University of Virginia Library

YOUTH.

Youth is like a fairy wave,
Glittering in the morning light;
Where the storm-winds never rave—
Where the shore's for ever bright—
Flowers exhale their glad perfume,
O'er its calm, unruffled breast;
And the coral's fadeless bloom,
Wreaths its soft and moonlight rest:
Joy and freedom light its track,
Sun and song their beauty cast;
Never doth it once look back
On the green shore lessening fast:
For gayer songs and purer skies
Seem far away to have their birth;
And Hope points onward to the prize—
That prize so seldom found on earth!
Oh! Happiness is rarely won,
'Tis like the Moon now beaming o'er us,
Which still, however fast we run,
Is faster fleeting on before us!
The glad to-morrow of the mind,
That idol of the human heart;
Which myriads seek but never find,
Still lures the wave to isles apart!
Until the last sweet kindred flower
Sighs to the wandering wave farewell;
And like a dark and evil power,
Glooms on the billows' swell!
The tempest mutters deep and long,
Ere yet its bolts in thunder burst;
And Light and Beauty, Joy and Song,
Flee to the home where they were nurst!
No more a gay and rippling wave—
But in its wild, ambitious pride,
'Tis hurling proud ships to a grave
Within the channels wide!
Ruin and wreck bestride its path—
And with the foam of million steeds,
Before the billows in their wrath,
The “Ocean Conqueror” speeds!
Till dashing in its fierce career
Through caverns like a mighty tomb,
'Tis left—where ray ne'er wakes to cheer
Its miserable doom!
Its strength enfeebling day by day,—
Impell'd by some unknown decree;—
It wins its dark and rapid way,
And wastes into Eternity!