

 

’Tis thus with our life, while it passes along,

Like a vessel at sea, amid sunshine and song!

Gaily we glide, in the gaze of the world,

With streamers afloat, and with canvass unfurled;

All gladness and glory to wandering eyes,

Yet chartered by sorrow, and freighted with sighs!—

Fading and false is the aspect it wears,

As the smiles we put on—just to cover our tears;

And the withering thoughts which the world cannot know,

Like heart-broken exiles, lie burning below;

While the vessel drives on to that desolate shore

Where the dreams of our childhood are vanished and o’er!

Mine eyes—that may not see thee smile,—

  Are glad to see thee weep;

Thy spirit’s calm, this weary while,

  Has been too dark and deep!

Alas! for him who has but tears,

  To mark his path of pain,

But oh! his long and lonely years,

  Who may not weep again!

 

Thou know’st, young mourner! thou hast been

  Through good and ill, to me,

Amid a bleak and blighted scene,

  A single leafy tree:

A star within a stormy sky;

  An island on the main;

And I have prayed, in agony,

  To see thee weep again!

 

Thou, ever, wert a thing of tears,

  When but a playful child,

A very sport of hopes and fears,

  And both too warm and wild!

Thy lightest thoughts and wishes wore

  Too passionate a strain;—

To such how often comes an hour,

  They never weep again!

 

Thou wert of those whose very morn

  Gives some dark hint of night,

And, in thine eye, too soon was born

  A sad and softened light;

And on thy brow youth set the seal

  Which years, upon thy brain,

Confirmed too well,—and they who feel

  May scarcely weep again!

 

Yet, once again, within thine eye,

  I see the waters start,—

The fountains cannot all be dry

  Within so young a heart!

Our love, which clouds have wrapt awhile,

  Thirsts for the spirit’s rain,

And I shall yet behold thee smile,

  Since thou hast wept again!

  Thou art not silent!—oracles are thine

  Which the wind utters, and the spirit hears,

  Lingering, ’mid ruined fane and broken shrine,

  O’er many a tale and trace of other years!

  Bright as an ark, o’er all the flood of tears

  That wraps thy cradle-land—thine earthly love,

  Where hours of hope, ’mid centuries of fears,

  Have gleamed, like lightnings through the gloom above,

Stands, roofless to the sky, thy home, Olympian Jove!

 

  Thy columned aisles with whispers of the past

  Are vocal,—and, along thine ivied walls,

  While Elian echoes murmur on the blast,

  And wild-flowers hang, like victor-coronals,

  In vain the turbaned tyrant rears his halls,

  And plants the symbol of his faith and slaughters;

  Now, even now, the beam of promise falls

  Bright upon Hellas, as her own bright daughters,

And a Greek Ararat is rising o’er the waters!

 

  Thou art not silent!—when the southern fair—

  Ionia’s moon—looks down upon thy breast,^[1]

  Smiling, as pity smiles above despair,

  Soft as young beauty soothing age to rest,—

  Sings the night-spirit in thy weedy crest,

  And she—the minstrel of the moonlight hours

  Breathes—like some lone one, sighing to be blest,—

  Her lay—half hope, half sorrow,—from the flowers,

And hoots the prophet owl, amid his tangled bowers!

 

  And, round thine altar’s mouldering stones are born

  Mysterious harpings,—wild as ever crept

  From him who waked Aurora, every morn,

  And sad as those he sung her, till she slept!

  A thousand and a thousand years have swept

  O’er thee, who wert a moral from thy spring,

  A wreck in youth!—nor vainly hast thou kept^[2]

  Thy lyre,—Olympia’s soul is on the wing,

And a new Iphitus has waked, beneath its string!

Her hair streams backward,—like a cloud

Before the sun-light of her eyes,

That seem to pierce the fleecy shroud

Of the far, blue Italian skies!

Her hands amid the golden strings

Play,—like a spirit’s wanderings,

Still making music as they stray,

And scattering incense on their way!

And softest harpings float-around,

That make the chamber hallowed ground;

Till every breeze that wanders by

Seems holy with the maiden’s sigh,

And seraph-forms come stealing down,

To hear a music like their own!

 

Her robe is of the same pure white

Whose silver skirts yon azure sky,

Her form is like a form of light,—

But all the woman dims her eye

With tears that dare to look to heaven,

And griefs that mount—and are forgiven!

Deep in her warm and holy heart,

Are thoughts that play a mortal part,

And her young worship wafts above

The breathings of an earthly love!

 

Of earth,—yet not a love that flings

One clog upon her spirit’s wings,

Or, like a shadow, dimly lies

Upon her pure heart’s sacrifice!

The lark may—like that spirit,—play

In the blue heavens, the livelong day,

And He who gave that sunny thing

A mounting—yet a wearying—wing,

Will not refuse its morning flight,

Because it stooped to earth by night;—

Nor shall the maiden’s offering rise

Less stainless to her native skies,

Because the youthful saint reveals

The throbbings which the woman feels,

And pours to heaven her worship, fraught

With passion which itself hath taught!

 

The notes fall fainter on the ear,

Yet, still, the seraph leans to hear;—

Though sorrow sighs along the lyre,

And woman’s fears have dimmed her fire,

And breathings, meant for God alone,

Echo some pulses of her own!—

The angel stays—and stays to bless

Love—which, itself, is holiness!

The same—and oh, how beautiful!—the same

As memory meets thee through the mist of years!—

Love’s roses on thy cheek, and feeling’s flame

Lighting an eye unchanged in all—but tears!

Upon thy severed lips the very smile

Remembered well, the sunlight of my youth;

But gone the shadow that would steal, the while,

To mar its brightness, and to mock its truth!—

Once more I see thee, as I saw thee last,

The lost restored,—the vision of the past!

 

How like to what thou wert—and art not now!

Yet oh, how more resembling what thou art!

There dwells no cloud upon that pictured brow,

As sorrows sits no longer in thy heart;

Gone where its very wishes are at rest,

And all its throbbings hushed, and achings healed;—

I gaze, till half I deem thee to my breast,

In thine immortal loveliness, revealed,

And see thee, as in some permitted dream,

There where thou art what here thou dost but seem!

 

I loved thee passing well!—thou wert a beam

Of pleasant beauty on this stormy sea!

With just so much of mirth as might redeem

Man from the musings of his misery;

Yet ever pensive,—like a thing from home!

Lovely and lonely as a single star!

But kind and true to me, as thou hadst come

From thine own element—so very far,

Only to be a cynosure to eyes

Now sickening at the sunshine of the skies!

 

It were a crime to weep!—’tis none to kneel,

As now I kneel, before this type of thee,

And worship her, who taught my soul to feel

Such worship is no vain idolatry!

Thou wert my spirit’s spirit—and thou art,

Though this be all of thee time hath not reft,

Save the old thoughts that hang about the heart,

Like withered leaves that many storms have left!

I turn from living looks—the cold, the dull,

To any trace of thee—the lost, the beautiful!

 

Broken, and bowed, and wasted with regret,

I gaze, and weep—why do I weep alone!

I would not—would not, if I could—forget,

But I am all remembrance,—it hath grown

My very being!—Will she never speak?

The lips are parted, and the braided hair

Seems as it waved upon her brightening cheek,

And smile, and every thing—but breath—are there!

Oh, for the voice that I have stayed to hear,

—Only in dreams,—so many a lonely year!

 

It will not be;—away, bright cheat, away!

Cold, far too cold to love!—thy look grows strange;

I want the thousand thoughts that used to play,

Like lights and shadowings, in chequered change!

That smile!—I know thou art not like her, now;—

Within her land—where’er it be—of light,

She smiles not while a cloud is on my brow!—

When will it pass away—this heavy night!

Oh! will the cool, clear morning never come,

And light me to her, in her spirit’s home!

Flower of my cold and darkened year!

  Sweet fount amid my spirit’s dearth!

Be near me, with the smiles that cheer

  The happy home and quiet hearth;

That still, ’mid winter and ’mid night,

  Like fairies play their sunny part,

To turn the darkness into light,

  And make it summer in the heart!

 

What though my early hopes have flown,

  Like Noah’s bird, that came not back,

And many a faded leaf has strown,

  All—all too soon, my summer track;

My heart has treasures of its own,

  Shrines on which ruin cannot fall,

And cherished there, thy look and tone

  Are birds, and flowers, and hopes, and all!

 

Oh! blessed time of smiles and tears,—

  Ere smiles or tears are mournful things,—

Of hopes—ere hopes are born with fears,—

  And wishes—that have, all, got wings!

Oh! could I tread, again, youth’s track,

  With thee,—beloved as thou art!

But who shall bring the shadow back,

  Upon the dial of my heart!

 

Forward, like rivers to the main,

  Time passes on—for ever on!—

The moon shall never pause again

  Upon the vale of Ajalon!—

The sun comes o’er the eastern hill,

  On Gideon,—as in days gone by,

But that high voice has long been still

  That bade him linger in the sky!

 

Yet, thou hast been to me a beam,

  Pure as that bright and angel form,^[4]

That stood beside the troubled stream,

  And gathered healing—from its storm!

Thy love—when all was strife around,

  Like music, sung my soul to rest,

And thou hast fondly sought—and found

  A thousand fountains in my breast!

 

Oh!—for the bloom that thou hast shed

  Along my wasted breast and brow,—

May flowers spring up beneath thy tread,

  And make thy life-path bright as now!

Still may thy fancy daily fleet,

  As here, ’mid glad and happy themes,

And visions—sweet, as thou art sweet,—

  Come gliding to thy nightly dreams!

 

May mercy shield thy breast and brain,

  (Descending like a gentle dew,)

Alike from grief’s and pleasure’s pain,

  —For pleasure has her poisons too!—

Bliss—like the Spirit’s flaming sword,—

  Consuming from its very light,

And hopes that—like the prophet’s gourd,—

  Grow up, to perish in a night!

 

May years pass o’er thee, like the breeze

  That sweeps along a spicy vale,

That bows—but will not break—the trees,

  And draws fresh perfume with each gale!

And, when thy wintry day draws in,

  Light—precious as thyself,—be given,

To cheer thee through this darker scene,

  And point thee to thy native heaven!

The night is lowering, dull and dark,

He holds her to his heavy heart;

Her eye is on the fatal bark,—

And must they—must they part!

Oh! that a wish could chain the gales,

How long that dreary calm should last,

Or e’er a breath should swell the sails

That flap around the mast!

Oh! that no ray might ever rise,

To light her latest sacrifice!

 

There are they met—the young and fond,—

That such should ever meet to part!

One hour is theirs, and all beyond

A chaos of the heart!—

She hears him yet—his softest sigh,—

The breathing of his lowest word,—

Sounds that, by her, beneath the sky,

Shall never more be heard!

Form, voice, that hour—all, save its sorrow—

Shall be but memories on the morrow!

 

He is her all who bends above,

Her hope—the brightest and the last;—

Oh! that the days life gives to love

Should ever be the past!—

What gleam upon their startled eyes

Breaks, like the flash from angry heaven?

Lo, where the clouds, in yonder skies,

Before the gale are driven!

And o’er their spirits all grows night,

Beneath that burst of life and light.

 

The moon is forth,—but sad and pale,

As though she wept and waited, still,

For him she never more shall hail,

Upon the Latmos hill!

The breeze is up,—the sail unfurled!—

Oh, for one hour of respite, yet!

In vain!—’tis moonlight in the world,

But Ellen’s light is set!

The bark is tossing in the bay,

The streamers point away—away!

 

One kiss—of lips as wan and cold

As life to them shall, henceforth, be;

One glance—the glance that makes us old,

Of utter agony;

One throb—the bitterest and the last,

Awakening, but to deaden, pain,

In hearts that, when that pang is past,

Shall never ache again;—

And the loosed chord and broken bowl

Lie at hope’s fountain, in the soul!

The Seine is like a belt of gold,—

Beneath an autumn sky,

That floats, in many a crimson fold,

Like a banner hung on high!

The town hangs darkly o’er the stream,

Where lights and shadows play,

While wave on wave—like dream on dream,—

Smile, as they glide away!

 

And here I stand—as here I stood,

How many years ago!

When life danced onward, like the flood,

With music in its flow!

But now, my breast—like yonder dome,

Where sleeps the Lion-heart,^[6]

Is half a temple—half a tomb,

But has no earthly part!

 

My spirit keeps the trace, like thee,

Of many a lost parade,—

Dreams of the soul’s young chivalry,

Of many a wild crusade!

Like thee, dark town!—like thee, in all

But thy many gushing fountains,

Yet brightened, still, by lights that fall

From heaven,—like thy blue mountains!

Across the waves—away and far,

My spirit turns to thee;

I love thee as men love a star,

The brightest where a thousand are,

Sadly and silently,—

With love unstained by hopes or fears,

Too deep for words—too pure for tears!

 

My heart is tutored not to weep;

Calm, like the calm of even,

Where grief lies hushed, but not asleep,

Hallows the hours I love to keep

For only thee and heaven:—

Too far and fair to aid the birth

Of thoughts that have a taint of earth!

 

And yet, the days for ever gone,—

When thou wert as a bird,

Living ’mid sun and flowers alone,

And singing in so soft a tone

As I never since have heard,—

Will make me grieve that birds, and things

So beautiful, have ever wings!

 

And there are hours in the lonely night

When I seem to hear thy calls,

Faint as the echos of far delight,

And dreamy and sad as the sighing flight

Of distant waterfalls;—

And then my vow is hard to keep,

For it were a joy, indeed, to weep!

 

For I feel as men feel when moonlight falls

Amid old cathedral aisles;

Or the wind plays, sadly, along the walls

Of lonely and forsaken halls,

That we knew in their day of smiles;

Or as one who hears, amid foreign flowers,

A tune he had learnt in his mother’s bowers.

 

But I may not and I dare not weep,

Lest the vision pass away,

And the vigils that I love to keep

Be broken up, by the fevered sleep

That leaves me—with the day—

Like one who has travelled far, to the spot

Where his home should be—and finds it not!

 

Yet then, like the incense of many flowers,

Rise pleasant thoughts to me;

For I know, from thy dwelling in eastern bowers,

That thy spirit has come, in those silent hours,

To meet me over the sea;

And I feel, in my soul, the fadeless truth

Of her whom I loved in early youth.

 

Like hidden streams,—whose quiet tone

Is unheard in the garish day,

That utter a music all their own,

When the night-dew falls, and the lady moon

Looks out to hear them play,—

I knew not half thy gentle worth,

Till grief drew all its music forth.

 

We shall not meet on earth again!

And I would have it so;

For, they tell me that the cloud of pain

Has flung its shadow o’er thy brain,

And touched thy looks with woe;

And I have heard that storm and shower

Have dimmed thy loveliness, my flower!

 

I would not look upon thy tears,—

For I have thee in my heart,

Just as thou wert, in those blessed years

When we were, both, too young for fears

That we should ever part;

And I would not aught should mar the spell,

The picture nursed so long and well!

 

I love to think on thee, as one

With whom the strife is o’er;

And feel that I am journeying on,

Wasted, and weary, and alone,

To join thee on that shore

Where thou—I know—wilt look for me,

And I, for ever, be with thee!

Wake, soldier, wake!—thy war-horse waits,

To bear thee to the battle back;—

Thou slumberest at a foeman’s gates;—

Thy dog would break thy bivouac;—

Thy plume is trailing in the dust,

And thy red faulchion gathering rust!

 

Sleep, soldier, sleep!—thy warfare o’er,—

Not thine own bugle’s loudest strain

Shall ever break thy slumbers more,

With summons to the battle-plain;

A trumpet-note more loud and deep

Must rouse thee from that leaden sleep!

 

Thou need’st nor helm nor cuirass, now,

—Beyond the Grecian hero’s boast,—

Thou wilt not quail thy naked brow,

Nor shrink before a myriad host,—

For head and heel alike are sound,

A thousand arrows cannot wound!

 

Thy mother is not in thy dreams,

With that wild, widowed look she wore

The day—how long to her it seems!—

She kissed thee, at the cottage door,

And sickened at the sounds of joy

That bore away her only boy!

 

Sleep, soldier!—let thy mother wait,

To hear thy bugle on the blast;

Thy dog, perhaps, may find the gate,

And bid her home to thee, at last:—

He cannot tell a sadder tale

Than did thy clarion, on the gale,

When last—and far away—she heard its lingering echos fail!

The harp is hushed, in Kedron’s vale,

  The river dwindled to a rill,

That haunts it—like an ancient tale—

  In dying whispers, still!

The wind, among the sedges, keeps

  Some echos of its broken lyre,

And wakes, at times, with sudden sweeps,

  Thoughts of its former fire,—

Where Carmel’s flowery summits rise,

  To point the moral to the skies!

 

My breast has learnt—in other lands,—

  That moral, through its own deep glooms,

Lone—as yon lonely city stands

  Among her thousand tombs!^[7]

Amid its mouldering wrecks and weeds,

  While memory—like that river,—sings,

Or—like the night-breeze in the reeds,—

  Plays with its broken strings,

My spirit sits, with folded wing,

  A sad—but not unhappy—thing!

 

What if my loves—like yonder waves,

  That seek a dead and tideless sea,—^[8]

Have perished in the place of graves,

  That darkly waits for me!

What if no outlet of the earth

  Those dull and dreary waters own,

And time can give no second birth

  To dreams and wishes gone!

What though my fount of early joy,

  Like Kedron’s springs, be almost dry!

 

High o’er them, with its thousand flowers,

  Its precious crown of scent and bloom,^[9]

Hope, like another Carmel, towers

  In sunshine and in gloom!

Flinging upon the wasted breast

  Sweets born in climes more pure and high,

And pointing, with its lofty crest,

  Beyond the starry sky,—

Where a new Jordan’s waves shall gem

  A statelier Jerusalem!

Dry up thy tears, love!—I fain would be gay!

Sing me the song of my early day!

Give me the music, so witchingly wild,

That solaced my sorrows when I was a child!—

Years have gone by me, both lonely and long,

Since my spirit was soothed by thy voice, in that song!

 

Years have gone by!—and life’s lowlands are past,

And I stand on the hill which I sighed for, at last;

But I turn from the summit that once was my star,

To the vale of my childhood, seen dimly and far;—

Each blight on its beauty seems softened and gone,

Like a land that we love, in the light of the moon!

 

There are the flowers that have withered away,

And the hopes that have faded,—like fairies at play,

And the eyes that are dimmed, and the smiles that are gone,

And thou too art there!—but thou still art mine own;

Fair as in childhood, and fond as in youth,

Thou—only thou—wert a spirit of truth!

 

Time hath been o’er thee, and darkened thine eye,

And thoughts are within thee more holy and high;

Sadder thy smile than in days that are o’er,

And lovelier all that was lovely before;

That which thou wert is not that which thou art,

Thou too art altered in all—but in heart!

 

Lie on my bosom, and lead me along

Over lost scenes, by the magic of song!

What if I weep at the vision of years?

Sighs are not sorrow,—and joy has her tears!

Sad is my brow, as thy music is sad,

But oh! it is long since my heart was so glad!

 

All that is left of life’s promise is here,—

Thou, my young idol, in sorrow more dear!

But thy murmurs remind me of many away,

And though I am glad, love! I cannot be gay!—

All has departed that offered like truth,

Save thou—only thou,—and the song of my youth!

She has been dreaming!—and her thoughts are, still,

On their far journey in the land of dreams!

The forms we call—but may not chase—at will,

And soft, low voices,—sweet as distant streams,

Heard in the night-hush,—linger round her heart!

Oh, dark-eyed dreamer! must thy spirit sail

Into the years when dreams of joy depart,

With each bright morning,—like the nightingale!

When hope is only for the slumbering hours,

A thing on which the waker thinks—and weeps;

And pleasant fancies—like night-blowing flowers,—

Give out their perfume but while memory sleeps!—

Thine is the precious privilege of youth,

That paints all visions in the hues of truth!

Oh! that the Spirit of thy votive song

Would pour her Sibyl oracles along,

Go forth where despots sway, and dastards yield,

And rouse a tented Israel to the field!

—Oh! for the mystic harp of Kedron’s vale,

To fling its music on the tameless gale!

As erst, in Israel, when, at God’s command,

Saul was sent forth to blight the chartered land,

When Siloa’s brook was gathered to a flood,

And Sion wept—till every tear was blood!

 

Oh! for a spell—like her’s who called the dead,

And brought the prophet from his dreamless bed,—

To wake the spirit of the martyred brave,

And break the slumber of Riego’s grave!

—Oh! for the warrior-youth of Judah’s line,

Divinely missioned to a work divine,—

A David to “go up”—with staff and sling,

And pebbles for the forehead of a king,—

And, in the spirit of a holy wrath,

Smite the Goliath of a sceptered Gath!

 

Alas, the lovely land!—where fetters bind

All but the sighs their captives give the wind!

Where life is stagnant—but when stirred by fears,

And patriots have no weapons—but their tears!

Where the free breezes and the dancing waves

Utter vain language to a world of slaves;

And hope—a “fitful fever”—wakes and dies,

Like clouds that form—to melt—in Spanish skies!

 

It comes—it comes!—like a far trumpet-blast,

I hear the tumult and the stir, at last!

Through the dull distance of a few short years,

The gathering-cry is borne to prophet ears,

When nations shall go forth, like water poured,

To see an Agag hewn before the Lord,

And Freedom lift, again, her starry crest,

High o’er the new-born Hebron of the West!

How vain to blot this snowy leaf

With human hope or human fear!

How vain to leave, of joy or grief,

A single record here!

And yet, the very lightest dream

That e’er was fancy’s cherished theme,

The frailest hope that ever played,

The fleetest thought that ever strayed,

—Arrested in its flight,—

May live upon this page—alone,

The brightest trace—the only one—

Of him who felt its light,—

When all his world of hopes and fears

Is mingled with the flood of years!

 

Full many a heart, by friendship tried,

Has left an offering on this shrine;

And names that love has sanctified

Along its pages shine!

Yet fancy pauses, with a tear,

Above the little register,

To think that all those hearts have known

A host of feelings of their own,

Which are not written here;

The transient smile, the frequent sigh,

The blighted hope, the mingled joy,

These have no chronicler;

The wish that warms, the dreams that fade,

Rest, unrecorded, in the shade!

 

How brief the tale this book can give—

Its painting of expression caught!

It can but make one feeling live,

Or fix one passing thought,

Of all which wander, or which rest

In the deep silence of the breast.

—As stars that deck the dark-blue sky

Beam, lonely, on the naked eye;

Yet each is but the sign

Of systems far from human sight,

Which—with their floods of living light,—

In countless numbers shine,—

Of orbs and peopled worlds, which lie

Scattered throughout immensity!

 

A few short years!—and, through the dark,

Each tribute may remain alone,

Like lonely signal-lights, to mark

A world of feelings gone!—

’Tis sad to think this leaf may be

The sole memorial left of me!

But, oh! should friendship interfere,

And, ’mid the wrecks of many a year,

Preserve some relics green;

May every record love shall save

From passing time’s o’erwhelming wave,

To tell that I have been,

And give me to a future age,—

Be written on as pure a page!

He comes—he comes through storm and night!

No sail impels—no pilot guides;

The sky has not a single light

To lamp him o’er the tides!

Through breeze and billow—swell and spray,

He stands upon his fated way,—

One of those fair and visioned forms

That—like the rainbow—come in storms!—

And bears, through more than mortal strife,

The treasure of a charmed life!

—Upon his brow the grace revealed

Which kings have stamped—and gods have sealed,

He rises on her, through the night,

Like some bright spirit of the sea,

And stands before her, in the light

Of his own high nobility!

 

But he is as those meteor things

That tread, like monarchs, through the sky,

Yet have their red and burning wings

Controlled and plumed by destiny!—

He came like light,—like light is gone,

Where far Hesperia beckons on;

And a young blighted passion-flower

Lies withering in Elissa’s bower!

 

Born eastward, where the palmy Tyre

Holds spirits, like its daylight—fire;

And passion takes a deeper tone

From Syria’s warm and glowing zone;

And love—and every sunny thing—

Spring upward on a brighter wing;—

Her heart is like her native scenes,

(And all a woman’s—though a queen’s!)

A heart whose fountains, dried away,

Have left it to the scorching ray,

That makes her young and wasted breast

Like wilds and waters in the East,—

A lifeless and a tideless sea,

A desert,—to eternity!

I am all alone!—and the visions that play

Round life’s young days, have passed away;

And the songs are hushed that gladness sings;

And the hopes that I cherished have made them wings;

And the light of my heart is dimmed and gone,

And I sit in my sorrow,—and all alone!

 

And the forms which I fondly loved are flown,

And friends have departed—one by one;

And memory sits, whole lonely hours,

And weaves her wreath of hope’s faded flowers,

And weeps o’er the chaplet, when no one is near

To gaze on her grief, or to chide her tear!

 

And the home of my childhood is distant far,

And I walk in a land where strangers are;

And the looks that I meet and the sounds that I hear

Are not light to my spirit, nor song to my ear;

And sunshine is round me,—which I cannot see,

And eyes that beam kindness,—but not for me!

 

And the song goes round, and the glowing smile,

But I am desolate all the while!

And faces are bright and bosoms glad,

And nothing, I think, but my heart, is sad!

And I seem like a blight in a region of bloom,

While I dwell in my own little circle of gloom!

 

I wander about, like a shadow of pain,

With a worm in my breast, and a spell on my brain;

And I list, with a start, to the gushing of gladness,—

Oh! how it grates on a bosom all sadness!—

So, I turn from a world where I never was known,

To sit in my sorrow,—and all alone!

Oh! for the wings we used to wear,

When the heart was like a bird,

And floated, still, through summer air,

And painted all it looked on fair,

And sung to all it heard!

When fancy put the seal of truth

On all the promises of youth!

 

Oh! for the wings with which the dove

Flies to the valley of her rest,^[10]

To take us to some pleasant grove,

Where hearts are not afraid to love,

And truth is, sometimes, blest;

To make the spirit mount again

That time has bowed, and grief, and pain!

 

It may not—oh, it may not be!

I cannot soar on fancy’s wing,

And hope has been,—like thee, like thee!—

These many weary years, to me,

A lost and perished thing!

Are there no pinions left, to bear

Me where the good and gentle are!

 

Yes!—rise upon the morning’s wing,^[11]

And, far beyond the farthest sea,

Where autumn is the mate of spring,

And winter comes not withering,

There is a home for thee!—

Away—away!—and lay thy head

In the low valley of the dead!

Is it some vision of the elder day,

Won from the dead-sea waters, by a spell

Like her’s who waked the prophet?—or a dream

Of burning Egypt,—ere the Lybian sand

Had flung its pall above a perished world,—

Dreamt on its dreary grave, that has no flowers?

—It is the eastern orphan’s ocean-home!—

The southern queen!—the city of the sea,

Ere Venice was a name!—the lofty heart

That battled for the empire of the world,

And all but won,—yet perished in the strife!

Now, in her young, proud beauty;—the blue waves,

Like vassals, bending low, to kiss her feet,

Or dancing to their own sweet minstrelsy!—

The olives hanging round her crested front,

Like laurel-crowns upon a victor’s brow!—

Beneath her palms, and ’mid her climbing bowers,

Darts, like a sunny flash, the antelope!

And bound the wild deer, where the severing boughs

Wave forth a goddess!—in her hunter-guise,

She wakes the perfumes of the Tyrian’s groves,

To welcome from the waves her pilgrim boy,

And point his tangled pathway, to the towers

That to his homeless spirit speak of home!

 

Alas! the stately city!—is it here,

Here, ’mid this palace pomp and leafy store,

(Bright as some landscape which the poet sees

Painted, by sunset, on a summer sky,

In hues the dolphin borrows, when he dies!)

’Mid all this clustering loveliness and life,

Where treads the Trojan,—that, in after-years,

A lonelier exile and a loftier chief

Sat amid ruins!

I think on thee, in the night,

  When all beside is still,

And the moon comes out, with her pale, sad light,

  To sit on the lonely hill!

When the stars are all like dreams,

  And the breezes all like sighs,

And there comes a voice from the far-off streams,

  Like thy spirit’s low replies!

 

I think on thee, by day,

  ’Mid the cold and busy crowd,

When the laughter of the young and gay

  Is far too glad and loud!

I hear thy soft, sad tone,

  And thy young, sweet smile I see,—

My heart—my heart were all alone,

  But for its dreams of thee!

 

Of thee who wert so dear,—

  And yet, I do not weep,

For thine eyes were stained by many a tear,

  Before they went to sleep;

And, if I haunt the past,

  Yet may I not repine

That thou hast won thy rest, at last,

  And all the grief is mine!

 

I think upon thy gain,

  Whate’er to me it cost,

And fancy dwells, with less of pain,

  On all that I have lost!—

Hope, like the cuckoo’s oft-told tale,

  —Alas! it wears her wing!—

And love, that—like the nightingale,—

  Sings only in the spring!

 

Thou art my spirit’s all,

  Just as thou wert in youth,

Still, from thy grave, no shadows fall

  Upon my lonely truth;—

A taper, yet, above thy tomb,

  Since lost its sweeter rays,

And what is memory, through the gloom,

  Was hope, in brighter days!

 

I am pining for the home

  Where sorrow sinks to sleep,

Where the weary and the weepers come,

  And they cease to toil and weep!

Why walk about, with smiles

  That, each, should be a tear,

Vain as the summer’s glowing spoils,

  Flung o’er an early bier!

 

Oh! like those fairy things,

  Those insects of the East,

That have their beauty in their wings,

  And shroud it, while at rest;

That fold their colours of the sky,

  When earthward they alight,

And flash their splendors on the eye,

  Only to take their flight;—

 

I never knew how dear thou wert,

  Till thou wert borne away!

I have it, yet, about my heart,

  Thy beauty of that day!—

As if the robe thou wert to wear,

  Beyond the stars, were given,

That I might learn to know it, there,

  And seek thee out, in Heaven!

Mute emblem of the broken heart!

To thee my spirit fondly clings;

And memory—ruin as thou art!—

Haunts, like a ghost, thy shivered strings!

Alike, o’er thee, may pass the breeze

That steals along in summer gladness,

Or utters through the leafless trees,

At eve, the soul of sadness!—

To summer’s breath, or winter’s sigh,

Thy murmurs never more reply!

 

There was a time—’tis long ago!—

When round thee music loved to linger,

Or sweep thy chords, in softened flow,

Before the little fairy finger

Of that remembered one, whose name

On earth is but an echo now!

Though I have sunned me in the flame

That brightened on her brow,—

The pure, glad light, when hope beat high,

That sparkled in her holy eye!

 

When sadness hung upon its blue,—

Like clouds that steal o’er summer skies,—

The murmurs that from thee she drew,

Oh! they were music’s very sighs!

But, in her gayer hours, thy strains

Breathed like the notes to spirits given,

To soothe them, after all their pains,

From the soft harps of heaven,—

With power to bid all sorrow cease,

And win the bosom back to peace!

 

’Twas meet that, when the minstrel died,

The lyre she cherished should decay;—

And never have thy tones replied

To touch, since that bereaving day!

The voice that spoke along each string

Of her pure spirit was a part,

And every sound it used to fling

An echo of her heart!

That heart is gone,—that spirit fled,—

And thou—art tuneless as the dead!

 

Her song—and oh, how sweet she sung!—

Is silent now in mortal ears!

But memory, broken lyre! has hung

Round thee the thoughts of other years;

And made thee still a thing divine,

—With many a tear thy chords bedewing,—

Round which our feelings fondly twine,

Like ivy round a ruin!—

There, in thy loneliness, thou art

Fit emblem of a broken heart!

I leave thee now, my spirit’s love!

All bright in youth’s unclouded light;—

With sunshine round, and hope above,

Thou scarce hast learnt to dream of night.

 

Yet night will come!—thy bounding heart

Must watch its idols melt away;

And, oh! thy soul must learn to part

With much that made thy childhood gay!

 

But should we meet in darker years,

When clouds have gathered round thy brow,—

How far more precious in thy tears,

Than in thy glow of gladness, now!—

 

Then come to me,—thy wounded heart

Shall find it has a haven still,

One bosom—faithless as thou art,—

All—all thine own, ’mid good and ill!

 

Thou leavest me for the world!—then go!

Thou art too young to feel it yet,

But time may teach thy heart to know

The worth of those who ne’er forget.

 

And, should that world look dark and cold,

Then turn to him whose silent truth

Will still love on, when worn and old,

The form it loved so well in youth!

 

Like that young bird that left its nest,

Lured, by the warm and sunny sky,

From flower to flower,—but found no rest,

And sought its native vale to die;—

 

Go! leave my soul to pine alone;

But, should the hopes that woo thee, wither,

Return, my own beloved one!

And let—oh, let us die together!

The ship goes forth, in all her pageantry,

To walk the wide sea-waves!—her silver wings,

Spread in the dying day-light, like a bird

That seeks for summer in a brighter clime!

—One stands upon the deck; and, through the war

Of waters, watches where the blood-red sun

Sinks o’er his own far valley of the west,

And lights the distant home that never more

Shall come, with all its music—but in dreams!

Never shall vision rise upon his sight

Like that, this moment, o’er the billows fading,

Dim in the distance!—Onward goes the ship,

To meet the rising sun!—but on his soul

Has sunk—morn shall not lighten it!—the night

Descending o’er his own Hesperia!

 

The vessel wanders onwards!—onwards still,

In music and in moonlight!—and the waves—

The little wavelets—lighted by the moon,

Play, like a thousand stars, upon its path!

And the light pennon streams upon a breeze,

Winged with the perfume of far orange-bowers!

And birds go flashing by, like silver gleams,

Or ride, like snow-flakes, on the dancing waves!

And sounds steal o’er the waters!—and the breasts

Of many throb, with that delicious thrill

That marks the weariness and peril past;

And—where she rises—hail the glowing East,

Fair as a new-born Venus from the sea!

And eyes look out, where hearts have gone before,

Through many a weary day and heavy night,—

All, all—save one!

                  He leans upon the deck,

And, through the waters, sends his spirit forth,

To seek another “land!”—For him—for him,

The ample world has but a single home;

All else a waste—of water or of plain,

What boots it which!—and the glad land-cry comes

Light to his ear—but heavy to his heart,

Marking the space he never must repass,

That hides the valley where he was a child!

—His mother’s white-walled cottage—far away—

Lost—like the dove that wandered from the ark,

And never came again!—all this, and more,

A thousand thoughts—each one an agony!—

Swell in his bosom!—and he turns to weep,

Amid the smiles that greet the lovely land,

Where he is but AN EXILE!

You remember the maid with her dark-brown hair,

And her brow, where the finger of beauty

Had written her name, and had stamped it there,

Till it made adoration a duty!

And you have not forgot how we watched with delight

Each charm,—as a new one was given,

Till she grew in our eyes to a vision of light,

And we thought her a spirit from heaven!

 

And your heart can recall—and mine often goes back,

With a sigh and a tear, to—the hours

When we gazed on her form, as she followed the track

Of the butterfly’s wing through the flowers;—

When, in her young joy, she would smile, with delight,

On its plumage of mingling dyes,

Till she let it go free,—and looked after its flight,

To see if it entered the skies!

 

But she wandered away from the home of her youth,

One spring, ere the roses were blown!

For she fancied the world was a temple of truth,

And she measured all hearts by her own!—

She fed on a vision, and lived on a dream,

And she followed it over the wave;

And she sought—where the moon has a milder gleam,

For a home,—and they gave her a grave!

 

There was one whom she loved, though she breathed it to none,

—For love of her soul was a part!—

And he said he loved her, but he left her alone,

With the worm of despair on her heart!

And oh! with what anguish we counted, each day,

The roses that died on her cheek,

And hung o’er her form, as it faded away,

And wept for the beautiful wreck!

 

Yet her eye was as mild and as blue, to the last,

Though shadows stole over its beam;

And her smiles are remembered—since long they are past!—

Like the smiles we have seen in a dream!

And—it may be that fancy had woven a spell,

But—I think, though her tones were as clear,

They were somewhat more soft, and their murmurings fell

Like a dirge, on the listening ear!

 

And, while sorrow threw round her a holier grace,

—Though she always was gentle and kind!—

Yet, I thought that the softness which stole o’er her face,

Had a softening power on her mind!—

But, it might be her looks and her tones were more dear,

And we valued them more, in decay,

As we treasure the last fading flower of the year,

—For we felt she was passing away!

 

She never complained,—but she loved to the last!

And the tear in her beautiful eye

Often told that her thoughts were gone back to the past,

And the youth who had left her to die!

—But mercy came down, and the maid is at rest,

Where the palm-tree sighs o’er her at even;

And the dew that weeps over the turf on her breast,

Is the tear of a far-foreign heaven!

Away—away! and bear thy breast

  To some more pleasant strand!

Why did it pitch its tent of rest

  Within a desert land!—

Though clouds may dim thy distant skies,

  And love look dark before thee,

Yet colder hearts and falser eyes

  Have flung their shadows o’er thee!

 

It is, at least, a joy to know

  That thou hast felt the worst,

And—if for thee no waters flow,—

  Thou never more shalt thirst!

Go forward, like a free-born child,

  Thy chains and weakness past,

Thou hast thy manna in the wild,

  Thy Pisgah, at the last!

 

And yet, those far and forfeit bowers

  Will rise, in after years,

The flowers,—and one who nursed the flowers,

  With smiles that turned to tears;

And I shall see her holy eye,

  In visions of the night,

As her youthful form goes stealing by,

  The beautiful and bright!

 

But I must wake, to bear along

  A bruised and buried heart,

And smile amid the smiling throng

  With whom I have no part;

To watch for hopes that may not bud

  Amid my spirit’s gloom,

Till He, who flowered the prophet’s rod,

  Shall bid them burst to bloom!

Thought sits upon her happy brow—like light!

—The young, pure thoughts that have no taint of sin!

Making the mortal beauty yet more bright,

By the immortal beauty from within!

Oh, blessed youth!—like perfume to the flower

Is thought to her—a loveliness the more!

Must she—oh! must she meet its darker hour,

That shows the ghosts of what it showed before;

When death—crowned death—o’er all the heart holds worth

Rides, on the pale steed, memory,—trampling all;

And thoughts are like the fingers that came forth,

And wrote their burning curse upon the wall,—

Searing, alike, the spirit and the brow!

—Oh! for the heaven that should receive her, now!

My early love, and must we part!

Yes!—other wishes win thee now,

New hopes are springing in thy heart,

New feelings brightening o’er thy brow!

And childhood’s light and childhood’s home

Are all forgot, at glory’s call;—

Yet, cast one thought, in years to come,

On her who loved thee—o’er them all!

 

When pleasure’s bowl is filled for thee,

And thou hast raised the cup to sip,

I would not that one dream of me

Should chase the chalice from thy lip;

But should there mingle in the draught

One dream of days that long are o’er,

Then—only then—the pledge be quafft

To her who ne’er shall taste it more!

 

When love and friendship’s holy joys

Within their magic circle bound thee,

And happy hearts and smiling eyes,—

As all must wear who are around thee!—

Remember that an eye as bright

Is dimmed,—a heart as true is broken,

And turn thee from thy land of light,

To waste on these some little token!

 

But do not weep!—I could not bear

To stain thy cheek with sorrow’s trace,

I would not draw one single tear,

For worlds, down that beloved face!

As soon would I, if power were given,

Pluck out the bow from yonder sky,

And free the prisoned floods of heaven,

As call one tear-drop to thine eye!

 

Yet oh, my love!—I know not why,

It is a woman’s thought!—but while

Thou offerest to my memory,

The tribute should not be—a smile!

For, though I would not see thee weep,

The heart, methinks! should not be gay,

That would the fast of feeling keep

To her who loves it—far away!

 

No! give me but one single sigh,

Pure as we breathed in happier hours,

When very sighs were winged with joy,

Like gales that have swept over flowers!

That uttering of a fond regret,

That strain my spirit long must pour!—

A thousand dreams may wait us yet,

Our holiest and our first is o’er!

My native clime! along thy shore

The clansman’s song is heard no more;

No more the pibroch glads the gale,

Nor wandering harper cheers the vale;

No more do warriors’ visioned forms

Ride forth upon the “hills of storms;”

No chieftain raises to the sky

The gladness of his battle-cry;

Nor minstrel’s lofty numbers swell

Above the brave, who fought—and fell!

Unmarked the grey stone rears its head

Above each hero’s mountain-bed;

Unheard by all the thistle’s sigh,

As the lone spirit wanders by;

Hushed is the music of thy dells,

And silent, now, the feast of shells;

And, like a thought, has passed away

The magic of thine early day!

—Yet there,—like hearts that love thee still,—

The heather hangs upon each hill,

And blooms along thy hardy braes,

As brightly as in better days;

Like valour, rears its purple crest

Above thy lorn and widowed breast!—

And there,—like beauty’s glances seen,—

The blue-eyed harebell springs between!—

Still faithful, ’mid the wrecks of time,

Twin children of my native clime!

The warrior youth and his dog are come

Where the banner of war is unfurled,—

It had eat from his hand, in his mother’s home,

And had followed him through the world.—

The friends of his heart, in its morning pride,

Have fled from the gloom of his morrow;

And his dog is all that stands by his side,

Since he has but his sabre and sorrow!

 

He had doted too well on those perishing things,

And wept over them long, as they past,

Till, one by one, they had made themselves wings,

Save woman—and she went, last!

So, he wiped from his father’s sword the stain,

And the weakness from his heart,

And hied him away to the battle-plain,

—But his dog would not depart!

 

He has slumbered beneath a moonless sky,

While his friend has watched around,

And soothed with its tongue, the agony

Of each—save the spirit’s—wound.

And its faith has been as a gentle dew,

Shed sweetly and silently!—

Oh! were the maid of his soul as true,

How fair a thing were she!

 

And now, amid the battle’s strife,

He flings his sword away,

And, as he marks its ebbing life,

Weeps—as a soldier may!—

Tears that become the warrior, more

Than all the weak ones given

To her—the darker, that she wore

The livery of heaven!

The noon-day sun is riding high,

Along the calm and cloudless sky!

The mantle of his gorgeous glow

Floats sleepily o’er all below;

And heaven and earth are brightly gay

Beneath the universal ray!—

But not a wandering sunbeam falls

Within these high and hallowed walls,

Which echo back my lonely tread,

Like solemn answers from the dead!

—The murmurs steal along the nave,

And die above—my sister’s grave.

 

’Tis evening!—still I linger here,

Yet sorrow speaks not in a tear;

The silence is so sadly deep,

The place so pure,—I dare not weep!

I sit as in a shapeless dream,

Where all is changing, save its theme;

And, if a sigh will sometimes heave

A heart that loves,—but may not grieve,

It seems as though the spirits round

Sent back reproachfully the sound;

And then I start,—and think I have

A chiding from my sister’s grave!

 

The feeling is a nameless one

With which I sit upon thy stone,

And read the tale I dare not breathe

Of blighted hope that sleeps beneath!

A simple tablet bears above

Brief record of a father’s love,

And hints, in language yet more brief,

The story of a father’s grief:—

Around, the night-breeze sadly plays

With scutcheons of the elder days;

And faded banners dimly wave,

On high,—right o’er my sister’s grave!

 

Lost spirit!—thine was not a breast

To struggle vainly after rest!

Thou wert not made to bear the strife,

Nor labour through the storms of life!

Thy heart was in too warm a mould

To mingle with the dull and cold,

And every thought that wronged thy truth

Fell like a blight upon thy youth!—

Thou shouldst have been, for thy distress,

Less pure,—and oh, more passionless!

For sorrow’s wasting mildew gave

Its tenant to my sister’s grave!

 

But all thy griefs, my girl, are o’er!

Thy fair-blue eyes shall weep no more!

’Tis sweet to know thy fragile form

Lies safe from every future storm!—

Oft, as I haunt the dreary gloom

That gathers round thy peaceful tomb,

I love to see the lightning stream

Along thy stone, with fitful gleam;

To fancy in each flash are given

Thy spirit’s visitings from heaven;—

And smile—to hear the tempest rave

Above my sister’s quiet grave!

I sit, in my lonely mood!—

No smiling eyes are near,

And there is not a sound in my solitude,

Save the voice in my dreaming ear!

The friends whom I loved, in light,

Are seen through a twilight dim,

Like fairies, beheld in a moonlight night,

Or heard in a far-off hymn!

The hopes of my youth are away,

My home and its early dreams,

I am far from the land where I used to play,

A child, by its thousand streams!

—Yet now, in my lonely hour,

What visions of bliss are mine!

For my spirit is ruled by a spell of power,

And the spell and the power are thine!

 

I have mixed with the courtly throng,

And smiled with the smiling crowd,

When the laugh was light, and the revel long,

And the mirth was high and loud!

I have watched the lightning-flash

Of beauty’s playful eye,

As it gleamed beneath the long, dark lash,

Like a star in a moonless sky!

I have been where gentle tones

Grew gentler for my sake,

And seen soft smiles—those lovely ones

Which make young bosoms ache!

—Yet, in those brightest hours,

What lonely thoughts were mine!

For the heart has but one spring of flowers,

And my heart and its flowers were thine!

As one—who leaves some blessed isle,

Where youth’s unclouded hours were past;

Where all around him wore a smile,

Too bright—too rainbow-like—to last;

Where beauty haunted every bower,

And fragrance breathed from every flower,

And heaven shed a softer hue

On all that slept beneath its blue;—

Roams through each well-known sunny glade,

And visits every leafy shade,

And sighs o’er every floweret’s bell

That fancy hallows with a spell;

And strives to bid adieu, in vain,

To all he ne’er may see again;

And, like a phantom, wanders still

Through every vale, o’er every hill,

In every grove, by every stream,

Each blent with childhood’s golden dream;—

Long lingering, with a fond distress,

To weep above their loveliness;

And sighing, as remembrance brings

The thousand thoughts upon its wings,

That over all have sweetly thrown

A milder magic of their own:—

While oft a tear (and oh! in heaven,

That murmuring tear shall be forgiven!)

Will from his heavy eyelid start,

As fancy whispers to his heart,

That summer suns shall brightly smile

Upon his own beloved isle,—

And flowers as fondly shall exhale

Their incense to the passing gale,—

And violet vales and woodbine bowers

Shall consecrate the moonlight hours,—

And whispering streams still glide away,

Beneath the calm and holy ray,

Unerring as the path of duty,

Yet graceful as the step of beauty,

’Mid blossomed banks and greenwood groves,—

When far from him the land he loves;

When, unto him, that witching scene

Shall be—as though it ne’er had been!

 

’Tis thus with me!—in fond delay,

I linger still, condemned to part;

And cannot rend the ties away

That love has twined around my heart!

And every dear and cherished form,

That—as a sunbeam in the storm,—

Looks brightest in the parting day,

Glides through my thoughts, in sad array:

And every look and touch and tone,

And every happy moment gone,

And all the bright and blessed hours

That strewed my path of life with flowers,—

When daylight woke the heart to joy,

And night flew, winged with music, by,—

In long review, before me pass,

Through memory’s necromantic glass;

And seem—like ghosts that leave a blight

Where’er they wander through the night,—

To “come like shadows, so depart,”

And cast a chill upon my heart,

And weave around my brain a spell,

That drowns the struggling word—farewell!

That withering word must come at last!

But memory shall survive its power,

And light, with visions of the past,

The gloom of many a future hour!

And, though I wander far away,

Yet, wheresoe’er my feet may stray,

Oh! never, never from my heart

The looks and tones it loved shall part!—

Oft will I turn from darkness nigh,

To catch the smile of days gone by;

And hallow oft, in future years,

Life’s early dream with manhood’s tears!

 

And then, methinks! with silent track,

My thoughts shall oft go wandering back,

And glide around the dear recess,

Built, as it were, for happiness!—

Where, through the clustering vines, the eye

Looks out upon the moonlight sky,

When the night-spirit steals to kiss

The bower of silver clematis,

And to the whispering air replies

The jasmine, with its sweetest sighs;

When, on its wing, the voiceless breeze

Brings fragrance from the orange-trees;

When the white beams of evening fall

Along the darkly ivied wall,

And his light web the spider weaves

Among the bright acacia leaves;—

While, heard from some sequestered vale,

Sings to the stars the nightingale!

 

But, brighter than that witching scene

The little fairy world within;

Where happy hearts and smiling eyes

Were the pure planets of our skies!

Where we had lips, whose every breath—

More fragrant than the scented wreath

From which the zephyr stole its kiss,—

Loaded the atmosphere with bliss!

And ringlets, in whose silken net,

Of shining brown, or raven jet.

There lurked a far more subtle snare

Than those the spider hangs in air!

And sounds on which the spirit hung,

Till all unheard the night-bird sung!—

While friendship, blending every soul,

Threw moonlight beauty o’er the whole!

 

Then oh! how brightly thou wilt seem

To mingle in that blessed dream,

Such as thou wert in years of youth,

With looks of light, and soul of truth,—

The young and mild and snowy dove

That blessed that little ark of love!

When beauty with her zone had bound thee,

And music seemed to breathe around thee;—

When the rapt spirit fondly hung

On every murmur of thy tongue,

Or gazed, in calm and quiet joy,

On the soft lustre of thine eye,

Where dwelt a ray, too bright for sadness,

Yet oh! too holy far for gladness!—

When o’er thy very faults was thrown

Redeeming sweetness of their own!

With soul too firmly proud to bend,

Yet far too gentle to offend;

To smile at others’ follies prone,

Too honest to conceal thine own;

In every weakness of thy heart

Some virtue sweetly bore a part;

And every failing, in its train,

Brought something to redeem its stain;

Till even thy faults grew dear to me,

I loved them—as a part of thee!

For thou hadst none which love would hide,

Which goodness had not sanctified!

 

Thou, too, shalt be remembered, then,

The guardian-angel of the scene!—

Rich in the native untaught art

To rear a shrine in every heart!

With all the feelings of life’s prime,—

But chastened and subdued by time!

A spirit high, an ardent soul,—

But taught to brook thy mind’s control!

As pure a love as ever blest

The mansion of a stainless breast,

Which sweetly flowed—as dew showers fall,—

In common kindness towards all!

An eye of mild and holy light,

Serenely glad, and calmly bright,—

Yet fired, at times, with joyous gleams,

Gay as an infant’s happy dreams!

’Twas thine, within thy magic bound,

To scatter sunshine all around,

Till every other face grew bright,

And shone in thy emitted light!

And,—as the moon, the livelong day,

Drinks from the sun’s eternal ray,

Then wanders forth, in borrowed light,

To shed a beauty o’er the night,—

So, from thy presence, every eye

Grew radiant with reflected joy,

And half we seemed to win from thee

A portion of thy purity!

 

He, too, shall haunt that dreaming mood,

The kind, the generous, and the good,—

The open heart and liberal hand,

The genius of that fairy land!

Beneath whose fostering eye, arose

That paradise of pure repose;

Who watched the little Eden spring

Under the shelter of his wing!—

Chartered, by nature, to dispense

The hidden oracles of sense,

And hang a new and living light

Along a page where all was night;^[13]

Whose eye explored, with steady ray,

The darkness of a rugged way,—

Till order out of chaos smiled,

And beauty blossomed in the wild,

And, at his country’s feet, he placed

The fruits he gathered from the waste!—

Whose manly spirit, born to soar

Wherever genius trod before,

Loved still to stoop, in calmer hours,

And taste those humbler, sweeter flowers

That in the noon-day blaze would fade,

But yield their fragrance in the shade!—

Whose grasping mind could still unbend,

The husband—father—brother—friend!—

Who, skilled in precedents and rules,

Could leave the jargon of the schools;

And owned no rule which would control

The overflowings of the soul,

No precedent whose stern behest

Would lock the floodgates of the breast!—

Who loved, beyond the terms of art,

The simple language of the heart;

Still true to all life’s softer ties,

And nature’s home-bred sympathies!—

Oh! memory will, indeed, be dim,

When she retains no trace of him!

 

Farewell—farewell!—but think on one

Whose steps through many a maze have run;

Whose follies wore the stamp of youth,

Whose soul was still a soul of truth!—

Who often erred,—for oh! his head

For ever by his heart was led,

And reason’s voice was vain, addrest

Against the pleadings of his breast!—

And vain its warnings must be still,

His heart must lead him at its will;

And—though it take him far astray,

Too oft, through many a flowery way,—

Yet, rather will he trust its song,

—Which never can beguile him long,—

Than shut it up within his breast,

(A jewel in a worthless chest!)

To follow prudence as his guide,—

Whose footstep will not turn aside,

Though all the flowers of life lay dead

Beneath the pressure of its tread,—

Which may not pause, to give a sigh

To all the sweets it wanders by!—

No! never shall his head control

The honest beatings of his soul;

And ne’er, by him, shall be represt

The gushing feelings of his breast!

 

As rivers—which meandering glide

Through many a fair and winding way,—

Where’er their course may turn aside,

Howe’er their roving waters stray,

Still murmur till their home they gain,

And flow, unerring, to the main!—

My heart—though oft its restless tide

Awhile may wander far and wide,—

’Mid all its ramblings, ne’er forgets

The point to which its current sets,

But fondly tends, where’er it roves,

In silent truth, to those it loves!

 

Be such the current of my fate!—

Though now it bears me far away

From hopes, whose beauty, long and late,

Shall haunt me on my devious way!—

Oh! may it lead through golden bowers,

Through life-tracks gay with summer flowers;

And—all my wanderings brightly past,—

May I flow calmly back, at last!

Death is the privilege of human nature,

And life, without it, were not worth our taking.

How sweet to sleep where all is peace,

Where sorrow cannot reach the breast,

Where all life’s idle throbbings cease,

And pain is lulled to rest;—

Escaped o’er fortune’s troubled wave,

To anchor in the silent grave!

 

That quiet land where, peril past,

The weary win a long repose,

The bruised spirit finds, at last,

A balm for all its woes,—

And lowly grief and lordly pride

Lie down, like brothers, side by side!

 

The breath of slander cannot come

To break the calm that lingers there;

There is no dreaming in the tomb,

Nor waking to despair;

Unkindness cannot wound us more,

And all earth’s bitterness is o’er!

 

There the maiden waits till her lover come,—

They never more shall part!—

And the stricken deer has gained her home,

With the arrow in her heart!

And passion’s pulse lies hushed and still,

Beyond the reach of the tempter’s skill!

 

The mother—she is gone to sleep,

With her babe upon her breast,—

She has no weary watch to keep

Over her infant’s rest;

His slumbers on her bosom fair

Shall never more be broken—there!

 

For me—for me, whom all have left,

—The lovely, and the dearly loved!—

From whom the touch of time hath reft

The hearts that time had proved,

Whose guerdon was—and is—despair,

For all I bore—and all I bear;—

 

Why should I linger idly on,

Amid the selfish and the cold,

A dreamer—when such dreams are gone

As those I nursed of old!

Why should the dead tree mock the spring,

A blighted and a withering thing!

 

How blest—how blest that home to gain,

And slumber in that soothing sleep,

From which we never rise to pain,

Nor ever wake to weep!—

To win my way from the tempest’s roar,

And lay me down on the golden shore!

The rose that decked thy cheek is dead,

The ruby from thy lip has fled,

  Thy brow has lost its gladness;

And the pure smiles that used to play

So brightly there, have passed away

  Before the touch of sadness!—

Yet sorrow’s shadows o’er thy face

Have wandered with a mellowing grace

 

And grief has given to thine eye

A beauty,—such as yonder sky

  Receives, when daylight’s splendour

Fades in the holy twilight hour,

Whose magic hangs on every flower

  A bloom more pure and tender;

When angels walk the quiet even,

On messages of love from Heaven!

 

Thy low sweet voice, in every word,

Breathes—like soft music far-off heard,—

  The soul of melancholy!

And oh! to listen to thy sigh!—

The evening gale that wanders by

  The rose is not so holy!

But none may know the thoughts that rest

In the deep silence of thy breast!

 

For oh! thou art, to mortal eyes,

  Like some pure spirit of the skies,

  Awhile to bless us given;

And sadly pining for the day,

To spread thy wings, and flee away,

  Back to thy native Heaven!—

Thou wert beloved by all before,

But now,—a thing that we adore!^[14]

Blue-eyed Athena! what a dream wert thou!

Oh! what a glory hovered o’er thy shrine,—

Thy hill, where darker error nestles, now!—

Yet art thou hallowed, though no more divine!

The worship of all noblest hearts is thine,—

Though the dull Moslem haunts the sacred earth

Where sprung the olive, o’er its bower of vine,

And watched above thine own Cecropia’s birth!—

Truth, that should chase such dreams, were, surely, little worth!

 

For oh! thou art the very purest thought

That fable e’er conceived!—and, on thy hill—

Thine own blue hill—where time and Turk have wrought,

In vain, to break the spell that lingers, still,—

The heart that owns a better faith may kneel,

Nor wrong his creed, while bending o’er the sod

Where gods—and men like gods, in act and will,—

Are made immortal, by the wizard rod

Of him whose every thought aspired to be a god!^[15]

 

Mount of the free—Olympus of the earth!

Fair as a temple—lonely as a tomb!

Shall the dark robber rear his household hearth,

Where fabled gods contended for a home!

—Those bright abstractions of a truth to come!—

No, by the gift Trazene’s monarch gave!^[16]

No, by thy withered olive’s early bloom!—

The sea-god’s offering calls upon thy brave,

Mount, and replant the tree, once more,—upon the Moslem’s grave!

Oh! the glad days when life was in its spring,

And every wish was furnished with a wing!

When smiling eyes betokened smiling hearts,

As sunshine is the brightness it imparts!

When truth and gladness gathered flowers together,

And duty plumed her wing with pleasure’s feather!

When, if to-day was chequered by a sorrow,

It could not fling one cloud upon to-morrow,—

And the young soul but brightened from its showers,

As dew draws holier incense from the flowers!

Ere hope had mocked us, or the cloud of pain

Had left its withering shadow on the brain!

Ere yet the spirit grieved, to see depart

Those hues which were a rainbow to the heart!

Ere thou hadst worn the smile that speaks of sadness,

Or I the mask of mirth—when mirth is madness!

 

Those days are gone,—as beautiful as brief!

Vain as the vain complaint that blots this leaf!

The world—the world its wasting blight has shed

O’er all the flowers hope reared,—till hope lay dead;

And many a bitter pang of vain regret

Hath burnt my breast and brain, since last we met!

I walk as one who wanders in a dream,

Through scenes where beauty smiles,—but not for him!

Silent and sad as he who haunts the spot

Where joy should be,—and, oh! where joy is not!

Wild with the thoughtless,—gay amid the gay,

But, oh! my heart—my heart is far away!

Away and lonely—when my mirth is loud,

Cold as the corpse within a gorgeous shroud!—

’Mid sounds that on my ear unheeded roll,

And songs that have no echo in my soul,

And smiles that cannot wile my gloom away,

I dwell,—and with a brow as bright as they;

Still tasting joys which cannot quench my pains,

As vampires blood—which never swells their veins!

 

And yet, methinks! (how fondly we caress

The cherished hopes which make our happiness!)

Methinks that, haply, in some distant day,

When fate’s wild storms have scattered friends away,

And time and distance roll their tides between,

Like parted shores where torrents intervene,—

Thine eye upon this humble page may fall,

And fancy may the fleeted past recall!

And then, the voice that has so long been mute,

May seem to murmur, like a broken lute,—

Sad as the wailing night-wind’s fitful lay,

Soft as the sound of music far away!—

Then, through thy heart, my vanished form may pass,

Like the frail shadow in a magic glass;

Just smiling on thy dreams,—to fade away,

Like hopes that cheat us in life’s little day!—

Oh! if thy lips but name me with a sigh,

And thou shalt weep for all the hours gone by,

If from thine eyelid steal a single tear,—

Pure as the dew-drop bathes the moonlight sphere,—

That sigh, by spirits wafted through the gloom,

Be all the dirge that murmurs o’er my tomb!

That holy tear, to consecrate my name,

Is all my heart would ever ask of fame!

 

Oh! that, like thee, I had the magic art

To write my name, for ever, on the heart!

More blest than I, thou seek’st no fading leaf,

To trace memorials—sad as they are brief:—

Thy gentle image, on the soul imprest,

Suns all the flowers that blossom in the breast,

Alike ’mid every chance and change of fate,

Hope’s sweetest pledge,—joy’s charmed amulet!

In all my memories of the buried past,

Thou art the loveliest,—and shalt be the last!

Peace sit on thy young spirit!—never rest

On thee the phantom sorrow!—may thy brow

Pass, like an ark, along life’s stormy waste,

As stainless and as beautiful as now;—

Still buoyant on the waves, with all its store

Of thoughts and feelings treasured from the past:

And, if thy breast shall ever sigh for more,

And hope go forth, thy envoy, on the blast,

Oh! may the dove as oft return, and bring

The olive-branch beneath her snowy wing!

 

’Tis long since we have met!—long years, though few;—

For we are in that blessed time of youth

When fancy sinks along the heart, like dew,

And the world has not withered up its truth;

When years are but as moments,—yet we crowd

In one short moment, passions, hopes and fears,

Which haunt the spirit, ere its powers are bowed,

And make brief minutes worth long after-years,

And years worth immortalities,—when life

Sleeps, cold and passionless, from feeling’s strife!

 

When o’er the surface of our days is thrown

A blank repose,—a weariness of rest,—

Fullness of void;—and memory walks, alone,

Amid the ruins of the wasted breast,

O’er many a blighted track where shapes have been,

Those fleeting shapes that, in the years of youth,

—Like fairy elves that haunt the freshest green,—

Rise brightly up, and take the form of truth,

Dance, in their magic rings, around the heart,

And leave its blossoms withered, when they part!^[17]

 

Or, worse than all!—when fancy’s early dreams

Have mingled into one; which, not the less,

Haunts the lorn soul, though shorn of all its beams;—

One Titan thought,—one passionate distress,—

One overwhelming Upas of the mind,—

Immortal pest! beneath whose mortal shade

Lie withered hopes and feelings intertwined,—

Sole monarch of the desert it has made,—

Infecting, with its breath, life’s wholesome air,

And darkening all things to a black despair!

 

’Tis years since we have met!—those precious years

Which make days, ages,—and old friends in youth!—

And now we meet again!—and smiles and tears,

Since last we met, have done their work on both;

But time, that hath been busy on my way,

Hath passed thee lightly:—still, methinks! thine eye

Is darker than it was, and yields a ray

Too bright for sorrow, yet too sad for joy;

A chastened light,—a look which seems to own

That thou hast battled with the world,—and won!

 

Friend of forgotten days!—of days that give

No record, save in gentle hearts like thine!

Thy form is of the cherished things that live,

Canonized in the soul, as in a shrine;

And while, before thine altar, fancy pours

The votive firstlings of her early years,

If sadness be the priestess, in the hours

Of loneliness,—the worship is not tears;—

The dark-eyed vestal thou wilt not despise,

Fit votaress for so pure a sacrifice!

 

How beautiful it is—the bright blue sky,

When eve puts on her coronal of light,

And looks, in gladness, from her throne on high,

O’er southern seas—the mirrors of the night,—

Where zephyrs have no power to curl the deep,

But soothe it into slumber!—lovelier far

To gaze upon the lustres, where they sleep

Below,—each like the memory of a star,—

Glancing, like phantoms, through their watery veil,

A visioned heaven,—dreamy, dim, and pale!

A rose in Zöe’s arbour grew,

Like Zöe, young and bright,—

It fed upon the fragrant dew,

And bathed in beams of light;

The gentlest zephyrs, still, would creep,

Warm o’er it, from the west,

And the night-spirit loved to weep

Upon its virgin breast;

And all the host of insect beaux

Would pause, to trifle with the rose!

 

Alas, the flower!—one summer night,

Some spirit rode the gale,

Who, from his pinions, scattered blight

Along the scented vale;—

I saw it in the sunny morn,

’Twas dying on its stem,

Yet wore, though drooping and forlorn,

Its dewy diadem;

But every roving butterfly

Looked on the rose—and wandered by!

 

The beams of morning had no power

Upon its faded cheek,

The bee went singing past the flower,

The bird flew by the wreck;

Still, as each fluttering idler fled,

That used to linger here,

The rose would bow its gentle head,

And shake away a tear,—

But never raised its timid eye,

To gaze, again, upon the sky!

 

It withered through the sunny hours,

And, when the shadows fell,

In vain the spirit of the flowers

Flung down its dewy spell!

The moon gleamed sad,—the night-breeze sighed,

Above the lonely flower,

But, none who loved its day of pride

Watched o’er its waning hour;—

The flatterers—they had, long, been gone,

It died—neglected and alone!

Far, far away,—the zephyrs wave,

In silence, o’er thy lonely grave!

No kindred sigh disturbs the gloom

That midnight hangs around thy tomb:

But spirits of a foreign air,

At evening, love to linger there;

And roses of another shore

—Blooming, where thou shalt bloom no more!—

Shed sweetness o’er the quiet spot

Where thou liest low—but unforgot;

While moonbeams of a distant sky

Watch o’er it,—like a mother’s eye!

 

The spot is holy,—and it seems

Like to some shadowy land of dreams!

For, never does a single sound

Break on the calm that hovers round:

Save when the lone bird, grieving nigh,

Complains unto the silent sky;

Or the sad cypress waves its head,

In murmurs, o’er thy narrow bed;

Or—while the gales are all at rest,

Far off upon the billows’ breast,—

The flow of yonder distant stream

Comes on the silence, as a dream;

Whose music—like a thought of thee,—

Tunes all the heart to melody,

And steals upon the calm around,

As ’twere the shadow of a sound!

 

It seems as peace had built her nest

Above thy hallowed place of rest;

As though no footstep might intrude

Upon that sacred solitude;

Nor human feeling dare to come,

To mock the stillness of thy tomb!

 

And thou art nothing—but a thought!

A form by fancy’s magic wrought!

A rainbow, softly lingering, yet,

Reflected from a sun that’s set,

Painted in memory’s softest die!

A shadow of a joy gone by!

A spell—a very phantasy!

A vision, clinging to the heart!

A dream that haunts—and will not part!

 

Anna! methinks I see thee, yet,

The roses on thy cheek all wet;

I see thy form, as last it stood

Upon the verge of ocean’s flood;

Thine eye, that glistened through a tear;—

Thy voice still lingers on mine ear,

Like the low wailing of a knell,

Striving, in vain, to say farewell!

(Oh, woe! that such a withering word,

From lips so dear, should e’er be heard!)

I feel the pressure of thy hand,—

—Thy heart was in it!—on the sand,

That weary day when we two parted,

And I was left half broken-hearted!—

How truly, when that hour was past,

My heart foretold it was our last,—

And when our hands were forced to sever,

I knew, I felt—it was for ever!

 

It was for ever!—years of pain

Have passed,—we have not met again;—

Nor ever shall!—but oft in hours

When melancholy weaves her powers,

My thoughts go o’er the severing sea,

And wander far in search of thee!

Oft, when the whispering winds repine,

My spirit, Anna! is with thine;

Oft, in the dim and moonless night,

We meet by memory’s solemn light;

And oft when wintry tempests rave,

My heart is with thee,—in thy grave!

 

And oh! ere many years be past,

—And they are fleeting sad and fast!—

My foot may seek the far-off scene,

Where, long and oft, my soul has been!

Yet will I come—where thou art not!—

To bend above the lonely spot

Which fancy, with a prophet’s art,

So long has painted to my heart!—

To hear the night-bird carol, there,

Thy dirge unto the silent air;

To kiss the wild-flowers which have shed

Their fragrance o’er thy lowly bed;

And, sitting in the cypress gloom,

To weave a garland for thy tomb!

Flutes in the sunny air!

And harps in the porphyry halls!

And a low, deep hum,—like a people’s prayer,—

With its heart-breathed swells and falls!

And an echo,—like the desart’s call,—

Flung back to the shouting shores!

And the river’s ripple, heard through all,

As it plays with the silver oars!—

The sky is a gleam of gold!

And the amber breezes float,

Like thoughts to be dreamed of—but never told,

Around the dancing boat!

 

She has stepped on the burning sand!

And the thousand tongues are mute!

And the Syrian strikes, with a trembling hand,

The strings of his gilded lute!

And the Æthiop’s heart throbs loud and high,

Beneath his white symar,

And the Lybian kneels, as he meets her eye,

Like the flash of an Eastern star!

The gales may not be heard,

Yet the silken streamers quiver,

And the vessel shoots—like a bright-plumed bird,—

Away—down the golden river!

 

Away by the lofty mount!

And away by the lonely shore!

And away by the gushing of many a fount,

Where fountains gush no more!—

Oh! for some warning vision, there,

Some voice that should have spoken

Of climes to be laid waste and bare,

And glad, young spirits broken!

Of waters dried away,

And hope and beauty blasted!

—That scenes so fair and hearts so gay

Should be so early wasted!

 

A dream of other days!—

That land is a desart, now!

And grief grew up, to dim the blaze

Upon that royal brow!

The whirlwind’s burning wing hath cast

Blight on the marble plain,

And sorrow—like the Simoom—past

O’er Cleopatra’s brain!

Too like her fervid clime, that bred

Its self-consuming fires,—

Her breast—like Indian widows—fed

Its own funereal pyres!

—Not such the song her minstrels sing,—

“Live, beauteous, and for ever!”^[19]

As the vessel darts, with its purple wing,

Away—down the golden river!

Beloved pledge of happier years,—

When life was in its bursting spring,

Ere love had learnt to speak in tears,

Or hope to stoop her eagle wing!—

Though dark and drear thy story, now,—

In sorrow shred—in sadness braided,—

And dim the eye and cold the brow

That, once, thy silken ringlet shaded,

I turn from brighter things, to bless

Thee, in thine utter loneliness!

 

The world may have a healing power

O’er gentle hearts—when hearts are breaking,

And time may rear some future flower

To soothe away the spirit’s aching;—

And kindly tones and smiling eyes

May deck the coming hours with gladness,

And other hopes and friends arise,

Like sunlight, o’er the bosom’s sadness;—

Yes, age may chase each burning tear,

But not one thought that made thee dear!

 

And oft shall memory turn to weep,

As visions of the buried past,

Like dreams that haunt the mourner’s sleep,

Along my soul their beauty cast;—

Oft shall the form we loved—in vain—

Twined with thy fair and silken tress,

Come dimly stealing back again,

In youth’s unclouded loveliness,

With all the thoughts of other days

That mingle in thy mystic maze!

 

As that lone harp that only tells

Its story to the wandering wind,—

Though sad its music sinks and swells,—

Yet, leaves a nameless joy behind;

So, thou shalt touch on many a string

That, in the heart, has long been broken,

Yet peace shall o’er the spirit spring

Before thy tale, thou lonely token!

And thou shalt shed a holy rest,

A fast of feeling through the breast!

 

When life and love grow dark and dim,

And friends are cold, and youth is past,

My soul shall turn to thee,—and him

Whose love was changeless, to the last!

Years had not shed their withering blight

Upon the freshness of his truth,

Nor sorrow put one ray to flight

That scattered gladness o’er his youth;

Hope in his web her garlands wove,

And all his blessed lot was love!

 

He died a pure and stainless thing!

The taint of sin—the touch of grief

Had flung no fetter on a wing

Whose flight was sunny all—as brief!

Ere slander uttered, by his tongue,

The words that worse than arrows wound,

Or coldness round his spirit hung

The thoughts that speak—without a sound!—

Oh! happy in his early bloom,

But happier in his early tomb!

 

Time was, each breeze that wandered by

Could wave thee on thy native brow;

The rudest storm that sweeps the sky

O’er thee—and him—is powerless, now!

He ne’er shall know the bitter smart

Of nursing dreams,—to weep, in waking,

Nor feel that loneliness of heart

For which there is no cure—but breaking!—

There had not been one cloud, to stain

That sun which ne’er may shine, again!

 

Lie near my heart, thou lonely thing!—

Thou all that love had power to save!—

And thou shalt feed the hopes that spring,

The flowers that blossom, from the grave.

Round thee shall dwell no thought of gloom,

But fancy learn in thee to read

A message from the spirit’s home,

A token from the silent dead!—

The cold may frown,—the kind depart,—

Lie thou, for ever, near my heart!

I stood with Ellen, where the stream

Flowed through a dark and lonely wild,

Ungilded by one sunny gleam,

And murmuring like a fretted child;

And, as I watched its rapid chase,

I whispered that—unlike that river,—

Our love should have a smoother race,

But—like its waters,—flow for ever!

 

A smile contended with a sigh,

As o’er my arm she drooped her head;

I read the trouble in her eye,

—There’s not a look but love can read!—

A dew had dimmed her glance, which fell

Where, broken from its fragile stem,

One flower—it was an azure bell,—

Came floating down the turbid stream!

 

She stooped to seize the blighted flower,

And wreathed it in her raven hair;

And never till that blessed hour,

Methought, had Ellen looked so fair!

A light was in her flashing eye,

And on her cheek a deeper bloom;—

Who would not wither, but to lie,

One hour, within as sweet a tomb!

 

The floweret drooped above her brow,

Which the dark ringlets almost shaded;

And, bathing in her beauty’s glow,

The eye forgot its tint was faded!

Oh! how I watched, along her face,

The silent blushes softly stealing,

That marked, in sweetly mingling grace,

The varying shades of some deep feeling!

 

Gently she laid her hand on mine,

And, with a faint and timid smile,

Took the lone chaplet from its shrine;

—A tear was on her cheek the while!—

“Perchance,” she said, “this bell has come,

A weary way, from brighter bowers,

Where some glad valley was its home,

And its young lot as blest as ours!

 

“And, even in its young decay,

Say, is it not most sadly fair!

And wouldst thou choose a wreath more gay,

For love to twine in Ellen’s hair!

Methinks that round its withering zone

A wild and witching charm is hung,—

As echo breathes a holier tone

Than the sweet sounds from which it sprung!

 

“Thou knowest, our stream of life has strayed

A summer course, through springing flowers—

But we may quit the smiling glade,

For darker scenes, in gloomier hours:

Through desart wastes our fate may flow,

Dark as these rapid waters rave,

And blighted hopes and feelings strow,

Like withered flowers, its troubled wave!

 

“Yet oh! methinks,—when, one by one,

The blossoms of our youth have perished,

And all the blessed buds are gone

Which the young spirit vainly cherished,—

The heart will weep each ruined gem,

As I this faded floweret now;

And memory save each broken stem,

To twine a chaplet for her brow!”

 

She paused, while something unexprest

Looked through the cloud upon her cheek;

Full well I knew, her gentle breast

Heaved with a fear she would not speak!

I took her to my beating heart,

And kissed the sorrow from her mien;

—Oh! nought but sadness could impart

The love with which I loved her then!—

 

“My dark-eyed beauty! time may fling

His waste and withering power o’er thee,

But not one feather of his wing

Shall brush love’s fond fidelity!

Thy form, amid its wreck of youth,

Shall—like that wanderer of the river,—

Be treasured by eternal truth,

My blossom now,—my flower for ever!”

She sleeps—that still and placid sleep

  For which the weary pant, in vain,

And, where the dews of evening weep,

  I may not weep again;—

Oh! never more, upon her grave,

  Shall I behold the wild-flower wave!

 

They laid her where the sun and moon

  Look on her tomb, with loving eye,

And I have heard the breeze of June

  Sweep o’er it—like a sigh!

And the wild river’s wailing song

  Grow dirge-like, as it stole along!

 

And I have dreamt, in many dreams,

  Of her—who was a dream to me,

And talked to her, by summer streams,

  In crowds, and on the sea,—

Till, in my soul she grew enshrined,

  A young Egeria of the mind!

 

’Tis years ago!—and other eyes

  Have flung their beauty o’er my youth,

And I have hung on other sighs,

  And sounds that seemed like truth,—

And loved the music which they gave,

  Like that which perished in the grave.

 

And I have left the cold and dead,

  To mingle with the living cold,—

There is a weight around my head,

  My heart is growing old!—

Oh! for a refuge and a home,

  With thee, dead Ellen, in thy tomb!

 

Age sits upon my breast and brain,

  My spirit fades before its time,

But they are all thine own again,

  Lost partner of their prime!

And thou art dearer, in thy shroud,

  Than all the false and living crowd!

 

Rise, gentle vision of the hours,

  Which go—like birds, that come not back!—

And fling thy pale and funeral flowers

  On memory’s wasted track!—

Oh! for the wings that made thee blest,

  To “flee away, and be at rest!”

Adieu!—the chain is shivered, now,

That linked my heart and hopes with thine,

I leave thee to thy broken vow,

Thy dreams will, often, be of mine!

And tears—be those the only tears

Thine eyes may, ever, learn to weep!—

Shall tell the thoughts to other years

Thy spirit cannot chuse but keep!

          Adieu!

 

Adieu!—enjoy thy pleasant hours,

Find other hearts, to fling away;

Thy life is in its time of flowers,

Gather May-garlands while ’tis May!

Oh! till thy dreary day draws in,

And winter darkens o’er thy heart,

And memory’s phantom forms begin

To take a wounded spirit’s part,

          Adieu!

 

Adieu!—thy beauty is the bow

That keeps the tempest from thy sky,

And all too bright, upon thy brow,

A sign that must, so surely, die!

These drops—the last for thee!—are shed,

To know that there will be not one

To love thee, when its light is fled,

To shield thee, when the storm comes on!

          Adieu!

 

Adieu!—oh! wild and worthless all

The heart that wakes this last farewell!

Why—for a thing like thee—should fall

My harpings, like a passing-bell!

Why should my soul and song be sad!

Away!—I fling thee from my heart,

Back to the selfish and the bad,

With whom thou hast thy fitter part!

          Adieu!

 

Adieu!—and may thy dreams of me

Be poison in thy brain and breast,

And hope be lost in memory,

And memory mar thy prayer for rest!

—Why seeks my soul a gentler strain!

For thee my harp be, henceforth, mute,—

Never to wake thy name, again,

Thou stranger to my love and lute!

          Adieu!

Isle of the ocean!—Zion of the seas!—

Child of the waves!—and nursling of the breeze!—

How beauteous, Albion! on thy lonely steep,

Thou risest, like a vision, in the deep!

The temple of the brave, the good, the free,

Built, by some spirit, in the circling sea!—

Still hast thou floated, like a thing of light,

Through all the darkness of the moral night:

Alone upon the waves,—the hallowed ark

Where Freedom sheltered, when the world was dark;

When Science left her eastern home for thee,

And nestled, like the halcyon, in the sea!

Above thee, gentlest airs, in gladness, meet,—

The billows break, in music, at thy feet,—

And heaven’s purest dews, and holiest dies,

Weep on thy breast, and brighten in thy skies!

 

Rome of the waters!—on thy sea-girt rock,^[20]

Far from the battle, and the tempest’s shock,

Thou sittest proudly, on thine ocean throne,

A sceptred queen,—majestic and alone!

In fairy state, on emerald couch reclined,

Rocked by the waves, and cradled in the wind!—

Far o’er the deep, thy crimson flag, unfurled,

Streams, like a meteor, to the gazing world!—

With stately necks and bounding motion, ride

Thy gallant barks, like swans, upon the tide;

Lift up their swelling bosoms to the sky,

And spread their wings, to woo the gales from high!

 

From clime to clime thy hardy children roam,—

The wave their world—the ship their island-home!—

Where’er the waters in their wildness roar,

Or lead their surges to the sounding shore;

Wherever winds lift up their song on high,

Or mercy paints an Iris in the sky;

Where o’er the burning line the billows roll,

Or lash themselves to madness at the Pole!—

Through seas o’er which the spirit of the north

Marshals his clouds, and sends his icebergs forth;

Where the dark waves, without a tempest, roar,

As avalanches thunder from the shore;

’Mid everlasting cones that rise sublime,—

The trophies and the monuments of time,—

Sparkle like sapphire temples in the sun,

And make a daylight—when the day is done;

Where, in the heaven while meteor phantoms fly,

A thousand points reflect them ere they die,

And crystal pyramids and icy spires

Receive—and then fling back—the parting fires;

Where mountain snows, by ages piled on high,

And glacier turrets, towering to the sky,

Return, in dazzling hues, the rushing light,

And shine, like moons, along the brow of night;

Where in the zenith smiles the polar star,^[21]

While the cold sun looks dimly from afar,

Obliquely scans the drear horizon round,

And flings Periscian shadows on the ground!—

Or, where he flashes summer through the sky,

While all its blooms burst forth, beneath his eye;

Where faints the magnet ’mid the burning zone,^[22]

Ruled by a power mysterious as its own;

Where glow the midnight waves in liquid flame,^[23]

And heaven is gemmed with stars without a name!—

Through hurricanes by night, and calms by day,

Thy gallant children win their steady way;

Borne by the billows,—wafted by the breeze,—

Thy forests float through undiscovered seas,

Explore the mines where science hides her stores,

And waft her treasures to thy island shores!

 

Gem of the ocean!—empress of the sea!

My heart could weep, in fondness, over thee!

My soul looks forward, through a mist of tears,

To pierce the darkness of the coming years,

And dimly reads, amid the future gloom,

Warnings she dares not utter of thy doom!

And canst thou perish,—island of the free!

Shall ruin dare to fling her shroud o’er thee,—

Thou who dost light the nations, like a star,

In solitary grandeur, from afar!

Thou who hast been, indeed, the pillared light^[24]

For Israel’s sons, in superstition’s night!

Can desolation reach thy hallowed strand,

While Shakspeare’s spirit breathes along the land,

While time o’er Milton’s grave fleets powerless by,

And Newton’s memory links thee with the sky!

 

Alas for power, and pride, and empire gone!

The East has mourned o’er lofty Babylon!—

Where is the earthly throne of Jesse’s stem?—

The crescent waves o’er high Jerusalem!—

The sun but lights a desert, when he falls

Where Thebes had, once, her hundred-portalled walls,

And vainly seeks, where rank the wall-flower grows,

The lyre whose song should lull him to repose!^[25]—

Some lone memorials mark the silent spot

Where Memphis was,—and tell that she is not!^[26]—

Balbec is shrouded in mysterious fame!^[27]—

Troy is a tale!—Palmyra is a name!—

Fair Carthage has her crown in Mantuan lays!—

And Athens is a dream of other days!—

To fancy’s ear the very breeze complains,

Where more than ruin haunts the Latian plains;

And worse than desolation walks the land

Where freedom sprung, beneath her hero’s hand!

—Oh! for a Brutus, in these later years,

To burst the heavier bonds his country wears!

Oh! for a Tully, with the silver tongue!

And oh, Venusia! that thy harp were strung

One hour, to tell her sons the spell that lies

In the deep azure of Italian skies!

 

And where art thou, with all thy songs and smiles,

Thou dream-like city of the hundred isles!^[28]—

Thy marble columns, and thy princely halls,—

Thy merry masques, and moonlight carnivals;—

Thy weeping myrtles, and thy orange bowers,—

Thy lulling fountains, ’mid ambrosial flowers;—

The cloudless beauty of thy deep-blue skies,—

Thy star-light serenades to ladies’ eyes,—

Thy lion, looking, o’er the Adrian sea,^[29]

Defiance to the world, and power to thee!—

That pageant of the sunny waves is gone,

Her glory lives on memory’s page alone;

It flashes still in Shakspeare’s living lay,

And Otway’s song has snatched it from decay:—

But ah! her Chian steeds of brass no more

May lord it proudly over sea and shore;

Nor ducal sovereigns launch upon the tide,

To win the Adriatic for their bride!—

Hushed is the music of her gondoliers,

And fled her glory of a thousand years;

And Tasso’s spirit round her seems to sigh,

In every Adrian gale that wanders by!

 

And oh, my native isle! the day may come

When thou must fall, before as dark a doom,—

When, idly furled, thy time-worn flag shall sleep,

And thou shalt lie a wreck upon the deep!

 

But thou hast writ thy records, where, sublime,

They scorn the strength of tempest and of time.—

What though the temple from its base decline!

Its hallowed things may deck another shrine.

What though thou perish, on thy northern wave!

Thy phœnix-spirit shall escape that grave;

Thy fame shall mock the wasting flood of years,—

Worlds are thy children,—continents thy heirs!

I see them in the east and in the west,

Where’er the ocean heaves her troubled breast!

—Wide o’er the regions of the setting sun,

Where mighty streams through vast savannahs run;

’Mid woods coeval with the land they shade,

And bright-winged birds in every sunny glade;

’Mid lakes, whose deeps the plummet’s search defy,

And hills that hide their summits in the sky;

Where, to the wondering eye, a world appears

Veiled in the mystery of four thousand years,—

I see thy children’s children spread afar,

And garner up thy arts of peace and war!

—I turn to where Aurora leads the light;—

What beauteous vision rises on my sight!

 

Loud sing the winds, and wild the waters roar,

Luconia! on thy far and fatal shore,

Where brave Magellan led his hardy band,

And perished, darkly, by a savage hand,—

The first who sailed round each discovered shore,

And sealed a truth but darkly guessed before!^[30]

Then, too, Columbus, of the giant mind,

Had left his sorrows and his fame behind,^[31]

Sunk to the tomb, with care and sickness spent,

And made a second world his monument!

 

While science wept above each hallowed grave,

And mourned her gallant wanderers of the wave,—

Hope smiled to think they had not lived in vain,

And fancy built new regions in the main:—

Far o’er the billowy waste she proudly trod,

To track the wonders and the ways of God;

And, where the vast Antarctic waters roll,

She reared a continent against the Pole!

 

Philosophy, in thought, would oft repair

To theorize, and gather systems there;

And poets, in Utopian mood, would stray,

Within its shades to dream an hour away!—

Imagination wandered through the land,

Roamed o’er its smiling vales and golden sand,

Gazed on its meadows, bright with summer gleams,

And saw blue skies, that hung o’er bluer streams,—

Hills, with their summits dipt in rosy hues,

And blushing flowers impearled with balmy dews,—

Hesperian groves that wore an endless spring,—

And birds of nameless beauty on the wing,

Which flashed such untold splendour on the eyes,

As they had bathed in sunset for their dies,

Or poured a flood of melody along,

And wakened unknown echoes with their song;—

While more than fragrance floated on the breeze,

And far-off islets gemmed the sunny seas!—^[32]

Till learning, stamping fancy’s glowing cheat,

And fixing form and limits to its seat,

Gave to the “airy nothing” of a dream

“A local habitation, and a name!”^[33]

 

Then sallied forth, across the southern main,

To seek this ‘Golden Fleece,’ the sons of Spain!—

Then o’er the line was Holland’s flag displayed,—

And Lusitania launched on that crusade,—

And o’er the waters floated, far and free,

The pennon of the ‘rulers of the sea!’—

Then Säavedra’s crew explored the deep,

Where tempests rock the cape-born spirit’s sleep!^[34]

Then Hartog led his hardy rovers forth,—

And Tasman ventured boldly from the north,—

While o’er the boundless billows gaily steer

The party of the gallant buccaneer!^[35]

 

That southern land defied their wishes still!—

Yet not in vain their searching toil and skill;

Year after year, upon the surges thrown,

The wandering sailors found some corner stone

Of that stupendous whole, around whose shore

The waters of three mighty oceans roar!^[36]

 

He comes at length!—the gallant master-mind,

To rear the wondrous pile by fate designed,

Achieve the glorious task which they began,

And bind those scattered fragments in a plan!—

He comes! on whom consenting planets smile,

The dauntless hero of my native isle,—

His manly spirit on his brow imprest,

And all his country beating in his breast!^[37]

Before his daring soul and piercing eye,

Behold that polar vision darkly fly!

See, from its throne upon the waters, hurled

The shapeless phantom of a southern world!

Then track the generous seaman on his way,

Emerging upward to the realms of day,

To win a substance from the billowy waste,

And plant a new Columbia in the east!^[38]

 

Australia now demands the muse’s strain!—

But oh! she may not hint thy name in vain,

Lamented Cook!—she turns to weep for thee,

Where moan the dreary waves round Owhyhee!—

The sailor, as he nears that fatal isle,

Leans o’er the deck, and checks his joyous smile,

And almost thinks the gales go muffled by,

And billows shape their music to a sigh!—

Or mounts, if waves be high, and winds pipe loud,

And strains his eyes to see it from the shroud;

And, as the tempest rocks the creeking mast,

Half deems he hears thy whistle on the blast;

And wonders why his heart should own a fear,—

And brushes from his honest cheek a tear,—

And leaves a blessing on the passing wave,

Which chance may float above thy dismal grave!

 

Turn we to view the wide arena, now,

On which he won the laurel for his brow;—

Walk o’er the mighty field on which, so well,

He reaped the fruitful harvest, ere he fell,

Pursued his labours—bright as they were brief!—

And left the gleanings to a later chief.^[39]

 

Lo! vast Notasia rises from the main,

In all her mingling charms of mount and plain;—

The flowery banks that crown her roving rills,

And boundless wastes beyond her azure hills;—^[40]

The Protean thickets in her silent vales,

And cedars waving to her mountain gales;—

Her rivers wandering in a trackless maze,

And sunlight mimicked in her hundred bays;—

The ocean, like a girdle, round her rolled,

With all its billows burnished into gold:—

While, at her feet, adventure’s younger child

Sits, like a bud of beauty, in the wild!^[41]

 

Here lifts New Zealand, ’mid a sea of storms,

Her hills, that threaten heaven like Titan forms!—^[42]

Where the long lizard on the herbage lies,

And clouds of emerald beauty paint the skies;—

Where the dark savage courts the burning noon,

And counts his epochs by the hundredth moon!—

And yonder, redolent with fruits and flowers,

With spicy gales and aromatic showers,

And shady palms that into mid-air run,

To meet the winged creatures of the sun,^[43]

Fair Papua calls upon the mourning muse

To pause, and weep above the lost Peyrouse!—

But vain her wailing,—as the toil was vain

That sought this second Hylas o’er the main!—^[44]

Eastward she turns, where many an island smiles,

Each like a chief amid its vassal isles;—^[45]

Where lie the lands so often lost and found;—^[46]

And where, so long in circling silence bound,^[47]

New Caledonia sits upon the seas

That roll their waves amid the Cyclades!—^[48]

Far to the south, she sees the billows toss,

Upon their foam, the sleeping Albatross,

Till, rudely startled by their restless roar,

He wanders, screaming, to his desart shore!^[49]

 

Australia, in her varied forms, expands,

And opens to the sky her hundred lands,

From where the day-beam paints the waters blue,

Around the blessed islands of Arroo,—

And life, in all its myriad mouldings, plays,

Amid the beauty of the tropic blaze,—

Where summer watches with undying eye,

And equal day and night divide the sky,—

Where the throned Phœbus wakens all the flowers,

To do him homage in his own bright bowers,—

And Cynthia, on her empyrean height,

Holds crowded levee through the livelong night,—

Where starlight is a gala of the skies,

And sunset is a cloud-sketched paradise;—

Away—away, to where the billows rave,

Around the quenched volcano’s echoing cave,—^[50]

Where she, the lonely beauty, sits and smiles,^[51]

In sweetness, like an orphan of the isles,

Fair as fair Aphrodité on the deep,

But lone as Ariadne on her steep!—

Away—away, to where the dolphins play,

And the sea-lion tracks his pathless way;—

Away—away, where southern ice-bergs roll,

Upon the troubled billows round the pole;—

Where the bold mariner, whose course has run

Beyond the journey of the circling sun,

Condemned, for lingering months, to sleep and wake

By nights that cloud not,—days that never break,

To watch by stars that fade not from the eye,

And moons that have no rival in the sky,

Lies down to slumber,—and awakes to weep

For brighter scenes that rose upon his sleep,

And many a glance from faces far away,

That turned the darkness into more than day,—

Till his fond bosom glows with fancy’s fires,

And hope embodies all the heart desires,

And every vision of his distant home

Warms—like a prophecy of days to come!

 

Isles of the orient!—gardens of the east!

Thou giant secret of the liquid waste,—

Long ages in untrodden paths concealed,

Or, but in glimpses faint and few revealed,—

Like some chimera of the ocean-caves,

Some dark and sphinx-like riddle of the waves,—

Till he—the northern Œdipus—unfurled

His venturous sail, and solved it to the world!—

Surpassing beauty sits upon thy brow,

But darkness veils thy all of time, save now;

Enshrouded in the shadows of the past,

And secret in thy birth as is the blast!^[52]

If, when the waters and the land were weighed,

Thy vast foundations in the deep were laid;—

Or,—’mid the tempests of a thousand years,

Where, through the depths, her shell the mermaid steers,—

Mysterious workmen wrought unseen at thee,

And reared thee, like a Babel, in the sea;^[53]—

If Afric’s dusky children sought the soil

Which yields her fruits without the tiller’s toil;—

Or, southward wandering on his dubious way,

Came to thy blooming shores the swarth Malay;—

’Tis darkness all!—long years have o’er thee rolled,

Their flight unnoted, and their tale untold!

But beautiful thou art, as fancy deems

The visioned regions of her sweetest dreams;—

Fair as the Moslem, in his fervor, paints

The promised vallies of his prophet’s saints;—

Bright with the brightness which the poet’s eye

Flings o’er the long-lost bowers of Araby!^[54]

The soul of beauty haunts thy sunny glades,—

The soul of music whispers through thy shades,—

And nature, gazing on her loveliest plan,

Sees all supremely excellent—but Man!

How Heaven has scattered sweetness through the wild!

Here man alone is not a favored child.

Here—like a new-born world,—where all seems rife

With boundless beauty bursting into life,

Here—’mid this clustering of all lovely things,—

Man, like a blot upon the pageant, springs,—

Dim, Meropé! as thy unhappy star,

Amid the vernal Pleiads, looks afar!

Here, in these regions of the rising day,

A savage race, in mental darkness, stray;

Not upward gazing, with the conscious glow

Of heaven’s high patent stamped upon their brow;

But, coming like abortions to their birth,

And darkening with their crimes the glorious earth,

They shrink to pigmies in the fervid ray,

Obscurely live,—and darkly pass away!

 

Here nature, when she reared her mighty plan,

Sported with many things,—but most with man!^[55]

Gave him a mind to tower above the rest,

But left it slumbering in a darkened breast;

Lavished her holiest treasures on his sight,

But wrapped them in an intellectual night;

Flung beauty, like a pearl, before his eyes,

But made him reckless of the precious prize;

And, while along creation music ran,

She placed no echo in the heart of man!

 

Yet, on his forehead sits the seal sublime

That marks him monarch of his lovely clime;

And in his torpid spirit lurk the seeds

Of manly virtues and of lofty deeds!

Within that breast, where savage shadows roll,

Philosophy discerns a noble soul,

That—like the lamp within an eastern tomb,—

But looks more sickly ’mid surrounding gloom!

Full many a feeling trembles through his frame,

For which he never knew—or sought—a name;

And many a holy thought, but half supprest,

Still lurks ’mid all the tempest of his breast!

Pants not his heart with human hopes and fears,

And is he not the child of smiles and tears?

’Tis love that links him to his native woods,—

And pride that fires him while he breasts the floods,—

And glory guides him—felt but undefined,—

To battle with the breakers and the wind,

To tempt the torrent, or in arms to claim

The savage splendor of a warrior’s name!

 

True, through their souls all fiercer passions run,—

These fiery ones—these children of the sun!

But gentler thoughts redeem the frenzied mood,

Represt, but quenchless,—hid, but unsubdued!—

Their’s is the spell of home, where’er they rove;—

The maiden loves with all a maiden’s love;—

And the dark mother, as she rocks her boy,

Feels, in her bosom, all a mother’s joy!

 

Neglected children! ’mid your curse of crime,

Is nature shrineless in that beaming clime?

Has she no fane, beneath those burning skies,

For feeling’s throb,—the spirit’s sacrifice,—

The wish that murmurs, and the hope that cheers,—

The grief that has no uttering—but its tears?

Eternal essence, yes!—thy glory rests,

Thy temples rise within a thousand breasts,

And, there, thy universal influence darts

Its “still small” oracles through myriad hearts!

 

Despite the mart of death,—the waste of life,

Which mingles brothers in the mortal strife;

Despite the maddening shout and savage yell

Of foes exulting o’er the foe who fell,—

The raging “spirit of the first-born Cain,—”

The lurking treason skulking from the plain,—

The horrid feast, where human flesh is food,—

The burning thirst, whose dreadful draught is blood;—

Oh! could we walk amid their gentler hours,

And read their fancies in their silent bowers,—

Oh! could we wander through their hearts, and hear

The quiet music sweetly murmuring there,

The unseen harp, whose tuneful chords are prest

By every thought that steals along the breast,

Discursive as the airy lyre, which sings

To every breeze that wantons with its strings,—

Oh! could we see them in each solitude,

Their barks at sea,—their dwellings in the wood,—

The daughter weeping for her perished sire,—

The mother waiting, by her forest fire,

For him, the lonely hunter, far away,

Or watching o’er her orphan, by its ray,—

The mourning girl, reposing in the gloom

Her love has fostered round her lover’s tomb,

Bent o’er the sculptures of her untaught clime,

Or wildly wailing in its ruder rhyme,—

Then might the bigot blush the doubts away

That darkly hang round mercy’s struggling day,

And the proud child of Europe stretch his hand

To clasp a brother, on that distant land!

 

Yes! the rude Negro is the partner, still,

In all the white man’s strength for good or ill!

A form of darkness,—and a soul of flame,

But all his passions and his powers the same!

The sport of feelings ardent as his zone,

Where all creation takes an ardent tone;—

Of fancies which as swiftly set and rise

As day grows night along his own warm skies!—^[56]

For him, hope’s pencil paints, with magic hue,

The vistas which his spirit loves to view;—

To him, the future dawns in blessed dreams,

And seems all brightness—if it only seems;—

His, too, the softer light which memory’s eye

Steals—like the moon,—from gayer beams gone by;

The images which joy has left behind,

Lie, as a cherished treasure, in his mind,

Like legacies—the holiest and the last!—

Which dying hope bequeathed him ere it past;

And oft he fondly views them o’er and o’er,

Like parting gifts of friends who meet no more;—

His is that vacant buoyancy of bliss

Young spirits never feel but once;—and his

That dull and lingering leprosy of heart,

Which has no Jordan,—which will not depart!

 

Hail, hail, Australia!—rising in the west,

A beauteous star looks down upon thy breast!

Dim is its light upon the hesper sea;—

But lo! it brightens, as it steers to thee,

And all the lowering clouds that quenched its ray,

Are sweetly purified and wept away;—

Till, now, in unobstructed pomp it smiles,

Spread, like a glory, o’er the eastern isles!—

See where it beams, a promise-token given,

Blest as the bow that spanned the arch of heaven,

When first its splendor rose upon the eye,

And Noah watched it brightening through the sky!

 

Oh! let me turn, to trace that rising ray

Which o’er Australia dawns a better day!—

Look we once more upon Notasia’s strand,

And see its beauty break upon the land!

 

It is a summer eve!—the gorgeous west

Lights into flame the ocean’s heaving breast;

The sun has rested from his march on high,

But left his glowing banner in the sky,—

And, far and wide, it flings its crimson fold

O’er clouds that float in purple and in gold,

Or,—piled around his rich pavilion,—lie,

In thousand shapes, to fancy’s curious eye!

The very air is radiant with the glow;

The billows dance in liquid light below;

The splendors rest upon the woods of pine,

And jewelled mountains in their brightness shine;^[57]

While earth sends flashing back the glory lent,

In thousand colors, to the firmament!

 

The falcon pauses, in his midway flight,

And turns him, eastward, from the dazzling light;—

Along the vallies strides the vast emu,^[58]

And o’er the waters wanders the curlew;—

The pelican, upon his dizzy steep,

Looks proudly down along the glowing deep:—

While herons spread their plumes o’er coral graves,^[59]

Or fall, like snow-drifts, on the buoying waves!

Far off, the white-winged eagle sails on high,

And nestles half-way ’twixt the earth and sky,

Above the archer’s ken, and arrow’s flight,

Rocked on the Eucalyptus’ towering height,—^[60]

Whose healing leaves weep balsam on the ground,

And fling their sighs of fragrance all around

O’er many an inland lake, with swelling breast,

And scarlet-painted beak, and golden crest,

The mourning swan in dark-eyed beauty rides,

Or spreads his jetty plumage o’er the tides,—

Along whose banks resounds the far halloo

Of tribes that chase the graceful kangaroo,

Or lurk for vengeance in some covert way,

And rush from ambush on their startled prey!

 

In light canoes, along the purple seas,

The natives sport, like swallows in the breeze;

Glide where the porpoise rocks himself to sleep,

But shun the dolphin, where he stirs the deep;

Or lead the measured music of the oar

Where the small billows break upon the shore,

Flow to the beach,—like joys that will not stay,—

Then ebb again,—like happiness,—away!

 

On land, some thread the dance, to tinkling shells,—

Here, stretched in caves, they mutter o’er their spells—^[61]

And there, the murmur of their evening song

In melancholy cadence dies along;—^[62]

Some throw the spear, with bold and skilful hand,—

While others wander o’er the glittering sand,

Gaze on that western paradise of clouds,

And muse upon the mystery it shrouds!^[63]

 

What lovely pageant bursts upon the eye,

Where the bright waters wed the brighter sky,—

Launched, like a phœnix, from the day-god’s pyre,

Where all the billows glow in sheeted fire!—

What fairy form, beneath the magic gleam,

Comes gliding o’er the surges, like a dream!

What dauntless spirit walks upon the sea,

And treads along the waves, so gallantly!

 

From mouth to mouth the wondrous tidings reach,

And eager hundreds hasten to the beach;

The rowers push their pröas to the land,^[64]

And join their gazing brethren on the strand;

And children climb the mountains, to behold

The tale established which their sires have told!^[65]

Onward it comes—that lovely thing of light!

And spreads its pinions through the gathering night;—

Bright as that beauteous bird of rainbow dyes,

Which sleeps—their legends tell—in summer skies,^[66]

Comes down, by day, to haunt Evodian vales,^[67]

And floats to heaven, on aromatic gales!

 

The sun is down!—that crimson flush of light

From heaven and earth has faded, into night!

The sun is down!—but, in his parting hour,

The moon has caught the mantle of his power;

She smote the gathering darkness from her side,

And lo! the shadows fly, the clouds divide!

The glancing stars come out along the sky,

Like Israel’s flock beneath their prophet’s eye!

The cedars brighten in the silvery light,

And hang new stars along the brow of night!

Delicious airs come wafted from the vales,—

Which echo songs like those of nightingales,—^[68]

Rich with sweet basil and with orange flowers,

That keep their incense for the moonlight hours!

The Exocarpus, in the hallowing rays,

Throws out its weeping boughs a hundred ways;

And Thesium groves and Melaleuca trees

Load, with their fragrance, every passing breeze!

 

Calm o’er the deep, beneath the holy ray,

That lonely vision wins its silent way!—

A ship! a ship!—I see the swelling sails

Fly, like white clouds, before the breathing gales!

I see the waters dancing round her bow,

The moonbeams flashing silvery from her prow!

How gracefully she cleaves the sparkling flood,

And rides the billows like a winged god!

Bright o’er that darkened land, to fancy’s eye,

She rises like ‘the Day-Spring from on high’!

 

’Tis morn!—she comes, ‘with healing on her wing’,

And more than music round her seems to sing!

O’er the glad surges glides the glory on,

With all her streamers laughing in the sun!

The anchor sounds the depths,—the sails are furled,—

My country’s genius walks another world!

’Tis Albion’s oak that braves the austral blast,

And Britain’s banner flutters at her mast!

 

Beneath that banner, let me sit and dream!—

Oh! for a worthier bard of such a theme!

Oh! for a glance in Banquo’s magic glass,

To fix the crowding shadows, as they pass!

Oh! for one hour of Mirza’s fairy guide,

To point the moral which dim ages hide!

 

Now, on my soul the rising vision warms,

But mingled in a thousand lovely forms!—

Methinks, I see Australian landscapes still,

But softer beauty sits on every hill;—

I see bright meadows, decked in livelier green,

The yellow corn-field, and the blossomed bean;—

A hundred flocks o’er smiling pastures roam,

And hark! the music of the harvest-home

Methinks, I hear the hammer’s busy sound,

And cheerful hum of human voices round,—

The laughter, and the song that lightens toil,

Sung in the language of my native isle;—

In mighty bays unnumbered navies ride,^[69]

Or come and go upon the distant tide,

In land-locked harbours rest their giant forms,

Or boldly launch upon the ‘Bay of storms;’—

While the swarth native crowns the glorious plan,

In all the towering dignity of man!

 

The vision leads me on by many a stream;—

And spreading cities crowd upon my dream,

Where turrets darkly frown, and lofty spires

Point to the stars,—and sparkle in their fires!—

Here, Sydney gazes, from the mountain side,^[70]

Narcissus-like, upon the glassy tide!—

There, Hobart stretches, where the Derwent sees

Her flaxen ringlets tremble in the breeze!—^[71]

O’er rising towns Notasian commerce reigns,—

And temples crowd Tasmania’s lovely plains,—

And browsing goats, without a keeper, stray,

Where the bush-ranger tracked the covert way!^[72]

 

The prospect varies, in an endless range,

Villas and lawns go by, in ceaseless change!—

Glenfinlas! thou hast hundred rival vales,^[73]

Where quiet hamlets deck the sloping dales;—

And, wafted on the gale from many a dell,

Methinks, I hear the village Sabbath bell!—

And now, the anthem swells!—on every hand,

A cloud of incense gathers o’er the land;

Faith upward mounts, upon devotion’s wings,

And—like the lark,—at heaven’s high portal sings;

From myriad tongues the song of praise is poured,

And o’er them floats ‘the spirit of the Lord!’

 

The vision widens!—northward brightly rolled,

That spirit rests upon the ‘Isles of gold’;—^[74]

Eastward, methinks! the beauteous veil expands,

And smiles upon a hundred sea-bound lands;—

Far to the west, it breaks the moral night,

And all the islands slumber in its light;—

Upward, again, I trace the spreading glow,

Till all the wide Pacific lies below;—

Far—far away from where its course began,

I see it rouse thy empire, fierce Japan!

I see it fling its hallowed beams around,

Where, once, the cross was trampled on the ground;—^[75]

Westward, once more, it makes its shining road,

And China worships at the name of God;

Down to the dust the priests of Brahma bow,

And truth sits smiling on the shrines of Fo;

Till, now, it brightens o’er its native earth,

And lights, again, the cradle of its birth,—

Arabia basks beneath the blessed beam;—

And Europe suns her in the glorious gleam,

While Britain smiles upon her ocean-seat,

And all the world is glowing at her feet!—

For, lo! the ray she fostered in her breast

Has won its kindling way o’er east and west,

And all the nations in its beauty sleep,

As the vast waters fill the boundless deep!^[76]

 

Again the vision changes!—o’er my soul,^[77]

Mysterious forms and giant shadows roll!—

Vast spectres dimly flit across my mind,

But vague and shapeless,—dark and undefined!—

Strange phantasies in whirling motion run,

And, lo! they meet, and mingle into One,—

One mighty shade,—in shrouding darkness furled,—

Wild as the chaos of an unborn world!—

Till, o’er the phantom gathering vapours roll,

Then spread before me, like a written scroll!

And now, it stands revealed in sudden light,

And all creation opens on my sight!

 

Far to the east,—where once Aurora’s smiles

Looked on an archipelago of isles,

And coral banks upreared their glittering forms,

Like spots of azure in a sky of storms,—

Where many a ship has sailed the roaring brine,—

Sits a vast continent upon the Line,

Back from her strand assembled oceans rolls,

And points, with either finger, to the poles!—

But where is Africa?—I seek in vain

Her swarthy form along its native main!

Methinks, I hear a wailing in the wild,

As of a mother weeping o’er her child!—

Her fate lies buried in mysterious night,

Where the wide waters of the globe unite;

And, where the moonlight paved her hills with smiles,

The billows moan amid a hundred isles!

—I turn me from their knelling, with a sigh,

To where a lovelier vision meets the eye;

Where spreads the British name from sun to sun,

And all the nations of the earth are One!

Come, touch the harp, my gentle one!

And let the notes be sad and low,

Such as may breathe, in every tone,

The soul of long ago!—

That smile of thine is all too bright

For aching hearts and lonely years,

And—dearly as I love its light,—

To-night, I would have tears!

 

Yet, weep not thus, my gentle girl!

No smile of thine has lost its spell,

By heaven! I love thy lightest curl,

Oh! more than fondly well!—

Then, strike the lyre, and let it wile

All thoughts of grief and gloom away,

While thou art by, with harp and smile.

I will not weep, to-day!

The moon is up!—and while the cars

Of night are out, we will not sleep,

Send round the bowl, and show the stars

What vigils earthly spirits keep!

And, if the vines, in yonder sky,

Weep, for their host, such purple tears,

The poet’s tale may be no lie,

That paints them ‘singing in their spheres’!

 

Shall we, because hope’s fount is dry,

Shun every fount that woos the soul?—

The pang that blights the heart and eye

Was never gathered from the bowl!

If eyes be dim, that, once, were bright,

To weep will hardly make them brighter,

And, if our hearts be far from light,

At least, we’ll strive to make them lighter!

 

Fill high the glass!—to-night we’ll try,

For once, to make a truce with sorrow,

And they who think it wise to sigh,

May drink to-night, and sigh to-morrow!—

While we, who love the better mood

To gather gladness where we may,

Will hail, across this beaming flood,

The dawning of a happier day!

Slumber lie soft on thy beautiful eye!

Spirits, whose smiles are—like thine—of the sky,

Play thee to sleep, with their visionless strings,

Brighter than thou, but because they have wings!

Fair as a being of heavenly birth,

But loving and loved like a child of the earth!

 

Why is that tear?—art thou gone, in thy dream,

To the valley far-off, and the moon-lighted stream,

Where the sighing of flowers and the nightingale’s song

Fling sweets on the wave, as it wanders along!—

Blest be the dream that restores them to thee,

But thou art the bird and the roses to me!

 

And now, as I watch o’er thy slumbers, alone,

And hear thy soft breathing, and know thee mine own,

And muse on the wishes that grew in that vale,

And the fancies we shaped from the river’s low tale,

I blame not the fate which has taken the rest,

Since it left, to my bosom, its dearest and best!

 

Slumber lie soft on thy beautiful eye!

Love be a rainbow, to brighten thy sky!

Oh! not for sunshine and hope, would I part

With the shade time has flung over all—but thy heart!

Still art thou all which thou wert, when a child,

Only more holy—and only less wild!

That song again!—its wailing strain

Brings back the thoughts of other hours,—

The forms I ne’er may see again,—

And brightens all life’s faded flowers!

 

In mournful murmurs, o’er mine ear

Remembered echos seem to roll,

And sounds I never more can hear,

Make music in my lonely soul!

 

That swell again!—now, full and high,

The tide of feeling flows along,

And many a thought that claims a sigh

Seems mingling with thy magic song!

 

The forms I loved—and loved in vain,

The hopes I nursed—to see them die,

With fleeting brightness, through my brain,

In phantom beauty, wander by!

 

Then touch the lyre, my own dear love!—

My soul is like a troubled sea,

And turns from all below—above,

In fondness, to the harp and thee!

Oh! come at this hour, love!—the daylight is gone,

And the heavens weep dew on the flowers;

And the spirit of loneliness steals, with a moan,

Through the shade of the eglantine bowers:—

For, the moon is asleep on her pillow of clouds,

And her curtain is drawn in the sky;

And the gale, as it wantons along the young buds,

Falls faint on the ear—like a sigh!

 

The summer-day sun is too gaudy and bright

For a heart that has suffered like mine;

And methinks, there were pain, in the noon of its light,

To a spirit so broken as thine!—

The birds—as they mingled their music of joy,—

And the roses that smiled in the beam,

Would but tell us of feelings for ever gone by,

And of hopes that have passed like a dream!

 

And the moonlight—pale spirit!—would speak of the time

When we wandered beneath its soft gleam,

Along the green meadows, when life was in prime,

And worshipped its face in the stream;—

When our hopes were as sweet, and our life-path as bright,

And as cloudless, to fancy’s young eye,

As the star-spangled course of that phantom of light,

Along the blue depths of the sky!

 

Then come in this hour, love!—when twilight has hung

Its shadowy mantle around,

And no sound, save the murmurs that breathe from thy tongue,

Or thy footfall—scarce heard on the ground!—

Shall steal on the silence, to waken a fear,—

When the sun that is gone, with its heat,

Has left on the cheek of all nature a tear,—

Then, hearts that are broken should meet!

The gondola glides—

Like a spirit of night,—

O’er the slumbering tides,

In the calm moonlight!

The star of the north

Shows her golden eye,—

But a brighter looks forth

From yon lattice, on high!

 

Her taper is out,

And the silver beam

Floats the maiden about,

Like a beautiful dream!

And the beat of her heart

Makes her tremble all o’er,—

And she lists, with a start,

To the dash of the oar!

 

But the moments are past,

And her fears are at rest,

And her lover, at last,

Holds her clasped to his breast;—

And the planet above

And the quiet blue sea

Are pledged to his love,

And his constancy!

 

Her cheek is reclined

On the home of his breast;

And his fingers are twined

’Mid her ringlets,—which rest,

In many a fold,

O’er his arm, that is placed

Round the cincture of gold

Which encircles her waist!

 

He looks to the stars

Which are gemming the blue,

And devoutly he swears

He will ever be true!—

Then bends him, to hear

The low sound of her sigh,

And kiss the fond tear

From her beautiful eye!

 

And he watches its flashes,

Which brightly reveal

What the long fringing lashes

Would vainly conceal;

And reads—while he kneels

All his ardour to speak,—

Her reply, as it steals,

In a blush, o’er her cheek!

 

Till—won by the prayers

Which so softly reprove,—

On his bosom, in tears,

She half murmurs her love;

And the stifled confession

Enraptured he sips,

’Mid the breathings of passion,

In dew, from her lips!

Forget me not—forget me not!

But let these little simple flowers

Remind thee of his lonely lot,

Who loved thee in life’s purer hours,—

When hearts and hopes were hallowed things,

Ere pleasure broke the lyre she brought;

Then oh! when shivered all its strings,

Forget me not—forget me not!

 

We met, ere yet the world had come

To wither up the springs of truth,

Amid the holy joys of home,

And in the first warm blush of youth;—

We parted, as they never part

Whose tears are doomed to be forgot,—

Oh! by that agony of heart,

Forget me not—forget me not!

 

Thine eye must watch these flowerets fade,

Thy soul its idols melt away,

But oh! when friends and flower lie dead,

Love may embalm them in decay;

And, when thy spirit sighs along

The shadowy scenes of hoarded thought,

Oh! listen to its pleading song,—

Forget me not—forget me not!

’Tis love’s own hour!—for the gentle moon

Has girdled herself in her silver zone,

And wandered forth, where the winds are still,

To her shepherd’s home, on the dewy hill,—

And the lily bows, with a sigh more sweet,

Beneath the touch of the huntress’ feet!

 

And the voiceless tale of the visionless breeze

Is told, in sighs, to the jasmine trees!—

And the zephyr woos the lake to bliss,

And kisses the stream, with a lover’s kiss!—

And the stars look light on the blue-deep sea,

Whose waves reflect it, slumberingly!

 

And, far in the quiet grove away,

The night bird utters his lonely lay;

And viewless echo repeats the tale

To his lady-love, in her distant vale;

And the rose looks up, with a tearful eye,

And lists to its music, silently!

 

And the gossamer weaves, in the holy light,

His scarce seen web,—like a far delight,—

A curtain hung ’twixt earth and sky,

As fair and frail as a phantasy!

And myriad forms, in the moonbeam pale,

Dance, in the maze of the mystic veil!

 

And spirits are flitting on shadowless wings!—

And sounds are all hushed into murmurings!—

And each low gale, as it wanders by,

Seems fraught with the breath of a young heart’s sigh!

And beautiful things are all gliding about,

And all that is fair—save the fairest—is out!

 

Awake, my love!—’tis love’s own hour!

His spirit is breathed upon every flower;

His oracles lie all around,

In every sight, and on every sound;—

And, over heaven and earth, is thrown

A spell of beauty,—like thine own!

        When in yon’ fading sky

          Summer light closes,

        And the lone spirit’s sigh

          Steals o’er the roses;—

        When in the waters still

          Twilight is sleeping,

        And on the purple hill

          Night dews are weeping;—

        Where o’er the slumbering lake

          Droops the fond willow,

        While the breeze cannot wake

          Even a billow;—

When there is silence in each leafy bower,

There be our meeting—alone—in that hour!

 

        Oh! let no cold eye

          Of others be o’er us!—

        Stillness be spread on high,

          Beauty before us!—

        Then,—down thy lovely cheek

          Silently stealing,

        Should a warm tear speak

          The fulness of feeling,—

        Fondly I’ll chide, sweet!

          That symbol of sadness;

        Surely, when lovers meet,

          All should be gladness!—

Stay till, along the sky, daylight is darting,

Then will we weep,—’tis our moment of parting!

How sadly sweet the moonlight hour, when, from their shrines on high,

The stars—like angel forms,—look out, along an azure sky!

When not a cloud in heaven throws its shadow o’er the deep,

And gentlest zephyrs only breathe to lull the wave to sleep!

When earth and air and ocean smile, beneath the holy gleam,

Like some bright scene the spirit loves to picture, in a dream!

And dew-drops hang on every flower,—till, in the blessed ray,

They seem like eyes from which all clouds are, sweetly, wept away!

 

Then memory’s lingering visions sink, more softly, on the soul,

And sorrow sighs herself away, beneath their mild control;—

And hearts that, o’er their fading joys, too long have darkly pined,

Grow bright again, as o’er them steals a moonlight of the mind!—

While hope, beneath its ray, once more, takes up her soothing tune,

—Like that lone bird who utters all her music to the moon!—

And peace, which—like the dove,—had flown, before life’s waters dark,

Returns, to plume her snowy wings, within her native ark!

Adieu, adieu!—our dream of love

Was far too sweet to linger long,

Such hopes may bloom in bowers above,

But, here, they mock the fond and young.

 

We met in hope,—we part in tears!—

Yet, oh! ’tis sadly sweet to know

That life, in all its future years,

Can reach us with no heavier blow!

 

Our souls have drunk, in early youth,

The bitter dregs of earthly ill,

Our bosoms, blighted in their growth,

Have learned to suffer—and be still!

 

The hour is come,—the spell is past!—

Far, far from thee,—my only love!

Youth’s earliest hope, and manhood’s last!—

My darkened spirit turns to rove.

 

Adieu, adieu!—oh, dull and dread,

Sinks on the ear that parting knell!—

Hope, and the dreams of hope, lie dead,

To them and thee, farewell—farewell!

  Nay, dry that tear!—where’er I stray,

  My spirit never shall repine,

  While it has power to chase away

    The shadows, dear! from thine.

 

My soul has weathered storms, above

The strength of feeble minds to bear;

But may not see the cheek I love

  Dimmed by affliction’s tear.

 

’Tis bliss enough for me, to rest

Beneath the ray of that blue eye,—

Or, pillowed on thy gentle breast,

  To echo back its sigh!

 

But oh! that eye must not be wet

With aught that speaks the touch of sorrow,—

Nor must the murmur of regret

  Thy sigh’s soft music borrow!

 

Oh! may thy looks be ever bright

With that sweet smile which peace discloses,

And o’er the young cheek sheds its light,

  Like sunbeams upon roses!

 

And may thy sighs—if sighs e’er start,—

Light as the wings to seraphs given,

Come from the heaven of thy heart,

  To waft the heart to heaven!

If to-morrow may dawn on a stormy day,—

  If the smile in pleasure’s eyes

By the cloud of despair may be chased away,

  Like the visions of summer skies,—

If joy be a vanishing beam, at best,

  Like the lights o’er northern seas,—

Oh! where is the heart that would coldly waste

  The sunshine of moments like these!

 

    Then fill—fill high the sparkling glass,

    And crown the moments, as they pass!

 

If bliss be a frail and perishing flower,

  Born only to decay,

Oh! who—when it blooms but a single hour,—

  Would fling its sweets away!

When storms are abroad, and the world is dark,

  And wrecks strew life’s abyss,

Oh! who would not anchor his weary bark,

  In the calm of a port like this!—

 

    Then, though round about us life’s tempests roll,

    We’ll cling to our moorings,—the bottle and bowl!

 

When lovers are false, and friends unkind,

  And the lights of life are flown,

Remember that, here, we still can find

  A bright little world of our own;—

Whose sun is a sun that beams all night,

  In the hearts that round us shine;

And its stars are the eyes that fling their light

  O’er waves of rosy wine!—

 

    Be our’s the sun that shines all night,

    And the blushing wave that reflects its light!

 

If hope, when she spreads her gossamer sail

  Along life’s billowy waste,

Is sure to be tossed by misfortune’s gale,

  And to perish at length in the blast,—

Let us launch her, at once, on this purple tide,

  Where her vessel can always float,

While mirth’s gay streamers flow, far and wide,

  Around her gilded boat!—

 

    O’er seas of wine when hope is afloat,

    Our’s are the spirits to ballast her boat!

 

Fill high the glass!—this night is ours!

  The dew of social feeling

Falls on each heart, its brightest flowers

  And warmest hues revealing!—

Then, weave them into a chaplet bright,

  Our happy brows to shade,

And live on the perfumed wreath, to-night,—

  Ah! think how soon ’twill fade!—

 

    To-night—to-night, the garland twine,

    And mingle, there, the laughing vine!