Still let them strive-when he collects his might, He will assert his right.
The spirit cannot always sleep in dust,
Whose essence is ethereal; they may try
To darken and degrade it; it may rust
Dimly awhile, but cannot wholly die;
And, when it wakens, it will send its fire
Intenser forth and higher.
MAN hath a weary pilgrimage,
As through the world he wends;
On every stage from youth to age
Still discontent attends ;
With heaviness he casts his eye
Upon the road before,
And still remembers with a sigh
The days that are no more.
To school the little exile goes,
Torn from his mother's arms,
What then shall sooth his earliest woes,
When novelty hath lost its charms?
Condemn'd to suffer through the day
Restraints which no rewards repay,
And cares where love has no concern, Hope lightens as she counts the hours
That hasten his return.
From hard control and tyrant rules,
The unfeeling discipline of schools,
The child's sad thoughts will roam,
And tears will struggle in his eye,
While he remembers with a sigh
The comforts of his home.
Youth comes: the toils and cares of life Torment the restless mind;
Where shall the tired and harass'd heart Its consolation find?
Then is not youth, as Fancy tells,
Life's summer prime of joy?
Ah! no; for hopes too long delayed,
And feelings blasted or betrayed,
The fabled bliss destroy;
And he remembers with a sigh
The careless days of infancy.
Maturer manhood now arrives,
And other thoughts come on,
But with the baseless hopes of youth
Its generous warmth is gone;
Cold calculating cares succeed,
The timid thought, the wary deed,
The dull realities of truth;
Back on the past he turns his eye,
Remembering with an envious sigh
The happy dreams of youth.
So reaches he the latter stage
Of this our mortal pilgrimage,
With feeble step and slow;
New ills that latter stage await,
And old experience learns too late
That all is vanity below;
Life's vain delusions are gone by,
Its idle hopes are o'er,
Yet Age remembers with a sigh
The days that are no more.
A SPIRIT, golden-haired, upon the side
Of a dark willow-shaded streamlet lay;
Sweetly the silent waters lapsed away,
And silently that spirit watched them glide.
And oft he fondly culled the violets pied,
And virgin lilies, with the budding spray
Of roses, ere they pined in soft decay-
And gently cast them on the peaceful tide.
Day passed, and Night; all seasons went and came;
The green earth blossomed, and grew white; but
O'er the smooth marge of that sequestered brook,
The faithful spirit hung-in all, the same,
Save that his blue eyes wore a milder look,
And on his brow there dwelt a chastened air.
A LIGHT is gone from yonder sky,
A star has left its sphere;
The beautiful-and do they die
In yon bright world, as here?
Will that star leave a lonely place,
A darkness on the night?
No: few will miss its lovely face,
And none think heaven less bright!
What wert thou star of, vanished one?
What mystery was thine?
Thy beauty from the east is gone:
What was thy sway and sign?
Wert thou the star of opening youth?
And is it then for thee,
Its frank glad thoughts, its stainless truth, So early cease to be?
Of hope?-and was it to express
How soon hope sinks in shade?
Or else of human loveliness,
In sign how it will fade?
How was thy dying like the song,
In music to the last,
An echo flung the winds among,
And then for ever past?
Or didst thou sink as stars whose light
The fair moon renders vain?
The rest shine forth the next dark night,—
Thou didst not shine again.
Didst thou fade gradual from the time
The first great curse was hurled,
Till, lost in sorrow and in crime,
Star of our early world?
Forgotten and departed star!
A thousand glories shine
Round the blue midnight's regal car,
Who then remembers thine?
Save when some mournful bard, like me,
Dreams over beauty gone,
And in the fate that waited thee,
Reads what will be his own.
ROLL on, thou deep and dark blue ocean-roll! Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain ; Man marks the earth with ruin-his control Stops with the shore;-upon the watery plain The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain A shadow of man's ravage, save his own, When, for a moment, like a drop of rain, He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown.
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