The legendary :: :: University of Virginia Library

O Clouds! ye ancient messengers,
Old couriers of the sky,
Treading as in primeval years,
Yon still immensity!
In march how wildly beautiful
Along the deep ye tower,
Begirt, as when from chaos dull
Ye loomed in pride and power,
To crown creation's morning hour.
Ye perish not, ye passing clouds!
But with the speed of Time,
Ye flit your shadowy shapes, like shrouds,
O'er each emerging clime;
And thus on broad and furlless wings
Ye float in light along,
Where every jewelled planet sings
Its clear eternal song,
Over the path our friends have gone!

Against that deep and peerless blue
Ye hold your journeying—
That silent birth-place of the dew,
Where life and lustre spring.
And then, how goldenly ye shine
On your immortal way,
Sailing through realms so near divine,
Under the Fount of Day!
O'er ye concentered glories play.
But when, to trail this sullen earth
Ye stoop from higher air,
And the glad regions of your birth,
To sweep the mountains bare,
In dim funereal pomp ye lower—
Oppressing like a pall—
Your brows of beauty veiled in power,
Whose shadows round us fall—
Ye brood like demons o'er the ball.
So our Life's hopes and promises
In dreamy distance lie;
So man a coming glory sees
Along his visioned sky—
So, as those rainbow joys come on,
Borne with his fleeting days,
That bright Futurity is gone,
And dulness dims his gaze—
Night gathers on his noontide blaze.
Ye posters of the wakeless air!
How silently ye glide
Down the unfathomed atmosphere,
That deep—deep, azure tide!

And thus in giant pomp ye go,
On high and reachless range,
Above earth's gladness and its woe,
Through centuries of change.
Your destiny how lone and strange!
Ye bear the Bow of Beauty—flung
On your triumphal path,
Splendid as first in joy it hung
O'er God's retiring wrath.
The promise and the covenant
Are written on your brow—
The mercy to the sinful sent
Is bending o'er them now.
Ye bear the memory of the Vow.
Ye linger with the silver stars,
Ye pass before the sun—
Ye marshal elements to wars,
And when the roar is done,
Ye lift your volumed robes in light,
And wave them to the world,
Like victory flags o'er scattered fight,
Brave banners all unfurled—
Still there, though rent and tempest hurled.
Ye bear the living thunder out,
Ye pageants of the sky!
Answering with trumpets' brattling shout
The lightning's scorching eye.
Pale faces cluster under ye,
Beneath your withering look,
And shaking hearts bow fearfully
At your sublime rebuke.
Has man his mockery forsook!

And then, in still and summer hours,
When men sit weary down,
Ye come o'er heated fields and flowers,
With shadowy pinions on—
Ye hover where the fervent earth
A saddened silence fills,
And, mourning o'er its stricken mirth,
Ye weep along the hills.
Then how the wakening landscape thrills!
And thus ye circle countless spheres,
Old spirits of the skies!
The same through Nature's smiles and tears,
Ye rose on Paradise.
I hear a voice from out your shrouds,
That tells me of decay—
For though ye stay not, hurtling clouds!
Till the last gathering day,
Ye pass like life's dim dreams away.