WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN SAID TO THE PSALMIST
Tell me not in mournful numbers,
"Life is but an empty dream!"
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal; 'Dust thou art, to dust returnest," Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead;
Act, act in the living Present,
Heart within, and God o'erhead.
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footsteps on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
Playful she turned that he might see
The passing smile her cheek put on;
But when she marked how mournfully
His eyes met hers, that smile was gone;
And, bursting into heartfelt tears,
"Yes, yes," she cried, "my hourly fears,
My dreams have boded all too right,
We part, for ever part, - to-night!
I knew, I knew it could not last,
'T was bright, 't was heavenly, but 't is past!
Oh! ever thus, from childhood's hour,
I 've seen my fondest hopes decay;
I never loved a tree or flower,
But 't was the first to fade away.
I never nursed a dear gazelle,
To glad me with its soft black eye,
But when it came to know me well,
And love me, it was sure to die."
The evening was glorious and light through the
Play'd the sunshine, the raindrops, the birds and the breeze;
The landscape, outstretching, in loveliness lay
On the lap of the year in the beauty of May.
For the queen of the spring, as she passed down
Left her robe on the trees, and her breath on the gale:
And the smile of her promise gave joy to the hours, While rank in her footsteps sprang herbage and
The skies, like a banner, in sunset unrolled,
O'er the west threw their splendors of azure and gold;
But one cloud at a distance, rose dense, and increased
Till its margin of black touched the zenith and east. We gazed on the scenes, while around us they
When a vision of beauty appeared on the cloud; 'T was not like the sun, as at mid-day we view, Nor the moon, that rolls nightly through starlight and blue.
Like a spirit it came in the van of the storm,
And the eye and the heart hailed its beautiful form;
For it looked not severe like an angel of wrath,
And its garment of brightness illum'd its dark path.
In the hues of its grandeur sublimely it stood
O'er the river, the village, the fields and the wood;
And river, fields, village and woodland grew bright,
As conscious they felt and afforded delight.
'T was the Bow of Omnipotence bent in His hand,
Whose grasp at Creation the universe spanned;
'T was the presence of God in a symbol sublime,
His vow from the flood to the exit of time.
Not dreadful, as when in the whirlwind he pleads,
When storms are his chariot, and lightning his
The black clouds his banners of vengeance unfurled,
And thunder his voice to a guilt-stricken world;
In the breath of his presence, when thousands expire,
And seas boil with fury, and rocks burn with fire,
When the sword and the plague-spot with death
And vultures and wolves are the graves of the slain.
Not such was the Rainbow, that beautiful one!
Whose arch was refraction, its keystone the sun;
A pavilion it seemed, which the Deity graced,
And justice and mercy met there and embraced.
Awhile, and it sweetly bent over the gloom,
Like love o'er a death-couch, or hope o'er the tomb;
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