I can't remember what we said,
'T was nothing worth a song or story; Yet that rude path by which we sped Seemed all transformed and in a glory.
The snow was crisp beneath our feet,
The moon was full, the fields were gleaming; By hood and tippet sheltered sweet,
It is her thirtieth birthday! With a sigh Her soul hath turned from youth's luxuriant bowers,
And her heart taken up the last sweet tie That measured out its links of golden hours! She feels her inmost soul within her stir With thoughts too wild and passionate to speak ;
Her face with youth and health was beaming. Yet her full heart its own interpreter —
Translates itself in silence on her cheek.
To him who, in the love of Nature, holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language: for his gayer hours She has a voice of gladness, and a smile And eloquence of beauty; and she glides Into his darker musings with a mild And gentle sympathy, that steals away Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts Of the last bitter hour come like a blight Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, And breathless darkness, and the narrow house, Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart, Go forth under the open sky, and list To Nature's teachings, while from all around Earth and her waters, and the depths of air- Comes a still voice, - Yet a few days, and thee The all-beholding sun shall see no more In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground, Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again; And, lost each human trace, surrendering up Thine individual being, shalt thou go To mix forever with the elements; To be a brother to the insensible rock, And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould. Yet not to thine eternal resting-place Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down With patriarchs of the infant world, — with kings, The powerful of the earth, the wise, the good, Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills, Rock-ribbed, and ancient as the sun; the vales Stretching in pensive quietness between ; The venerable woods; rivers that move In majesty, and the complaining brooks, That make the meadows green; and, poured
Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste,Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man! The golden sun, The planets, all the infinite host of heaven, Are shining on the sad abodes of death, Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread The globe are but a handful to the tribes That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings Of morning, traverse Barca's desert sands, Or lose thyself in the continuous woods Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound Save his own dashings, yet the dead are there! And millions in those solitudes, since first The flight of years began, have laid them down In their last sleep, the dead reign there alone! So shalt thou rest; and what if thou withdraw In silence from the living, and no friend Take note of thy departure? All that breathe Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care Plod on, and each one, as before, will chase His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave Their mirth and their employments, and shall
And make their bed with thee. As the long train Of ages glide away, the sons of men - The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes In the full strength of years, matron and maid, And the sweet babe, and the gray-headed man Shall, one by one, be gathered to thy side By those who in their turn shall follow them.
So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan that moves His chamber in the silent halls of death, To the pale realms of shade, where each shall take Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
A HUNDRED YEARS TO COME. WHO 'll press for gold this crowded street,
A hundred years to come? Who'll tread yon church with willing feet, A hundred years to come? Pale, trembling age and fiery youth, And childhood with his brow of truth, The rich and poor, on land, on sea, Where will the mighty millions be, A hundred years to come?
We all within our graves shall sleep, A hundred years to come; No living soul for us will weep,
A hundred years to come.
[The MSS. of this poem, which appeared during the first quarter of the present century, was said to have been found in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, in London, near a perfect hu
man skeleton, and to have been sent by the curator to the Morning Chronicle for publication. It excited so much attention that every effort was made to discover the author, and a responsible party went so far as to offer a reward of fifty guineas for informa
Say, did these fingers delve the mine? Or with the envied rubies shine? To hew the rock or wear a gem Can little now avail to them.
But if the page of Truth they sought, Or comfort to the mourner brought, These hands a richer meed shall claim Than all that wait on Wealth and Fame. Avails it whether bare or shod These feet the paths of duty trod? If from the bowers of Ease they fled, To seek Affliction's humble shed; If Grandeur's guilty bribe they spurned, And home to Virtue's cot returned, These feet with angel wings shall vie, And tread the palace of the sky!
INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD.
THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore: Turn wheresoe'er I may, By night or day,
tion that would discover its origin. The author preserved his in. The things which I have seen I now can see no
cognito, and, we believe, has never been discovered.]
BEHOLD this ruin! "T was a skull Once of ethereal spirit full.
This narrow cell was Life's retreat,
This space was Thought's mysterious seat. What beauteous visions filled this spot, What dreams of pleasure long forgot? Nor hope, nor joy, nor love, nor fear, Have left one trace of record here.
Beneath this mouldering canopy Once shone the bright and busy eye, But start not at the dismal void, - If social love that eye employed, If with no lawless fire it gleamed, But through the dews of kindness beamed, That eye shall be forever bright When stars and sun are sunk in night.
Within this hollow cavern hung The ready, swift, and tuneful tongue; If Falsehood's honey it disdained,
And when it could not praise was chained; If bold in Virtue's cause it spoke, Yet gentle concord never broke, This silent tongue shall plead for thee When Time unveils Eternity!
And with the heart of May
Doth every beast keep holiday;
Thou child of joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou Behold the child among his new-born blisses,
Ye blesséd creatures! I have heard the call Ye to each other make; I see The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee; My heart is at your festival,
My head hath its coronal,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel, I feel it all. O evil day! if I were sullen While earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May morning,
And the children are culling
In a thousand valleys far and wide, Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm, And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm, I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
But there's a tree, of many one, A single field which I have looked upon, Both of them speak of something that is gone; The pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat. Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar. Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory, do we come From God, who is our home.
Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing boy;
The little actor cons another part, Filling from time to time his "humorous stage' With all the persons, down to palsied age, That life brings with her in her equipage; As if his whole vocation Were endless imitation.
Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie Thy soul's immensity! Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep Thy heritage thou eye among the blind, That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep, Haunted forever by the eternal mind!— Mighty prophet! Seer blest,
On whom those truths do rest Which we are toiling all our lives to find, In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave! Thou over whom thy immortality Broods like the day, a master o'er a slave, A presence which is not to be put by! Thou little child, yet glorious in the might
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,
The youth who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is nature's priest, And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended :
At length the man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day.
Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own. Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind ; And even with something of a mother's mind, And no unworthy aim,
The homely nurse doth all she can To make her foster-child, her inmate man,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke The years to bring the inevitable yoke, Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight, And custom lie upon thee with a weight Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!
O joy that in our embers
Is something that doth live, That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed Perpetual benediction: not, indeed,
For that which is most worthy to be blest,
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might; I only have relinquished one delight
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his To live beneath your more habitual sway.
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise;
But for those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanishings,
Blank misgivings of a creature Moving about in worlds not realized, High instincts, before which our mortal nature Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised, But for those first affections, Those shadowy recollections, Which, be they what they may, Are yet the fountain-light of all our day, Are yet a master light of all our seeing,
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal silence: truths that wake,
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor, Nor man nor boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy, Can utterly abolish or destroy!
Hence in a season of calm weather, Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither, And see the children sport upon the shore, And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song! And let the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound!
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now forever taken from my sight,
SCENE. - CATO sitting in a thoughtful posture, with Plate's book on the Immortality of the Soul in his hand, and a drawn sword on the table by him.
IT must be so. Plato, thou reasonest well! Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, This longing after immortality?
Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror, Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul Back on herself, and startles at destruction? 'T is the divinity that stirs within us; 'T is Heaven itself, that points out a hereafter, And intimates eternity to man.
Eternity!-thou pleasing, dreadful thought! Through what variety of untried being, Through what new scenes and changes must we pass!
The wide, the unbounded prospect lies before me; But shadows, clouds, and darkness rest upon it. Here will I hold. If there 's a Power above us (And that there is, all Nature cries aloud Through all her works), he must delight in virtue; And that which he delights in must be happy. But when? or where? This world was made for Cæsar.
Though nothing can bring back the hour I'm weary of conjectures,
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower, We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind; In the primal sympathy Which, having been, must ever be ; In the soothing thoughts that spring Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind.
And O ye fountains, meadows, hills, and groves, Forebode not any severing of our loves.
this must end them. [Laying his hand on his sword.
Thus am I doubly armed: my death and life, My bane and antidote, are both before me. This in a moment brings me to an end; But this informs me I shall never die. The soul, secured in her existence, smiles At the drawn dagger, and defies its point. The stars shall fade away, the sun himself Grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years; But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, Unhurt amid the war of elements, The wreck of matter, and the crash of worlds!
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