Were they but the fancied dreams, that hover
Round the couch where tender hearts repose?
Only pictured veils that brightly cover
With their skyey tints a world of woes?
They are gone-but Memory loves to cherish
All their sweetness in her deepest core.
Ah! the recollection cannot perish,
Though the eye may never meet them more.
There are hopes, that like enchantment brighten
Gaily in the van of coming years;
They are never met—and yet they lighten,
When we walk in sorrow and in tears.
When the present only tells of anguish,
Then we know their worth, and only then:
O! the wasted heart will cease to languish,
When it thinks of joys that might have been.
Age, and suffering, and want, may sever
Every link, that bound to life, in twain:
Hope-even Hope may vanish, but forever
Memory with her visions will remain.
Lament who will, in fruitless tears,
The speed with which our moments fly:
I sigh not over vanished years,
But watch the years that hasten by.
See how they come, a mingled crowd
Of bright and dark, but rapid days;-
Beneath them, like a summer cloud,
The wide world changes as I gaze.
What! grieve that time has brought so soon
The sober age of manhood on!
As idly should I weep at noon,
To see the blush of morning gone.
Could I forego the hopes that glow
In prospect, like Elysian isles?
And let the charming future go,
With all her promises and smiles?
The future!-cruel were the power
Whose doom would tear thee from my heart. Thou sweetener of the present hour! We cannot-no-we will not part.
Oh, leave me, still, the rapid flight
That makes the changing seasons gay,
The grateful speed that brings the night,
The swift and glad return of day;
The months that touch with lovelier grace
This little prattler at my knee,
In whose arch eye and speaking face
New meaning every hour I see;
The years that o'er each sister land
Shall lift the country of my birth,
And nurse her strength, till she shall stand
The pride and pattern of the earth;
Till younger commonwealths, for aid,
Shall cling about her ample robe,
And, from her frown, shall shrink, afraid,
The crowned oppressors of the globe.
True-time will seam and blanch my brow-
Well-I shall sit with aged men,
And my good glass will tell me how
A grisly beard becomes me then.
And should no foul dishonour lie
Upon my head, when I am gray,
Love yet may search my fading eye,
And smooth the path of my decay.
Then haste thee, time,-'tis kindness all
That speeds thy winged feet so fast;
Thy pleasures stay not till they pall,
And all thy pains are quickly past.
Thou fliest, and bear'st away our woes;
And, as thy shadowy train depart,
The memory of sorrow grows
A lighter burden on the heart.
Stranger, if thou hast ever blest the shade,
That lent thee shelter from the sun or rain,
Thou wilt not rest thee underneath this elm
Without a sense of gratitude. The boughs,
That overshadow thee, have borne the brunt
Of centuries, and have records of the past
In all their whispering leaves. We cannot hear them
Telling their tales, through the long summer day,
To the cool west-wind, and have other thoughts,
Than of the generations, who have sat,
In long succession, on the mossy turf
That beds these twisted roots. Sunshine and calm,
Darkness and storm, have been around these boughs,
And they have smiled to the unclouded sky,
And rocked in the rude tempest, but have stood
Unbroken, while the stream of human life
Has ebbed and flowed, like the perpetual tide,
And hardly left a trace upon its shores,
To tell us where it came. Then rest thee, stranger,
And think thou hearest in the ancient wood
A monitor, that warns thee of thy end
With a low earnest voice, a voice of kindness,
That, like a silent fountain running over,
Refreshes where it flows, and, like its waters,
Gives life to the sere heart it passes by.
Aye, thou art for the grave; thy glances shine
Too brightly to shine long; another Spring
Shall deck her for men's eyes,—but not for thine,
Sealed in a sleep which knows no wakening.
The fields for thee have no medicinal leaf,
Nor the vexed ore a mineral of power,
And they who love thee, wait in anxious grief
Till the slow plague shall bring the fatal hour.
Glide softly to thy rest then; Death should come
Gently to one of gentle mould like thee,
As light winds wandering through groves of bloom
Detach the delicate blossom from the tree.
Close thy sweet eyes calmly, and without pain;
And we will trust in God, to see thee, yet again.
|