And Disappointment still pursued her blandishYet 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 plann'd 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.
As sinks a stranger in the crowded streets
Of busy London :-Some short bustle's caused,
A few inquiries, and the crowds close in,
And all's forgotten.-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 power subdues.
Oft I've beheld thee, in the glow of youth,
Hid 'neath the blushing roses which there
And dropp'd a tear, for then thy cankering tooth
I knew would never stay, till all consumed,
In the cold vault of death he were entomb'd.
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 beam'd 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 hover'd 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 rage the winds without.-The wintry cloud
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-topp'd [cot of thatch],
Soon shall his numb'd 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;
These hail his coming-these his meal prepare,
And boast in all that cot no lurking care.
What though the social circle be denied,
Even Sadness brightens at her own fireside,
Loves, with fix'd eye, to watch the fluttering blaze,
While musing Memory dwells on former days;
Or Hope, bless'd spirit! smiles—and still forgiven,
Forgets the passport, while she points to Heaven.
Then heap the fire-shut out the biting air,
And from its station wheel the easy chair:
Thus fenced and warm, in silent fit, 'tis sweet
To hear without the bitter tempest beat,
All, all alone-to sit, and muse, and sigh,
The pensive tenant of obscurity.
TO A FRIEND IN DISTRESS,
WHO, WHEN THE AUTHOR REASONED WITH HIM CALMLY, "" ASKED, IF HE DID NOT FEEL FOR HIM."
"Do I not feel?" The doubt is keen as steel. Yea, I do feel-most exquisitely feel;
My heart can weep, when, from
my downcast eye, I chase the tear, and stem the rising sigh;
Deep buried there I close the rankling dart,
And smile the most when heaviest is my heart.
On this I act-whatever pangs surround,
'Tis magnanimity to hide the wound!
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