Clad in the spoils of vanquish'd Time,
Down in the vale of years.
Beyond that vale, in boundless bloom,
The eternal mountains rise:
Virtue descends not to the tomb,
Her rest is in the skies.
The body of the Missionary, John Smith, (who died February 6, 1824, in prison,
under sentence of death by a court-martial, in Demerara,) was ordered to be
buried secretly at night, and no person, not even his widow, was allowed to
follow the corpse.
Mrs. Smith, however, and her friend Mrs. Elliott, accom-
panied by a free Negro, carrying a lantern, repaired beforehand to the spot
where a grave had been dug, and there they awaited the interment, which
took place accordingly. His Majesty's pardon, annulling the condemnation,
is said to have arrived on the day of the unfortunate Missionary's death, from
the rigours of confinement, in a tropical climate, and under the slow pains of
an inveterate malady, previously afflicting him.
COME down in thy profoundest gloom,
Without one vagrant fire-fly's light,
Beneath thine ebon arch entomb
Earth, from the gaze of heaven, O Night!
A deed of darkness must be done,
Put out the moon, hold back the sun.
Are these the criminals, that flee
Like deeper shadows through the shade?
A flickering lamp, from tree to tree
Betrays their path along the glade,
Led by a Negro;-now they stand,
Two trembling women, hand in hand.
A grave, an open grave, appears ;
O'er this in agony they bend,
Wet the fresh turf with bitter tears;
Sighs following sighs their bosoms rend:
These are not murderers !-these have known
Grief more bereaving than their own.
Oft through the gloom their straining eyes
Look forth, for what they fear to meet:
It comes; they catch a glimpse; it flies:
Quick-glancing lights, slow-tramping feet,
Amidst the cane-crops,-seen, heard, gone,—
Return, and in dead-march move on.
A stern procession !-gleaming arms,
And spectral countenances dart,
By the red torch-flame, wild alarms,
And withering pangs through either heart;
A corpse amidst the group is borne,
A prisoner's corpse who died last morn.
Not by the slave-lord's justice slain,
Who doom'd him to a traitor's death;
While royal mercy sped in vain
O'er land and sea to save his breath;
No; the frail life that warm'd this clay
Man could not give nor take away.
His vengeance and his grace, alike,
Were impotent to spare or kill;
-He may not lift the sword to strike,
Nor turn its edge aside, at will;
Here, by one sovereign act and deed,
God cancell'd all that man decreed.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,
That corpse is to the grave consign'd;
The scene departs :—this buried trust
The Judge of quick and dead shall find,
When things which Time and Death have seal'd, Shall be in flaming fire reveal'd.
The fire shall try Thee, then, like gold,
Prisoner of hope!-await the test:
And oh when truth alone is told,
Be thy clear innocence confess'd!
The fire shall try thy foes;-may they
Find mercy in that dreadful day.
THIS shadow on the Dial's face,
That steals from day to day,
With slow, unseen, unceasing pace,
Moments, and months, and years away;
This shadow, which, in every clime,
Since light and motion first began,
Hath held its course sublime ;-
What is it?- -Mortal Man!
It is the scythe of TIME:
-A shadow only to the eye;
Yet, in its calm career,
It levels all beneath the sky;
And still, through each succeeding year, Right onward, with resistless power,
Its stroke shall darken every hour,
Till Nature's race be run,
And TIME's last shadow shall eclipse the sun.
Nor only o'er the Dial's face,
This silent phantom, day by day,
With slow, unseen, unceasing pace,
Steals moments, months, and years away;
From hoary rock and aged tree,
From proud Palmyra's mouldering walls,
From Teneriffe, towering o'er the sea,
From every blade of grass it falls;
For still, where'er a shadow sweeps,
The scythe of Time destroys,
And man at every footstep weeps
O'er evanescent joys;
Like flow'rets glittering with the dews of morn,
Fair for a moment, then for ever shorn :
-Ah! soon, beneath the inevitable blow,
I too shall lie in dust and darkness low.
Then TIME, the Conqueror, will suspend
His scythe, a trophy, o'er my tomb,
Whose moving shadow shall portend
Each frail beholder's doom:
O'er the wide earth's illumined space,
Though TIME's triumphant flight be shown,
The truest index on its face
Points from the churchyard stone.
An evening cloud, in brief suspense,
Was hither driven and thither,
It came, I saw not whence,
It went, I knew not whither;
I watch'd it changing, in the wind,
Size, semblance, form, and hue,
Lessening and fading, till behind
It left no speck on heaven's pure blue.
Amidst the marshall'd host of night
Shone a new star supremely bright;
With marvelling eye, well pleased to err,
I hail'd that prodigy ;—anon,
It fell, it fell like Lucifer,
A flash,-
‚—a blaze,—a train,-'twas gone;
And then I sought in vain its place,
Throughout the infinite of space.
Dew-drops, at day-spring, deck'd a line
Of gossamer so frail, so fine,
A gnat's wing shook it :-round and clear
As if by fairy-fingers strung,
Like orient pearls at beauty's ear,
In trembling brilliancy they hung
Upon a rosy brier, whose bloom
Shed nectar round them, and perfume.
Ere long exhaled in limpid air,
Some mingled with the breath of morn,
While some slid singly, here and there,
Like tears by their own weight down borne;
At length the film itself collapsed, and where
The pageant glitter'd, lo! a naked thorn.
What are the living ?-hark! a sound
From grave and cradle crying,
By earth and ocean echoed round,
-"The living are the dying!"
From infancy to utmost age,
What is man's scene of pilgrimage?
The passage to death's portal!
The moment we begin to be,
We enter on the agony,
-The dead are the immortal;
They live not on expiring breath,
They only are exempt from death.
Cloud-atoms, sparkles of a falling star,
Dew-drops on gossamer, all are:
What can the state beyond us be?
Life?-Death?-Ah! no,-a greater mystery;
What thought hath not conceived, ear heard, eye seen ;
Perfect existence from a point begun ;
Part of what God's eternity hath been,—
Whole immortality belongs to none,
But Him, the First, the Last, the Only One.
|