Poems of Paul Hamilton Hayne :: :: University of Virginia Library

Though dowered with instincts keen and high,
With burning thoughts that wooed the light,
The scornful world hath passed him by,
And left him lonelier than the night.

Yes! cold and hopeless, one by one
The stars of faith have quenched their flame,
And like a waning polar sun,
Declines the latest hope of fame.

He longed to sing one noble song,
To thrill, with passion's living breath,
The fools whose scorn had worked him wrong,
And baffle fate, and conquer death.

Dear God! dost thou endow with powers,
Whose aspirations mock the bars
Of time and sense, whose vision towers
Irradiate 'mid thy sovereign stars,

Only to furnish some faint gleams
Of loftier beauty, quick withdrawn,
Leaving a frenzied hell of dreams,
And wailings for the vanished dawn?

The oracles of fancy mute,
Ambition's priests dethroned and fled,
He wanders with a tuneless lute,
Through dreary regions of the dead.

But from that place of bale uploom
The phantoms of unburied years,
The haunting care, the grief, the gloom,
The treacherous hopes, the pale-eyed fears

That stormed his spirit's brave design,
That clogged its wings, betrayed its trust,
Defaced its creed, and dashed the wine
In song's bright chalice, to the dust.

Ah, Heaven! could he retrace his life
From out this realm of doubt and dearth,
He would not court thought's eagle strife,
But clasp the calm that clings to earth.

Above, the threatening thunders wait
For dauntless souls that dare aspire,
But lowly lives are safe from hate,
And peace is wed to meek desire.

Yet, birds that breast the turbulent air
Are worthier than the things that creep,
And nobler is a high despair
Than weak content, or sluggish sleep.