Thought, like a wakeful vestal at her shrine,
Assumes her wonted sway.
Behold the world
Rests, and her tired inhabitants have paused
From trouble and turmoil. The widow now
Has ceased to weep, and her twin orphans lie
Locked in each arm, partakers of her rest.
The man of sorrow has forgot his woes;
The outcast that his head is shelterless,
His griefs unshared.-The mother tends no more
Her daughter's dying slumbers, but, surprised
With heaviness, and sunk upon her couch,
Dreams of her bridals. Even the hectic, lulled
On Death's lean arm to rest, in visions wrapt,
Crowning with hope's bland wreath his shuddering
Poor victim! smiles.-Silence and deep repose
Reign o'er the nations;—and the warning voice
Of nature utters audibly within
The general moral:-tells us that repose,
Deathlike as this, but of far longer span,
Is coming on us-that the weary crowds
Who now enjoy a temporary calm,
Shall soon taste lasting quiet, wrapt around
With grave-clothes; and their aching, restless heads
Mouldering in holes and corners unobserved,
Till the last trump shall break their sullen sleep.
Who needs a teacher to admonish him
That flesh is grass?—That earthly things are mist?
What are our joys but dreams? and what our hopes
But goodly shadows in a summer cloud?
There's not a wind that blows but bears with it
Some rainbow promise:-Not a moment flies
But puts its sickle in the fields of life,
And mows its thousands, with their joys and cares. 'Tis but as yesterday since on yon stars,
Which now I view, the Chaldee shepherd* gazed,
In his mid-watch observant, and disposed
The twinkling hosts as fancy gave them shape.
Yet in the interim what mighty shocks
Have buffeted mankind,--whole nations razed,-
Cities made desolate, the polished sunk
To barbarism, and once barbaric states
Swaying the wand of science and of arts;
Illustrious deeds and memorable names
Blotted from record, and upon the tongue
Of gray tradition voluble no more.
Where are the heroes of the ages past?
Where the brave chieftains, where the mighty ones
Who flourished in the infancy of days?
All to the grave gone down. On their fallen fame
Exulting, mocking at the pride of man,
Sits grim Forgetfulness.-The warrior's arm
Lies nerveless on the pillow of its shame;
Hushed is his stormy voice, and quenched the blaze
Of his red eyeball.-Yesterday his name
Was mighty on the earth.-To-day-'tis what?
The meteor of the night of distant years,
That flashed unnoticed, save by wrinkled eld,
Musing at midnight upon prophecies,
Who at her lonely lattice saw the gleam
Point to the mist-poised shroud, then quietly
Closed her pale lips, and locked the secret up
Safe in the charnel's treasures.
* Alluding to the first astronomical observations made by the Chaldean shepherds.
Is mortal man! how trifling-how confined
His scope of vision. Puffed with confidence,
His phrase grows big with immortality,
And he, poor insect of a summer's day,
Dreams of eternal honors to his name;
Of endless glory and perennial bays.
He idly reasons of eternity,
As of the train of ages,-when, alas!
Ten thousand thousand of his centuries
Are, in comparison a little point,
Too trivial for accompt.-O it is strange,
Tis passing strange, to mark his fallacies;
Behold him proudly view some pompous pile,
Whose high dome swells to emulate the skies,
And smile and say my name shall live with this
Till Time shall be no more; while at his feet,
Yea, at his very feet the crumbling dust
Of the fallen fabric of the other day,
Preaches the solemn lesson.-He should know,
That time must conquer. That the loudest blast
That ever filled Renown's obstreperous trump,
Fades in the lapse of ages, and expires.
Who lies inhumed in the terrific gloom
Of the gigantic pyramid? or who
Oblivion laughs and says, The prey is mine.-They sleep, and never more Their names shall strike upon the ear of man, Their memory burst its fetters.
She lives but in the tale of other times;
Her proud pavilions are the hermit's home;
And her long colonnades, her public walks,
Now faintly echo to the pilgrim's feet
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