University of Virginia Library

A HISTORY OF LIFE.

(From an unpublished Drama.)

Life!'tis sickliest shadow that e'er crossed
The goodly green o' the earth; the hoarest sound
That ever smote the silver ear of night
From thunder-throated seas. Man hath not weighed
A thing so light as his own life, that seems
The strength of many things, centre of hope;
And hath its little worlds—love, glory, gain—
Riding around, as buoyant and more brief.
How like the monarch of all life looks man,
Yet doth a lean and livid worm out-reign
The crowned Napoleon in the human heat!
Whate'er our summer, ice begins and ends—
The cradle, and the coffin, of our year.
All earth is but an hourglass, and the sands
That tremble through them are men. And as they pass
Some sparkle and would linger, but the rest
Come sweeping heavily onward, and tread out
The unredeeming lustre—and all sink.
The starriest page that history hath traced
In her own dubious twilight, is a tale
Of buried men that used their tears for ink;
A tombstone for the tired, which tells of those
That wept and vanished, toiled and marvelled why.
And all the students of our life have looked
Bearded ambition in the face, and laughed;
Themselves, perchance, had travelled far on foot,
The roots of knowledge nurturing with their blood,
Yet reared they not a branch or bud to shade
Wearied adventure; while the few dried leaves,
Which autumn swept from Eden, make a flame
That thaws no bond from ignorance and sloth.
So moves the visioned world; so runs the tale
Studied in April. Nothing true survives
Save fiction; which hath still the truest been,
And so less trusted—'tis a judging world.
Man idles in the sun, and finds a heath
To cross at eventide: the beam that flung
Freshness and strength upon his brow now leaves
His step unpiloted; while naked Death
Comes like the shadow of the world abroad,
Blotting his features out. Thus is he born
That old Philosophy may smile; and dies
That worms may thrive, and the thin poet write
An unread epitaph. This, this is Life!