IBID.
[Now Autumn crisps and dries the yellow'd leaf]
We are so much on the verge of the Union that it seems
almost impossible we should escape it.
In the Elegiac Manner
Now Autumn crisps and dries the yellow'd leaf,
Long since sad reapers brought the harvest in;
All which dejects us or exalts is brief—
Death in life's mask, shall life in death's begin?
Say, one is gone—perchance a kindly face,
A voice perchance which could some hearts encheer:
Haunt not, vain elegy, his former place
And, vacant heart, forbid the falling tear!
Trite epitaphs—“Too good on earth to stay”—
Let fools inscribe. Did peace make sweet his end?
Who knows?—Implora pace! Turn away
From hackney'd thoughts of father and of friend.
Convention tolls its bell with mournful sound,
Convention plumes the hearse which bears the clay,
Convention cries that hearts in hallow'd ground
Embalm remembrances that ne'er decay.
Go to! the heart forgets, the heart shall die,
Go to, who cares that dust to dust returns?
Or that in chapels of mortality
Some little space the lamp of memory burns!
Leave these old follies! Down the silent halls
And the long avenues that soul has pass'd;
If you have strength, refrain from useless calls
To other meetings—what if this were last?
That matters nothing, so he reach his goal:
Call, therefore, in the great Augustan mood,
Once and for all such end to crown his soul,
Content, so he bear that, to bear your rood.
We have been cautious through many initiations, but a
great reservation must be taken into the grade ne plus
ultra of death.
