THE POET'S LAMENT.

BY HON. RICHARD HENRY WILDE.

As evening's dews to sun-parched Summer flowers, So to young burning breasts has verse been

given,

To soothe and cool the flush of feverish hours, Even with the tears exhaled from earth to

Heaven.

But when life's ebbing pulse wanes faint and slow, And coming Winter clouds the short'ning day, No dews the Night, no tears the eyes bestow, No words the soul to mourn its own decay.

But frosts instead, the waste of years deform,
And on our head falls fast untimely snow,
Or worse-we prove volcanic passions' storm,
Whose earthquake calmness mocks the fires
below.

These have no voice-yet might their ruins speak

The past and present eloquently well

But, fiendlike, on themselves their rage they wreak, Although they dare not wake the silent spell.

For such, alas! all Poetry is past,

Not even in History their thoughts survive, Like crowded cities into lava cast

Oblivion-doomed, embalmed, while still alive.

Above the stifled heart a nation's grave,
Years, centuries, millenniums, even might pass,
And o'er their barren dust no laurels wave-
Forth from their ashes springs no blade of grass.

Ores, in the darkest caverns of the earth,

Pearls, in the sea's unfathomed depths may

shine

Gems in the mountain's living rock have birth— But never Poetry in souls like mine.

Prolithe