University of Virginia Library

Winter is nearing my dark threshold fast,
Already in low knells and broken wailings,
Ever austerer, menaces the blast
Which, soon a tempest, with its fierce assailings
Will swoop down on its unresistant prey.
The Iris-coloured firmament, whereto
Imagination turned, weeps day by day,
For some lost fragment of its gold and blue,
And the dun clouds are mustering thick that soon
Will overdark the little of the beams
Of that unfaithful and most wasted Moon
Of hope, that yet with pallid face (as gleams
A dying lamp amid grey ruins), wins
The cozened spirit o'er its flowerless path.
So be it! When the wanderer's night begins,
And the hoarse winds are heard afar in wrath,
He gazes on the curtained West with tears,
And lists disturbedly each sound, nor sees
Aught but dismay in the vague Night, nor hears
Aught but funereal voices on the breeze,
But when—his hour of gloom and slumber done—
He looks forth on the re-awakened globe,
Freshly apparelled in her virgin robe
Of morning light and crownèd with the sun,
His heart bounds like the light roe from its lair.
And shall it not be thus with me—the trance
Of death once conquered and o'erpast?—Perchance
I know not, but I cannot all despair.
I have grieved enough to bid Man's world farewell
Without one pang—and let not this be turned
To my disparagement what time my unurned
Ashes lie trodden in the churchyard dell.
For is not Grief the deepest, purest love?
Were not the tears that I have wept alone
Beside the midnight river, in the grove,
Under the yew, or o'er the burial-stone,
The outpourings of a heart that overflowed
With an affection worlds beyond control,
The pleasurable anguish of a soul
That, while it suffered, fondly loved and glowed?
It may be that my love was foolishness,
And yet it was not wholly objectless
In mine own fancy, which in soulless things,
Fountains and wildwood blossoms, rills and bowers,
Read words of mystic lore, and found in flowers,
And birds, and clouds, and winds, and gushing springs,
Histories from ancient spheres like the dim wanderers
Whose path is in the great Inane of Blue,
And which, though voiceless, utter to the few
Of Earth, whom Heaven and Poesy make ponderers
Apocalyptic oracles and true.
My Fatherland! My Mother-Earth! I owe
Ye much, and would not seem ungrateful now;
And if the laurel decorate my brow,
Be that a set-off against so much woe
As Man's applause hath power to mitigate;
If I have won, but may not wear it yet,
The wreath is but unculled, and soon or late
Will constitute my vernal coronet,
Fadeless—at least till some unlooked-for blight fall—
For, thanks to Knowledge, fair Desert, though sometimes
Repulsed and baffled, wins its meed at last,
And the reveil-call which on Fame's deep drum Time's
Hands beat for some lost hero of the Past,
If mute at morn and noon, will sound ere nightfall,
Hard though the struggle oft be which is made,
Not against Power throned in its proud pavilions,
Not against Wealth in trumpery sheen arrayed,
But against those who speed as the Postillions
Of Mind before the world, and, in their grade
Of teachers, can exalt or prostrate millions.
I have said I would not be an ingrate—No!
'Twere unavailing now to examine whence
The tide of my calamities may flow—
Enough that in my heart its residence
Is permanent and bitter:—let me not
Perhaps rebelliously arraign my lot.
If I have looked for nobleness and truth,
In souls where Treachery's brood of scorpions dwelt,
And felt the awakening shock as few have felt,
And found, alas! no anodyne to soothe,
I murmur not; to me was overdealt,
No doubt, the strong and wrong romance of Youth.
Less blame I for each lacerating error,
For all the javelin memories that pierce
Me now, that world wherein I willed to mirror
The visions of my boyhood, than the fierce
Impulses of a breast that scarce would curb
One ardent feeling, even when all was gone
Which makes Life dear, and ever frowned upon
Such monitors as ventured to disturb
Its baleful happiness. Of this no more.
My benison be on my native hills!
And when the sun shall shine upon the tomb
Where I and the remembrance of mine ills
Alike shall slumber, may his beams illume
Scenes happy as they oft illumed before,
Scenes happier than these feet have ever trod!
May the green Earth glow in the smile of God!
May the unwearying stars as mildly twinkle
As now—the rose and jessamine exhale
Their frankincense—the moon be still as pale—
The pebbled rivulets as lightly tinkle—
The singing-birds in Summer fill the vale
With lays whose diapasons never cloy!
May Love still garland his young votaries' brows!
May the fond husband and his faithful spouse
List to the pleasant nightingale with joy!
May radiant Hope for the soft souls that dream
Of golden hours long, long continue brightening
An alas! traitorous Future with her beam,
When in forgotten dust my bones lie whitening!
And, for myself, all I would care to claim
Is kindness to my memory—and to those
Whom I have tried, and trusted to the close,
Would I speak thus: Let Truth but give to Fame
My virtues with my failings; if this be,
Not all may weep but none will blush for me;
And—whatsoever chronicle of Good,
Attempted or achieved, may stand to speak
For what I was, when kindred souls shall seek
To unveil a life but darkly understood,—
Men will not, cannot, write it on my grave
That I, like myriads, was a mindless clod,
And trod with fettered will the course they trod,
Crouched to a world whose habitudes deprave
And sink the loftiest nature to a slave,
Slunk from my standard and renounced my God.
They will not, cannot tell, when I am cold,
That I betrayed, even once, a plighted trust,
Wrote but a single vow in Summer dust,
Or, weakly blinded by the glitter, sold
The best affections of my heart for gold,
And died as fickle as the wind or wave;
No! they will not write this upon my grave.