Yet all things must die. Death waits at the door. In the dark we must lie. Oh! misery! The red cheek paling, Ice with the warm blood mixing; Nine times goes the passing bell: Ye merry souls, farewell. The old earth Had a birth, As all men know, And the old earth must die. So let the warm winds range, And the blue wave beat the shore; For even and morn Ye will never see Thro' eternity. All things were born. LEONINE ELEGIACS. LOW-FLOWING breezes are roaming the broad valley dimm'd in the gloaming: Thoro' the black-stemm'd pines only the far river shines. Creeping thro' blossomy rushes and bowers of rose-blowing bushes, Down by the poplar tall rivulets babble and fall. Barketh the shepherd-dog cheerly; the grasshopper carolleth clearly; Deeply the wood-dove coos; shrilly the owlet halloos; Winds creep; dews fall chilly: in her first sleep earth breathes stilly: Over the pools in the burn water-gnats murmur and mourn. Sadly the far kine loweth: the glimmering water out-floweth : Twin peaks shadow'd with pine slope to the dark hyaline. Low-throned Hesper is stayed between the two peaks; but the Naiad Throbbing in mild unrest holds him beneath in her breast. The ancient poetess singeth, that Hesperus all things bringeth, Smoothing the wearied mind: bring me my love, Rosalind. Thou comest morning or even; she cometh not morning or even. False-eyed Hesper, unkind, where is my sweet Rosalind? SUPPOSED CONFESSIONS OF A SECOND-RATE SENSITIVE MIND. O GOD! my God! have mercy now. I faint, I fall. Men say that Thou Didst die for me, for such as me, Patient of ill, and death, and scorn, And that my sin was as a thorn Among the thorns that girt Thy brow, Of ignorance, I should require noon While I do pray to Thee alone, All cold, and dead, and corpse-like grown? And what is left to me, but Thou And faith in Thee? Men pass me by ; Christians with happy countenances And children all seem full of Thee! And women smile with saint-like glances Like Thine own mother's when she bow'd Above Thee, on that happy morn When angels spake to men aloud, And Thou and peace to earth were born, He hath no thought of coming woes; Would that my gloomed fancy were Paths in the desert? Could not I melt until the ice would Here, and I feel as thou hast felt? What Devil had the heart to scathe Flowers thou hadst rear'd- to brush the dew From thine own lily, when thy grave Was deep, my mother, in the clay? Myself? Is it thus? Myself? Had! So little love for thee? But why Prevail'd not thy pure prayers? Why pray To one who heeds not, who can save But will not? Great in faith, and strong The other? I am too forlorn, Too shaken: my own weakness fools My judgment, and my spirit whirls, Moved from beneath with doubt and fear. 'Yet," said I in my morn of youth, The unsunn'd freshness of my strength, When I went forth in quest of truth, "It is man's privilege to doubt, If so be that from doubt at length, Truth may stand forth unmoved of change, An image with profulgent brows, About his hoof. And in the flocks whence He knows not, on his light there falls And things that be, and analyze |