The bard, and minor poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

“True, 'twas but a dream;
And dreams are children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
Which is as thin of substance as the air.”
Shakspeare.

There is an hour, an holy hour, a time of bliss and peace,
When night hath set upon the earth, and caused our cares to cease;
When midnight, brooding o'er the plain, breathes stillness and repose,
And calms and soothes the raging main, as dew the breeze-stirr'd rose;
When through the woods more softly creep the winds which stirr'd the day,
Or on their pinions lull'd to sleep, thus dream the hours away;

When through the sky the night-bird wings his long and darken'd course,
And feeds upon the earth-born things, the victims of his force;—
There is an holy, hallow'd hour for feeling and for love,
When Nature wantons in her power, and draws our thoughts above;
When visions float across the soul, and fast in their embrace,
Unaw'd by Reason's stern control, our thoughts are lost in space.

I dreamt that I had left this earth to dwell within the moon,
And wander'd through its halls of mirth, unfetter'd and alone;
It seem'd like to our world below in structure and in form,
Yet still, and calm, and undisturb'd by tempest or by storm.
The beings who inhabited its wide and sunny land
Seem'd to my dream of mightier mould than aught on earthly strand:
Their natures were of nobler stamp, their thoughts of wider scan,
And more unlimited in range than those of earthly man.
In palaces of gold they dwelt, yet there was not their sleep,
But 'neath the glorious canopy of heaven's o'er-arching steep;
For theirs was one unvaried clime of brightness and of heat,
And ne'er upon its parched soil had Winter set his feet.

I look'd unto our world below, and thought upon the worms—
The things of clay, the sons of dust, and all its boasted charms:
How paltry did earth now appear, a speck upon the sky—
A dusky spot on heaven's bright face, to stain its majesty!
Who would have thought that man, so proud, so mighty in his sphere,
All-powerful, all-commanding man, should wholly disappear;
He who hath done such wond'rous things, and vaunted in his pride
All things in earth and sky were his, and in the ocean wide!

And thou, my own, my sea-girt Isle of freedom and the brave,
The lord of many nations, and the conqueror of the wave,
Where now were all thy bulwarks, thy armaments of power,
Which triumph on the waters unto earth's remotest shore?
And where thine Autumn's smiling fields, thy harvest rolling bright,
Which gently wave beneath the blast in mockery of its might?
Thy blooming fields of fertile spring, thy regal mountain oak,
Which from its seat so long hath braved the whirlwind's fiercest stroke?

And where were now the fair and brave who graced thy much loved land?
And where the wise who, by their nod, light up thy gifted strand?
Thy men of North, thy men of South, are nowhere to be seen,
All centred in that “dusky spot,” as if they ne'er had been.
The scorch'd plains of the distant East, and Afric's dreary wastes,
The Arabs' land, so oft up-turn'd by the Simoon's sweeping blasts;
Kamtschatka, lord of Norland snows, its sons the scoff of men,
The first-born child of the misty storms, and knight of the hurricane.
The West, the East, the North, where now are all your boundless climes—
And thou, sweet South, so oft gone o'er in the poet's glowing rhymes?
The Sea, whose caverns ne'er have been unveil'd to human ken,
Where lifeless forms have oft “repair'd, and will repair again,”—
Where were you all, when from Night's lamp I gazed in quest of each,
In that other orb, from burning Ind to Lapland's sounding beach?
And nought might now distinguish you save a bright and dusky stain,
The bright the scorching southern fields, the dark the watery main;

I saw but dimly, yet, methought that such must be the change,
Which spangled o'er the brighten'd face of earth's unbounded range.

And now my dream hath pass'd away, like a thought across the mind,
The dews before the sun's hot ray, or a bubble on the wind,—
The joys we felt in dawn of youth, when all our thoughts were bliss,
A shower upon a Summer's eve, the rapture of a kiss;
Yea, even as these, 'tis vanish'd, fled—its fancies all are gone,
No vestige on my soul is left save memory alone;
And there, long as life's lamp may burn, imprinted shall it be,
A phantom of the bygone years—a treasure unto me!

“Full of fancy, feeling, and imagination.”

Professor Wilson.

January, 1829.

This and the following poems are placed for the most part in the order of their composition, many of them having been written eight or ten years ago. The greater part, however, are of a later date.