 | The heir of the world, and lesser poems |  |
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MIDNIGHT.
I.
To sit beneath the moon's translucent beam,And drink her light with melancholy eye;
To hear the music of the bubbling stream,
And read the starlight volumes of the sky,
To muse on blighted loves and hopes gone by,
E'en as the moonlight shadows flit away,
And wander o'er the realm of memory,
And count the pangs of each succeeding day—
Alas! the tale is sad—more sad the picturing lay:
II.
But 'tis the hour of retrospective thought,When all the past before us lives again;
And purest pleasures with contentment bought
Return upon us like the shapes of pain;
And Hope's gay song and Fancy's syren strain
Come with a requiem echo on the soul;
And dead desires, a pale and shadowy train,
The pang-writ record of their fate unroll,
And agonize the heart that owned their wild control.
III.
The pale, pure moon looks innocently downUpon this warring world, with such a smile
Of soft derision as her eye may own;
And, as she passes many a starry isle,
Pauses to weep at deeds that do defile
The lovely earth, and change its young delights
To agonies—and angels sigh the while
That man should stain with guilt those glorious nights,
When heaven's gem-studded arch refracts seraphic lights.
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IV.
The silver stream of Dian's pearly raysFlows o'er this world of passion, crime and war,
As erst it did in young creation's days,
Ere dark ambition could the beauty mar
Of thought and feeling, and each lovely star
Gilds smiling scenes of love and loveliness
With the same diamond beams as when from far
It looked on Eden, and the soft caress
Of innocence beheld its holy joys express.
V.
The world is beautiful; the azure archIs paved with gems for angels' gliding tread,
And, when their starry plumes wave back in march,
Delicious music, through the concave spread,
Floats round the sleeper's softly pillowed head,
And dreams of glory o'er his spirit throws;
And lovely nature, by devotion led,
Like Iran's nightingale beside the rose,
On young, untainted spirits, holiness bestows.
VI.
Holy, delightful and unchanging, Heaven,On sin and sorrow and vicissitude
Gazes with grief and pity that 'tis given
Man the strange will of his own studied good
To be the foe, and crush in sullen mood
The rosy hopes that cost him pain to rear;
And white-hair'd time, while wrath doth deeply brood
O'er wrong and its atonement, smiles to hear
The settled schemes of hate, whose fruit cannot appear.
VII.
But 'tis the nature of aspiring manTo mourn, to sigh, and word in maddened speech
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His hate will finish; what his passions teach
His deeds will reverence; till beyond the reach
Of rivalry his spirit soars and bears
Its honours o'er his fellows; each from each
Of mortal kind his loves, desires and fears
Borrows—and 'tis not strange the debt is paid in tears.
VIII.
The changeful brilliance of the chequered beamsFalling on stream, grove, rock, and mountain dell,
Are like the spirit's momentary gleams
Of holy loveliness when upward swell
Feelings too raptured their delight to tell,
And loves too sweet their sweetness to unfold,
That dwell a moment—when the night of hell
Comes o'er their beauty, and the shuddering cold
Of anguish unrepressed chills hopes too soon unrolled.
IX.
The moonlight radiance of the sapphire skyDeepens cold shadows o'er the dark-robed earth,
As the bright gleamings of hope's diamond eye
Throw shades o'er all the phantoms of her birth;
The undying light of undissembling worth
Derives its beauty from the darkness drear
It round illumines; and man wanders forth
Alone, the hermit of a desert sphere,
To read the flitting lights and shadows that appear.
X.
What is philosophy but abstract thoughtOn never-ending sin and wo and crime,
Meting by method all the sorrows bought
By years of anguish, and appointing time
Its portions of despair? Howe'er sublime
Its contemplations are, disease and want
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The nutriment on which it banquets grant,
And lift the shuddering soul they wont with fear to daunt.
XI.
The world is full of wretchedness, and whileThe thoughtful man doth ever weep and sigh
O'er sin's foul leprosy, a sneering smile
Curls the proud lip and flashes from the eye
Of him who cries that none can ever die
Save unto pleasure; that the spirit rose
From dust and thither will return; on high
Clouds only roll—we make and nurse our woes—
And death brings dreamless sleep, and deep, unwaked repose.
XII.
The mellow moonlight, darting through the denseCloud of green foliage into yon ravine
Of darkness, doth not to the view dispense
More sombre hues, than mortal mind, I ween,
Throws o'er of moral life each changeful scene;
Nor doth the struggling, fluctuating light
More darkly bright the dripping cliffs between
Appear, than dying hopes, once high and bright,
Glimmering amid the shades of sorrow's mornless night
XIII.
Alone beneath the starry eyes of HeavenI sit upon the cold rock's moonlight brow,
For while soft slumbers to the world are given,
Unpitying grief will none to me allow.
The rushing rill's unceasing lapse and flow,
The twinkling forest where night zephyr sings,
Beseem the voiceless solitude of wo;
And thought that maddens, and despair that wrings,
Can find relief alone beside the woodland springs.
| The heir of the world, and lesser poems | |