 | Prose sketches and poems |  |
LINES
Written in Santa Fe, Noon of Feb. 15, 1832.
The sun is dull, the mist amid,
That like a grief is shading him;
And though the mountain be not hid,
His distant blue is shining dim,
And marking with its outline deep
The paler blue that bends above.
The winds have fanned themselves to sleep,
That like a grief is shading him;
And though the mountain be not hid,
His distant blue is shining dim,
And marking with its outline deep
The paler blue that bends above.
The winds have fanned themselves to sleep,
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And scarcely now their soft wings move,
With an unquiet slumberous motion,
Watched by the pale and flitting noon,
The wanderer of earth and ocean,
Whose stay all men desire, but none obtain the boon.
It is the hour of deepest thought,
When noise hath all a slumberous tone,
A dream-like indistinctness, fraught
With all which makes man feel alone.
It may be in the hour and time—
It may be only in the heart—
The cause that from the soul's abyme
Makes Time's old images to start;
When all that we have lost, or left,
Or loved, or worshipped, at our youth,
Comes up like an unwelcome gift,
With all the sad and stern reality of truth.
The stormy image of the past
Upon me at this time doth rise;
And, gazing in the distant vast,
Dim shapes I see with saddened eyes,
Like those that I have known before,
Yet altered, as I too have changed,
And some that near my heart I wore,
And some whose insults I avenged.
Ah yes! I know that sad, fair face—
Thy matchless form—thy witchery—
Thy step of air—thy winning grace!
Ah yes! I see thee in the dim obscurity.
My grief has now become as still
As is the sunlight or this wind;
And yet it knoweth well to fill,
With shapes like these, the gazing mind:
And Memory yields not yet her power—
Not yet her serpent sting will die;
Life is compressed into one hour—
A moment—by her searching eye:
And then a little fiend sits near,
And chatters of the lost and dead,
And hearts for woe grown chill and sere,
And points to Friendship's grave, as I his blood had shed.
And Fancy—Memory's sister—weaves
No golden web of hope for me;
Or if she smile, she still deceives
With all a wanton's mockery.
She paints to me a fireless hearth,
With an unquiet slumberous motion,
Watched by the pale and flitting noon,
The wanderer of earth and ocean,
Whose stay all men desire, but none obtain the boon.
It is the hour of deepest thought,
When noise hath all a slumberous tone,
A dream-like indistinctness, fraught
With all which makes man feel alone.
It may be in the hour and time—
It may be only in the heart—
The cause that from the soul's abyme
Makes Time's old images to start;
When all that we have lost, or left,
Or loved, or worshipped, at our youth,
Comes up like an unwelcome gift,
With all the sad and stern reality of truth.
The stormy image of the past
Upon me at this time doth rise;
And, gazing in the distant vast,
Dim shapes I see with saddened eyes,
Like those that I have known before,
Yet altered, as I too have changed,
And some that near my heart I wore,
And some whose insults I avenged.
Ah yes! I know that sad, fair face—
Thy matchless form—thy witchery—
Thy step of air—thy winning grace!
Ah yes! I see thee in the dim obscurity.
My grief has now become as still
As is the sunlight or this wind;
And yet it knoweth well to fill,
With shapes like these, the gazing mind:
And Memory yields not yet her power—
Not yet her serpent sting will die;
Life is compressed into one hour—
A moment—by her searching eye:
And then a little fiend sits near,
And chatters of the lost and dead,
And hearts for woe grown chill and sere,
And points to Friendship's grave, as I his blood had shed.
And Fancy—Memory's sister—weaves
No golden web of hope for me;
Or if she smile, she still deceives
With all a wanton's mockery.
She paints to me a fireless hearth,
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Or, worse than any other sting
We feel upon the lonely earth,
Cold hearts, and colder welcoming;
Friends wasted by life's ebbing tide,
Like sands along the shifting coasts;
The soul's best love another's bride;
And other worldless thoughts that haunt like unformed ghosts.
Well, I have chosen my own long path,
And I will walk it to the death,
Though Love's lone grief, or Hatred's wrath,
My way and purpose hindereth.
It may be, when this heart is cold,
And it were vain to love or hate—
When all that malice knows is told,
Some better name may on me wait;
And as the misty mountain mane
Doth not forever shade its blue,
The gloom on me may not remain,
When life, and love, and hope, have nought with me to do.
We feel upon the lonely earth,
Cold hearts, and colder welcoming;
Friends wasted by life's ebbing tide,
Like sands along the shifting coasts;
The soul's best love another's bride;
And other worldless thoughts that haunt like unformed ghosts.
Well, I have chosen my own long path,
And I will walk it to the death,
Though Love's lone grief, or Hatred's wrath,
My way and purpose hindereth.
It may be, when this heart is cold,
And it were vain to love or hate—
When all that malice knows is told,
Some better name may on me wait;
And as the misty mountain mane
Doth not forever shade its blue,
The gloom on me may not remain,
When life, and love, and hope, have nought with me to do.
| Prose sketches and poems | |