WRITTEN IN THE PROSPECT OF DEATH.
SAD solitary Thought, who keep'st thy vigils,
Thy solemn vigils, in the sick man's mind;
Communing lonely with his sinking soul,
And musing on the dubious glooms that lie
In dim obscurity before him, thee,
Wrapt in thy dark magnificence, I call
At this still midnight hour, this awful season,
When, on my bed, in wakeful restlessness,
I turn me wearisome; while all around,
All, all, save me, sink in forgetfulness;
I only wake to watch the sickly taper
Which lights me to my tomb. Yes, 'tis the hand
Of death I feel press heavy on my vitals,
Slow sapping the warm current of existence.
My moments now are few the sand of life
Ebbs fastly to its finish. Yet a little,
And the last fleeting particle will fall
Silent, unseen, unnoticed, unlamented.
Come then, sad Thought, and let us meditate,
While meditate we may.· We have now
But a small portion of what men call time
To hold communion; for even now the knife,
The separating knife, I feel divide
The tender bond that binds my soul to earth.
Yes, I must die- I feel that I must die;
And though to me has life been dark and dreary,
Though Hope for me has smiled but to deceive,
And Disappointment still pursued her blandishments, Yet do I feel my soul recoil within me
As I contemplate the dim gulf of death,
The shuddering void, the awful blank-futurity.
Ay, I had planned full many a sanguine scheme
Of earthly happiness-romantic schemes,
And fraught with loveliness; and it is hard
To feel the hand of Death arrest one's steps,
Throw a chill blight o'er all one's budding hopes,
And hurl one's soul untimely to the shades,
Lost in the gaping gulf of blank oblivion.
Fifty years hence, and who will hear of Henry?
Oh! none; - another busy brood of beings
Will shoot up in the interim, and none
Will hold him in remembrance. I shall sink
As sinks a stranger in the crowded streets
Of busy London: some short bustle's caused,
A few inquiries, and the crowds close in,
On my grassy grave
The men of future times will careless tread,
And read my name upon the sculptured stone;
Nor will the sound, familiar to their ears,
Recall my vanish'd memory. I did hope
For better things! — I hoped I should not leave
The earth without a vestige; Fate decrees
It shall be otherwise, and I submit.
Henceforth, oh, world, no more of thy desires!
No more of hope! the wanton vagrant Hope!
I abjure all. Now other cares engross me,
And my tired soul, with emulative haste,
Looks to its God, and prunes its wings for heaven.
WHEN pride and envy, and the scorn Of wealth my heart with gall imbued, I thought how pleasant were the morn Of silence, in the solitude;
To hear the forest bee on wing;
Or by the stream, or woodland spring,
To lie and muse alone - alone,
While the tinkling waters moan,
Or such wild sounds arise, as say,
Man and noise are far away.
Now, surely, thought I, there's enow
To fill life's dusty way;
And who will miss a poet's feet,
Or wonder where he stray:
So to the woods and wastes I'll go,
And I will build an osier bower,
And sweetly there to me shall flow
The meditative hour.
And when the Autumn's withering hand,
Shall strew with leaves the sylvan land,
I'll to the forest caverns hie:
And in the dark and stormy nights
I'll listen to the shrieking sprites,
Who, in the wintry wolds and floods,
Keep jubilee, and shred the woods;
Or, as it drifted soft and slow,
Hurl in ten thousand shapes the snow.
OH! thou most fatal of Pandora's train,
Consumption! silent cheater of the eye;
Thou comest not robed in agonizing pain,
Nor mark'st thy course with Death's delusive dye,
But silent and unnoticed thou dost lie;
O'er life's soft springs thy venom dost diffuse,
And, while thou givest new lustre to the eye, While o'er the cheek are spread health's ruddy hues, E'en then life's little rest thy cruel
Oft I've beheld thee, in the glow of youth,
Hid 'neath the blushing roses which there bloomed ; And dropped a tear, for then thy cankering tooth
I knew would never stay, till all consumed,
In the cold vault of death he were entombed.
But oh what sorrow did I feel, as swift,
Insidious ravager, I saw thee fly
Through fair Lucina's breast of whitest snow.
Preparing swift her passage to the sky.
Though still intelligence beamed in the glance,
The liquid lustre of her fine blue eye;
Yet soon did languid listlessness advance,
And soon she calmly sunk in death's repugnant
Even when her end was swiftly drawing near,
And dissolution hovered o'er her head:
Even then so beauteous did her form appear,
That none who saw her but admiring said,
"Sure so much beauty never could be dead."
Yet the dark lash of her expressive eye
Bent lowly down upon the languid -
LOUD the winds without.
rage
O'er the cold northstar casts her flitting shroud;
And Silence, pausing in some snow-clad dale,
Starts as she hears, by fits, the shrieking gale;
Where now, shut out from every still retreat,
Her pine-clad summit, and her woodland seat,
Shall Meditation, in her saddest mood,
Retire o'er all her pensive stores to brood?
Shivering and blue the peasant eyes askance
The drifted fleeces that around him dance,
And hurries on his half-averted form,
Stemming the fury of the sidelong storm.
Him soon shall greet his snow-topped [cot of thatch],
Soon shall his numbed hand tremble on the latch,
Soon from his chimney's nook the cheerful flame
Diffuse a genial warmth throughout his frame;
Round the light fire, while roars the north wind loud,
What merry groups of vacant faces crowd;
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