I.
The happiest day--the happiest hour
My seared and blighted heart hath known,
The highest hope of pride and power,
I feel hath flown.
II.
Of power! said I? Yes! such I ween
But they have vanished long, alas!
The visions of my youth have been--
But let them pass.
III.
And pride, what have I now with thee?
Another brow may ev'n inherit
The venom thou hast poured on me--
Be still my spirit!
IV.
The happiest day--the happiest hour
Mine eyes shall see--have ever seen
The brightest glance of pride and power
I feel have been:
V.
But were that hope of pride and power
Now offered with the pain
Ev'n
I would not live again:
VI.
For on its wing was dark alloy
And as it fluttered--fell
An essence--powerful to destroy
A soul that knew it well.
________
The End | Go to top
Dreams
Oh! that my young life were a lasting dream!
My spirit not awakening, till the beam
Of an Eternity should bring the morrow.
Yes! though that long dream were of hopeless sorrow,
'Twere better than the cold reality
Of waking life, to him whose heart must be,
And hath been still, upon the lovely earth,
A chaos of deep passion, from his birth.
But should it be-- that dream eternally
Continuing--as dreams have been to me
In my young boyhood--should it thus be given,
'Twere folly still to hope for higher Heaven.
For I have revelled when the sun was bright
I' the summer sky, in dreams of living light
And loveliness,--have left my very heart
Inclines of my imaginary apart
From mine own home, with beings that have been
Of mine own thought--what more could I have seen?
'Twas once--and only once--and the wild hour
From my remembrance shall not pass--some power
Or spell had bound me--'twas the chilly wind
Came o'er me in the night, and left behind
Its image on my spirit--or the moon
Shone on my slumbers in her lofty noon
Too coldly--or the stars--howe'er it was
That dream was that that night-wind--let it pass.
I have been happy--and I love the theme:
Dreams! in their vivid coloring of life
As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife
Of semblance with reality which brings
To the delirious eye, more lovely things
Of Paradise and Love--and all my own!--
Than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.
________
The End
In Youth I Have Known One
How often we forget all time, when lone
Admiring Nature's universal throne;
Her woods--her wilds--her mountains--the intense
Reply of Hers to Our intelligence!
I.
In youth I have known one with whom the Earth
In secret communing held--as he with it,
In daylight, and in beauty, from his birth:
Whose fervid, flickering torch of life was lit
From the sun and stars, whence he had drawn forth
A passionate light such for his spirit was fit--
And yet that spirit knew--not in the hour
Of its own fervor--what had o'er it power.
II.
Perhaps it may be that my mind is wrought
To a ferver by the moonbeam that hangs o'er,
But I will half believe that wild light fraught
With more of sovereignty than ancient lore
Hath ever told--or is it of a thought
The unembodied essence, and no more
That with a quickening spell doth o'er us pass
As dew of the night-time, o'er the summer grass?
III.
Doth o'er us pass, when, as th' expanding eye
To the loved object--so the tear to the lid
Will start, which lately slept in apathy?
And yet it need not be--(that object) hid
From us in life--but common--which doth lie
Each hour before us--but then only bid
With a strange sound, as of a harp-string broken
T' awake us--'Tis a symbol and a token--
IV.
Of what in other worlds shall be--and given
In beauty by our God, to those alone
Who otherwise would fall from life and Heaven
Drawn by their heart's passion, and that tone,
That high tone of the spirit which hath striven
Though not with Faith--with godliness--whose throne
With
