University of Virginia Library

I.

Heir of Summer's crown, September!
Soon will fade thy last red ember:
Seasons come and go like waves
Subsiding into ocean caves—
Naught is enduring here:
The cup of bliss conceals alloy,
And faces, wreathed with smiles of joy,
Mask shuddering fear,
Passing away! passing away!
Is writ on the hillside and the vale;
Flowers that blushed at the break of day,
Ere twilight-time turn pale.
What is the burthen of the song
That floats on the midnight blast along:
The words of fearful warning heard
In the voice of the rill, and the warble of bird?
The wild refrain of the stormy lay
Roared by the cataract, night and day?
Passing away! passing away!

II.

Nought endures that finite man
In his arrogance uprears;
Tower and temple he may plan,
Sons complete what sires began,
But revolving years
Arch and column undermine
Draped with the dark green ivy-twine,
And the bat and the owl flap their dismal wings,
In the desolate courts of departed kings,
And silence holds sway in baronial halls
Where the grim face of Ruin the gazer appalls.
Passing away! passing away!
When were words uttered so full of dismay?
How on my heart, like a knell, they are falling,
While through the darkness sad voices are calling
“Sorrow is ever the neighbor of mirth,
Nothing is stable and constant on earth:
Oh! how brief!
Winter's dazzling flake of snow,
Vernal flowers the first to blow,
Summer's rose, autumnal leaf.”

III.

Of little profit is wealth that we hoard,
Place and position are worse than vain;
Honors achieved by pen, tongue and the sword,
Ere the goal of our hopes we gain,
Break like frail bubbles awoke by the rain—
Chase of renown is rewarded with pain,
A heart-ache, a hungering void in the soul
That longs for escape from its mortal control,
Passing away! passing away!
Words only uttered by creatures of clay,
Are not inscribed on the portal of day,
Guarding approach to the beautiful shore
Washed by the stream we are ferrying o'er.
Forms on the dazzling, auriferous sands
Gather, and wave their pale, beckoning hands:
Woven of starlight are robes that they wear,
Each stately head ringed with a circlet of gold;
One I know well by her dark, glossy hair,
A beautiful being of Phidian mould.
Oh! I am under her wondrous control,
Melt her soft tones in the ear of my soul;
Sprinkled with heart-drops are words of her lay
“Hither, come hither! where wreaths never wither,
And idols are turned into mouldering clay,
While Love warbles mournfully passing away?
Bulbs that we bury shoot forth into flowers
When resurrection accompanies spring
Giving dark green to the skeleton bowers,
Painting the newly-born butterfly's wing,
Spirits released from their chrysalis state,
Flitting through Summerland's golden-arched gate,
Care not where lies the poor, perishing shell,
Loathsome, and dread with mortality's smell—
Enough that the bondage of earth-life is o'er,
And grief can encumber, guilt darken no more.”