University of Virginia Library

When mournful evening's gradual vapors spread
O'er the dim plain, and veil the river's bed;
While her own star with dull and watry eye
Peeps through the severing darkness of the sky;
While the mute birds to lonely coverts haste,
And silence listens on the slumbrous waste:
When tyrant frost his strong dominion holds,
And not a blade expands, a bud unfolds,
But nature dead, divested of her green,
Clothed in a solemn pallid shroud is seen:
When gathered thunders burst, abrupt, and loud,
And midnight lightning leaps from cloud to cloud,
Or rends, with forceful, momentary stroke,
The ivied turret, and the giant oak;
Can mere remembrance wake meridian mirth,
Bedeck with visionary charms the earth;
Renew the season when each wakening flower
Lifted its leaves to drink the morning shower;
Dispel the gloom, the fiery storm remove,
Gem the wide vault and animate the grove?
The fond illusions could but feebly shew,
The colors scarce appear, or faintly glow,
Fixed would the sad realities remain,
And memory waste her vaunted stores in vain.
Alas! all ineficient is her power,
To cheer, by what is past, the present hour,
For every good gone by, each transport o'er,
She may regret, but never can restore.
Yet shall her festering touch corrode the heart,
Compel the subjugated tear to start.
She calls grim phantoms from the shadowy deep,
And sends her furies forth to torture sleep:
The lapse of time, the strength of reason dares,
And with fresh rage her straining rack prepares.

Say, can the man oppressed by grief, review
With tranquil eye the pleasures that he knew,
When in content with love and friendship blest,
Their soft emotions charmed his youthful breast;
And as he gave each wild idea scope,
Looked to new joy with renovated hope?
Ah, no! his thought with melancholy range!
Traces the progress of the afflictive change,
Adds to the immediate evil he endures,
By strong control each struggling pang secures;
Till tired, and shocked, he turns him in despair,
From things that have been, to the things that are.
For what avails it now that once his mind
Was light as air, and frolic as the wind,
Alike to sorrow or to vice unknown,
That every moral solace was his own,
Since, at an altered season, misery gave
Sighs for the past, and wishes for the grave?

How swiftly fly the raptures of our prime,
Swept by the tempest of destroying time,
Whose whirlwind lays the pride of empire low,
And mingles nature in a wild of woe!
Shall we then, pondering on its varied rage,
By recollected bliss our cares assuage,
Expatiate freely on the ravaged plain,
Where flowed the stream, and waved the golden grain,
Where fountains cool refreshed the summer shade,
And hamlets gay diversified the glade,
Where showed the sculptured fane its splendid site,
And groves, the granduer of diurnal night?
Shall we not view the altered prospect rude,
With deep dismay, or chill solicitude,
And can the mind the sad reverse efface,
By fondly musing on each former grace?
Where'er we cast our retrospective eyes,
A waste of rocks, a dreary desert lies,
Here desolation's grasp has rent the flowers
That scattered fragrance round our infant bowers,
There the wide ruin of our hopes extends,
Marked with memorials of departed friends.
So the poor traveller from some Alpine height,
Looks backward on his journey with affright,
For still the dangers past his thoughts confound,
And other dangers threaten still around;
The headlong precipice, the icy pass,
The whelming Avalanche's monstrous mass,
The tumbling cliff, the torrents sudden rise,
The tangled forest reaching to the skies,
The clustering clouds that wrap the mountains side,
The frozen mists that o'er the valley glide,
These all in dread confusion strike his heart,
He fears to stay, nor ventures to depart.

Down in yon glade, beside that glassy pool,
There stands, and long has stood, the village school;
Hark! the gay murmurings of the sportive train,
Freed from restraint, that gambol o'er the plain;
List their shrill voices, and their bursts of glee,
Will future years recal their ecstacy?
Perchance some one, hereafter of the band,
From the brown summit of that jutting land,
Shall eye the well-known spot, the self same scene,
And the thin spire that peeps those groves between;
Shall mark the peasant plodding as before,
And the trim house-wife at the cottage door;
Shall hear the pausing bell's pathetic toll,
Borne on the gale, announce the parting soul
Of some old friend, who to his childhood kind,
Prepared the kite and streamed it to the wind;
Some busy dame for cakes and custards known,
Who gave him credit when his pence were gone;
Some truant ploughboy, who, neglecting toil,
Joined him to seize the tempting orchard's spoil,
Or in despite of peril spread the snare,
As through the thicket passed the nightly hare;
Then shall he think on all the woes of life,
His thankless children, or his faithless wife,
His fortune wasted, or his wishes crost,
His tender brother, sister, parents lost,
Till every object sinking into shade,
He sigh, and call oblivion to his aid.

The buxom lass, who late, secure from harm,
With gay importance bustled through the farm;
Tended her dairy at the break of dawn,
Or fed her circling poultry on the lawn;
O'er the washed floor, the cleanly sand let fall,
And brushed the unseemly cobweb from the wall:
Who in the hay-time met the lusty throng,
And with her share of labor joined her song,
To the faint reapers bore the humming ale,
Or joked the thrasher leaning on his flail;....
By vain ambition led at length to town,
In quest of fortune, and supposed renown,
If there, the victim of some worthless rake,
She chance its sickly pleasures to partake,
Mixed with the pampered crowds, whose looks disclaim
The smile of virtue and the blush of shame;
Will she not oft regret the cheerful day,
When sport and freedom hailed the approach of May,
And many a rural pair beguiled the hour,
With evening dance beneath the moonlight bower.
Or left to her sad fate, condemned to rove
The lawless paths of desultory love;
Will not her tortured bosom throb the more,
Whene'er she thinks on what she was before,
And finds, recoiling from the insidious joy,
A secret canker every rose destroy:
While all that memory's sorcery can dispense,
Shall add new pangs to loss of innocence.

From the dark east the yelling blasts arise,
And clouds on clouds roll dreadful through the skies,
With sweeping fury the impetuous rain,
Bursts on the hills and murmurs o'er the main;
Then to some promontory, bleak and bare,
Fierce as distraction, reckless as despair,
At night's cold noon, a tortured wretch retires,
Consumed by memory's unrelenting fires;
With smiling horror meets the piercing gale,
Waits the barbed flash, and breasts the driving hail;
While in his bosom with resistless force,
Rages the direr tempest of remorse.
And didst thou, babarous monster! didst thou dare
Consign to shame the violated fair:
To lothsome penury and death consign,
Her, whom thy flattering tongue had called divine?
Didst thou not skill and artifice employ,
To lure the hapless maid, and then destroy?
What kind persuasion wooed her softened sense,
What cunning falsehood, and what fair pretence,
What fond endearments, mingled with the kiss,
That promised constancy and nuptial bliss!
And she did perish....yes, in yonder grove,
Seduced to vice, the sacrifice of love,
There on the chilly grass the babe was born,
Beneath that bending solitary thorn:
And there the infant's transient spirit fled,
And there the mother mingled with the dead....
Then howl thy sorrows forth, unpitied rave,
Groan on the beach, or headlong seek the wave;
For never shall her wrongs from thee depart,
But thought revenge thy cruelty of heart.

The slave of guilt no cordial ever found
To dull the throb of memory's careless wound,
The impressive contrast of anterior joys
With actual evils, every bliss destroys,
He now no more, as once, delighted views
Declining twilight melt in silvery dews;
No more the moon a soothing lustre throws,
To calm his care, and cheat him of his woes,
But anguish drops from zephyr's fluttering wing,
Veiled is the sun, and desolate the spring,
The glittering rivers sadly seem to glide,
And mental darkness shrouds creation's pride.
Nor vice alone, remembrance! dreads thy reign,
Virtue at times can sicken at thy pain.
Why does that drooping youth, with footsteps slow,
Pace the dark desert, or the vale of snow;
Why hold fantastic converse with the wind?
Tis thou art with him, tyrant of the mind!
Lo! at thy call a beauteous nymph appears,
Trickt out in flowers, yet fainting with her fears;
A robe of white her polished limbs conceals,
A burning blush her secret woe reveals....
Again he views the gay procession move,
In all the mimic pageantry of love;
Again beholds her at the altar's side,
Of age and avarice, the destined bride;
Marks the grey spoiler smile with joy elate,
Hears the cold priest reratify her fate;
Forced by a parent's harsh decree to wed,
And bathe with endless tears the marriage bed.
Then, then thy scorching fires convulse his veins,
Her image settled on his thought remains;
In every shade her pensive form he sees,
Her wailing voice is heard in every breeze;
He feels the pressure of her circling arms,
Traces her sweet redundency of charms,
And still revolving on the dear display,
Sinks to the earth, in desolate dismay.
Long on those spreading hills, a rustic strove,
The wants of life, industrious to remove;
Now bowed the forest with continued toil,
Now forced the ploughshare thro' the obstructive soil;
Or in his cottage plied some useful trade,
The hamlet's boast, the glory of the glade;
And fondly hoped a competence to raise,
The well-earned solace of his latter days.
But times of hard mishap, and wide distress,
Baffle his schemes, and make his little less,
Till driven at last from home, in want of bread,
On the damp sod he lays his aged head,
And as the cherished vain ideas rise,
Shrinks from the gale, and in remembering, dies.

But most to him shall memory prove a curse,
Who meets capricious fortune's hard reverse;
Who once in wealth, indulged each gay desire,
While to possess, was only to require:
Who scattered bounty with a liberal hand,
And roved at will through pleasure's flowery land.
By ruin cast amongst the lowly crew,
What doleful visions pass before his view!
His taste, his worth, his wisdom disappear,
His virtues too, none notice, none revere:
Cold is the summer friend, who loved to trace
His playful fancy's ever-varying grace;
Even nature's self a different aspect wears,
Dimmed by the mists of slow-consuming cares.
Glows not a flower, nor pants a vernal breeze,
As in his hour of affluence and ease,
While every luxury that the world displays,
Wounds him afresh, and tells of better days.

Oft, when the moon-beam penetrates the gloom
Of midnight, to the solitary tomb
That holds the relics of a wife adored,
And his beloved children, all deplored,
A mourner hies, there desolately cast,
Wooes to his burning breast the hollow blast,
Welcomes the screech-owl's dirge, and rends his hair,
Or half devout, half murmuring, breathes a prayer.
Then recollection to his eager sight
Conjures the shadowy semblance of delight,
Shows the fond partner of his blissful hour,
His infants sporting in the noontide bower;
By her again his social board is graced,
Upon his knees, the smiling cherubs placed;
O'er his charmed ear again her accents creep,
To sooth his heart and tell him not to weep:
Her pitying gaze his deep despair reproves,
Fondly she counsels him who fondly loves,
And waves her snowy hand with tenderest care,
Points his abode, and seeks to lead him there:
Till in a moment, the delusion fled,
He drops a living corse upon the dead.

As the proud vessel o'er the ocean glides,
And seems to scorn the winds, and mock the tides;
The jocund mariners expand the sail,
To seize the vigor of the viewless gale;
From the high shrouds their caroled ditties raise
To many a favorite maid, in notes of praise.
But now more sullen blows the perilous blast,
And the strong tempest works the struggling mast;
A moment lulls, and from the treacherous pause,
Fresh horror gains, and fiercer fury draws;
In vain the pilot shuns the o'erwhelming wave,
Useless the caution, for no skill can save;
The timbers crack, the rudder quits its hold,
At random here and there the ship is rolled.
Then comes the fiend of memory to dispense
Amongst the crew, affliction's keener sense;
Dwells on each tender tie they left behind,
Grapples the soul, and preys upon the mind;
Shows the lorn wife distracted at their fate,
The weeping orphan's unprotected state,
Tells of the plighted virgin's ceaseless moan,
The faithful friend's dismay, the parent's groan,
And, as to endless darkness down they go,
Clings to the last, and leaves the latest woe.

Observe yon structure stretching o'er the plain,
Sad habitation of the lost, insane!
Ha! at the grates what grisly forms appear,
What dismal shrieks of laughter wound the ear!
Heart-broken love the tenderest measure pours,
Sighs, and laments, incessantly adores:
Insatiate fury clanks his ponderous chains:
Suspicious avarice counts ideal gains;
Bewildered pride the swelling crest uprears,
And causeless penitence is drowned in tears:
Wan jealousy, with scrutinizing glance,
On every side sees rival youths advance;
While maddest murder waits the sword to draw,
And ostentation flaunts in robes of straw:
Pale, pitious melancholy clasps her hands,
Sunk in deep thought, and as a statue stands;
Convulsive joy, imaginary state,
Low envy, ghastly fear, determined hate,
Loud agonizing horror, dumb despair,
And all the passions are distorted there.
Amidst those galleries drear, those doleful cells,
The unrelenting despot, memory, dwells.
Fixed on the burning brain, she urges still
Her ruthless power, in mockery of the will;
Regretted raptures, long remembered woes,
And every varying anguish, she bestows!
This is her sumptuous palace, these her slaves,
She reigns triumphant when the maniac raves.
But, O! her victims feel the heaviest stroke,
Whene'er at intervals the spell is broke;
When casual reason is a while restored,
And they themselves are by themselves deplored.

Behold the wretch, who from that cavern flies,
Hell in his heart, destruction in his eyes;
His bosom burns, his aggregated grief
Feeds on his being, and disdains relief;
Around he throws his solitary gaze,
Already dead to hope, and love, and praise;
By sharp sensation wounded to the soul,
He ponders on the world....abhors the whole;
While black as night, his gloomy thought expands
O'er life's perplexing paths, and barren sands:
In the dire workings of his wakeful dreams,
The human race a race of demons seems,
All is unjust, discordant and severe,
He asks not mercy's smiles, or pity's tear:
Guilt, hate, and horror drives him to the steep,
Furious and wild, he plunges in the deep;
Breathes his rash spirit on the roaring tide,
And glories that he dies a suicide.
Alas! he only strove to set him free
From thy abhorred dominion, memory!

Where are the bounteous blessings, do they flow
On the blank current of preceding woe,
Or on a halcyon sea allure the sight,
In distant, floating bubbles of delight?
Small consolation from past ills we gain,
And comforts vanished, leave the sharpest pain.
From thee does gratitude forever find
A settled bliss, a lasting ease of mind?
Dost thou not come, to dull its sickening sense,
And many a secret murmur to dispense;
To trace the benefactor's true intent,
And urge his selfish pride of sentiment,
Recal the gracious nod that followed soon,
The pitying smile as conscious of the boon,
Or bid it all at once indignant fly
From the keen sneer, the cold averted eye?
For heart-felt wrongs thy stimulative force
Oft wakens vengeance, and impels its course;
Thy feverish hand lays bare each wound to view,
That it may throb, and rage, and bleed anew;
While all, perhaps, the injured can acquire,
Is, not to pardon....but forget its ire.

Ask the meek nun, who fled from worldly care,
Is doomed to long involuntary prayer;
To meagre fasts, and nights of broken rest,
With busy nature struggling in her breast:
Ask, if she deem in her forlorn abode,
That sad seclusion is the will of God,
That her blue eyes so languishingly sweet,
Were meant to hide their lustre in retreat,
And, dimmed with tears, eternally to trace
The dull, the holy horrors of the place:
Those glowing lips, with vermil dews o'erspread,
To kiss the mouldering relics of the dead;
The ear's vibration but to catch the swell
Nocturnal, of some melancholy bell;
Unknown the thrilling ecstacies, that move
In the soft whisperings of the voice of love;
The sense of feeling drawn o'er every part,
And all the fine emotions of the heart,
Were they bestowed a mournful wreck to lie
In the oblivious gulph of bigotry?
Her trembling tongue the motive would explain,
That fixed her thus, alas, to live in vain.
Some dread remembrance of departed joy,
Beguiled her reason, powerful to destroy!
Left her like yonder leafless shrub to fade,
Hid from the light, and withering in the glade.

Through life's mysterious vale, from day to day,
Man, wretched pilgrim! journeys on his way;
Here towering palaces attract his view,
There the lorn hovel shews its tattered crew;
And if some casual flowers his senses greet,
Still rending brambles cling around his feet;
While, but a little onward, hangs the gloom
That hides the solemn precincts of the tomb:
Yet, lured by hope, a forward course he steers,
And shuns the painful retrospect of years.
For who, amongst the lowly, or the high,
His traversed path with rapture can descry?
Some wild desire, some sad mistake has cast
Severe remorse, or sorrow on the past;
Some former fault shall present solace curb,
Or fair occasion lost, his peace disturb;
Some fatal chance has ruined every scheme,
And proved his brightest prospect, but a dream.
E'en those, who, by the million, are confest
The noblest, truest, wisest, and the best,
Shall in repining thanklessness declare,
They might have been far happier than they are;
And oft exclaim, ‘if time would but renew,
How different were the system to pursue!’

Come then, creative fancy! hither bend
Thy sportive flight, and prove thyself a friend;
Raise by thy potent spells the castless fair,
Which charm the eye, though built but in the air;
Console the poor with visionary wealth,
And lure the sick man to the bowers of health;
To myrtle groves the panting lover bring,
And scatter roses from thy faëry wing;
The maid adored, though faithless as the wind,
Shall there be ever constant, ever kind,
With fond approval listen to his tale,
Melt on his sighs, and let his vows prevail.
Thou bidst the soldier win, with proud delight,
The deathless laurel of imagined fight,
Spur his bold steed, the routed foe to reach,
Or foremost, sword in hand, ascend the breach.
Thy magic influence makes the coward brave,
Gives ease to anguish, freedom to the slave:
Yes, he, alas! condemned for evermore,
To tug, with hopeless toil, the heavy oar,
To guide the galley through the boisterous sea,
In every hour of respite flies to thee:
On the cold pallet stretched, his pangs subside,
O'er his rapt thought thy pageant pleasures glide,
Bright views entrance him, soft illusions rise,
Dissolve his chains, and lift him to the skies,
The niggard wretch at thy benign command,
Feels with new tenderness his soul expand,
Wakens to charity, and grants relief,
At least in thought, to every human grief;
Then, to reward his sympathetic tears,
Invokes prosperity, and length of years.
Viewed through the medium of thy magic glass,
The loveliest scenes in gay succession pass,
Each virtue glows in purest tints arrayed,
In native ugliness is vice displayed;
For never yet has mortal predesigned
Himself unjust, deceitful, or unkind,
To gain the prize on which he loves to brood,
The means are proper, and the end is good.
Where'er then deignst thy cheering glance to throw,
Full harvests bend, salubrious rivers flow,
Long lakes their glossy surfaces unfold,
And heaven is decked with more resplendent gold:
Spontaneous forests clothe the lonely heath.
And all creation brightens at thy breath,
Then, fancy, hither come, exert thy sway,
And chase the demon, memory, far away!

Thou, too, forgetfulness! whose opiate charm
Can hush the passions, and their rage disarm;
Approach, O, kindly grant thy suppliant aid!
Wrap him in sweet oblivion's placid shade;
Veil the gay, transitory scenes that fled,
Like gleamy sunshine o'er the mountain head;
Sink in the dark abyss of endless night;
The artificial phantoms of delight;
Nor let his early ignorance, and mistake,
The sober bliss of age and reason shake:
Hide from his heart each suffering country's woe,
And o'er its chains thy covering mantle throw;
Hide yon deluded agonizing train,
Who bleed by thousands on the purple plain;
Their piercing cries, their dying groans control,
And lock up all the feelings of his soul.
So shall, perhaps, content with thee return,
Mongst vernal sweets to raise his wintry urn;
To his retreat tranquillity repair,
‘And freedom dwell a pensive hermit there.’
O! in retirement, may he rest at last,
The present, calm, forgotten all the past;
Beside the babbling brook at twilight's close,
Taste the soft solace of the mind's repose;
List the lorn-nightingale's impressive lay,
That sooths the evening of retiring May,
When the young moon her paly flag displays,
And o'er the stream the panting zephyr strays;
No heedless hours recalled, no festive roar,
That once deluded, but can please no more;
No wild emotions bid his comforts cease,
Or from his cottage drive the angel, peace;
Nor vain ambition tempt his thoughts anew,
But still preserve the friendship of the few;
Still, still preserve the fond domestic smile,
Of her, whose voice can every care beguile;
With meek philosophy his hours employ,
Or thrilling poetry's delicious joy;
And from the faded promises of youth,
Retain the love of liberty and truth!
Or may he, wafted o'er the watery main,
Woo the mild pleasures of Columbia's plain,
Where the proud Delaware's blue waters glide,
Or Susquehannah rolls the bounteous tide,
On the green margin of each crystal flood,
Delighted, view her daughters, fair and good;
Their curling tresses and their modest guise,
Their beauteous forms, and eloquence of eyes:
With her free sons the social converse share,
See grander scenes, and breathe a purer air!
And, O! when icy death, approaching near,
Shall bid life's transient victims disappear;
When o'er his eyes the filmy vapors spread,
And all the allurements of the world are fled.
May MEMORY then her wonted pains resign,
And from reflection waken hope divine,
Amidst his failings still some virtues trace,
Some fair exertions, and some deeds of grace.
For she alone, by her consoling power,
Can chase the terrors of that awful hour,
From chill despair the struggling spirit save,
And whisper happiness beyond the grave.