Poems by William Wetmore Story

Do you hear, Lorenzo? I say these wishes and vague desires
Will all of them pass away, though now they seem so bright;
They are will-o'-the-wisps that breed uncertain treacherous fires:
No real lamps that lead the traveller through the night.

II.

My youth has gone like a song. You heed not an old man's words.
Yet once, like you, I was young. Alas! I know it all;
And often my memory smites my thoughts, and awakens chords
Of far and dim delights, that I tremble as I recall.

III.

I loved! Ah! yes, I loved with a love that maddened my mind—
With a passion that reason reproved—I loved, as I pray to God

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You never may love, my boy; and the storm came down, and the wind,
And my hope was crushed, and my joy—as you crush these flowers in the sod.

IV.

I awoke—as a man may wake from a wild and feverish dream—
Useless and helpless—a wreck,—with scarcely the wish or power
On the spars of life to drift,—and a fierce regret that the stream,
Sweeping to death so swift, had flung me aside for an hour.

V.

Slowly the world came back; but oh! how changed and drear!
The serpent was on its track—my spirit was bitter and dark.
I rushed to battle;—Death passed me, shaking his sword and spear,
And, scornful, aside he cast me, making the happy his mark.

VI.

But the savage hate of life died down like a fading flame;
And weary and worn with strife, and broken and spent with care,—

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With a spirit inly stirred, to the convent grate I came,
And God in his mercy heard,—and peace returned with prayer.

VII.

There is peace, that nothing taints, in the life that to God is given—
To Christ, and the holy saints—that minister unto man;
For the world is a snare and a lure that leads us away from heaven,
And love is a demon impure, that tears us whenever it can.

VIII.

Ah! flee from the coils it spreads. Oh yield not unto its snare!
Gilded at first its threads, in torture at last they end;
And Love, like the Sphinx of old, with its bosom and face so fair,
Hath arms of the tiger to hold, and claws of the tiger to rend.

IX.

Look not back—be advised—on the path you have chosen so well.
The Church is the fold of Christ: the world is the devil's den.
Hark! 't is the Angelus, ringing afar from the convent bell—
Ave Maria sanctissima, ora pro nobis.—Amen.

University of Virginia Library

THE PADRE AND THE NOVICE.

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