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TIME.

UNFATHOMABLE Sea! whose waves are years,
Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe

Are brackish with the salt of human tears!

Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow Claspest the limits of mortality!

And sick of prey, yet howling on for more,
Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore,
Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm,
Who shall put forth on thee,

Unfathomable Sea?

LINES.

THAT time is dead forever, child,
Drowned, frozen, dead forever!
We look on the past

And stare aghast

At the spectres wailing, pale and ghast;
Of hopes which thou and I beguiled
To death on life's dark river.

The stream we gazed on then, rolled by;
Its waves are unreturning;

But we yet stand

In a lone land,

Like tombs to mark the memory

Of hopes and fears, which fade and flee
In the light of life's dim morning.

November 5th, 1817.

A SONG.

A WIDOW bird sate mourning for her love
Upon a wintry bough;

The frozen wind kept on above,
The freezing stream below.

There was no leaf upon the forest bare,
No flower upon the ground,

And little motion in the air

Except the mill-wheel's sound.

THE WORLD'S WANDERERS.

TELL me, thou star, whose wings of light Speed thee in thy fiery flight,

In what cavern of the night

Will thy pinions close now?

Tell me, moon, thou pale and grey
Pilgrim of heaven's homeless way,
In what depth of night or day
Seekest thou repose now?

Weary wind, who wanderest
Like the world's rejected guest,
Hast thou still some secret nest
On the tree or billow?

A DIRGE.

ROUGH wind, that moanest loud
Grief too sad for song;

Wild wind, when sullen cloud
Knells all the night long;

Sad storm, whose tears are vain,
Bare woods, whose branches stain,

Deep caves and dreary main,

Wail, for the world's wrong!

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