University of Virginia Library

These are the flowers of my poetic youth,
In their first fragrance; when a summer bloom
Bore fruitage for the Fancy and the Heart,
Which made each seeming, as each certainty,
A very jewel in the bosom of Life—
Made Life itself a measureless empery,
Where the glad hours, most happy in their waste,
Were but as rolling and sonorous wheels
To the triumphal chariot of a State,
Equal in pomps and freedoms; whose career—
A regal progress in its pageantry—
All flowers and song—processions of glad flight—
Had never the cares of grandeur in its march,
Nor set a watch and sentinel on Time!—
So many days for coursing o'er the heights—
So many nights for raptures in the shade—
All hours, at best employ, on sunny wings,
Ranging each day o'er new-discovered realms;
With regions for fresh enterprise so vast,
That, with the wing outspread, grew never a doubt
Of the new worlds for conquest!
Fancy brought
Aladdin's lamp and ring, which, with a touch,
Summoned a thousand slaves of the Orient,
To spread the banquet. At my whispered will,
On carpet of the Genii was I borne
Into the Caliph's gardens; where I lay
Listening the legends of Scheherezade;
While, mingling with the showers of falling spray,
From numerous fountains silvered by the moon,
I drank in love from the fond bulbul's notes,
Appealing to the rose!
With every dawn,
With new-wing'd vigor from delicious sleep,
I went forth to the hills a conqueror;
And won, by pathways inaccessible,
My entrance to the æron of the eagle;
A conqueror like himself, with wing and eye
Searching all provinces of deeps and air!

Nor less a conqueror, though at set of sun—
The fire of flight subdued to Lydian measures—
Down in the valley, with a dewy eye,
A tremulous speech, the tenderest voice of song,
I made obeisances, with folded wing,
In apprehensive homage at a shrine,
Where the sweet Priestess, as forgetful too,
Lost in her own felicities of conquest,
Grew won while winning.

It was thus I sang,
Fond as triumphant, in the glad caprice
Of ever alert emotions—pride and pleasure—
Even as the bird, with voices of the dawn,
Born of the beauty in unclouded skies,
And virgin forests; never with a doubt,
That fancy would find wings for each fresh flight;
Untroubled with prognostics of the thought,
Such as fling shadows o'er the disk of day,
And hush all birds to silence!
Mine were strains
That, with no purpose, found free overflow
From a confiding and a grateful heart,
That did not question sun, or skies, or time;
Never put Rapture on the rack of doubt;
And deem'd the apparent glory in the sight,
As true as were those fancies of the soul
That found all beautiful, and never fear'd
The fraud in Beauty!

But I must not now
Proclaim my disappointments. Not o'er these
Boy-tokens should I make complaint of griefs,
That made my flowers of manhood lose their hues,
Withering each leaf of fragrance. I would skip
The later sad experience of mine years;
And on the track of happier memories trace
The fiery progress of that flight in youth,
Which, flinging Time beneath his chariot wheels,
Sped unremorseful o'er his neck, nor feared
His terrible spectre, in that form of care,
That hath his being in our scorn of Time!

My record must be that of Youth alone,
Its happy satisfactions, and gay flights,
And generous raptures! There I shrine apart
The golden sun-bright memories of the dawn,
As one close locks the chamber of his youth,
Sacred to sweet communion with the past,
When Youth has gone forever; bearing with it
The joys which made it wingéd, and the hopes
That welcomed manhood ever to a feast;
Nor show'd him, as he quaff'd of gay delights,
The spectre of the Future at each chair!

Here should he dream, and in recovery,
Through memory, of the dear but lost possessions,
Forget the griefs that chide the present hour,
Nor feel the doubt that hangs upon his years—
The fraudulent in Fortune—and the loss
Of all that glad boy-promise which inform'd
Each sense with beauty, and made confident
Each thought in rapture.

It was thus I sang
Untutor'd, unattempting aught of pride,
In those blest days of boyhood, when the thought
Was twinn'd with Fancy, and the redolent Feeling
Ran over with delight. The impulsive soul,
Thus, in its very idlesse, found a voice,
Whose flight, capricious, wanton, as the breeze,
Sported along the ocean sands, while Night
With starry harmonies, of sphere to sphere,
Made echo to the profligate melodist,
And sang him back—as birds that in the grove
Make glad refrain to some gay chorister,
Who never once, as on he sings and soars,
Dreams of the sort of dawn that morning brings—
Nor idly sings, though ignorant of fate!

Thus did I sport and sing along the shores,
Thus spread my wing in heedless happy flight;
Unfearing the great deep, and, recklessly;
As any child, from the fond mother's arms,
Gone errant, and along the precipice,
Catching at purple blossoms o'er the steep.

Oh! censure not the song if immature,
Nor chide the thought, which, in our riper years,
Fades to a fancy! All heart-histories
Are records of illusions; not less precious,
Because they vanish with the growing day!

They had the happiest uses for the heart,
Even while they vanish'd; had their sweets to soothe,
Shed even while flying; temper'd rugged souls
So that they grew to tenderness; subdued,
To sacrifice of self, the vulgar self
With all its greed; and, though in flight they left
The sad, the dusk, in place of purple hours,
Yet left them sweetened with a dewy fondness,
That hallow'd what they left no longer bright.
So the gay thoughtless melodies which tell,
Of the boy-fancies, and the generous dawn—
How sweet the dream was, passing—shall beguile
Fresh fancies; and to other hearts that dream,
Commend themselves as true! They shall be true,
To such as love and dream, and have no purpose
Of the far-reaching policies that make
The head too wise for the heart's happiness—
The ambition too successful with the world,
To be at peace with Heaven.
They shall be echoes
To virgin fancies—voices that declare
For trembling hearts that dare not speak their troubles,
In very raptures dumb.
Oh! hearts shall follow—
Pure, young, fond hearts, that, by the sea-beat shore,
Or hanging o'er the perilous heights at eve,
Like happy children glad of their escape,
Shall find fit echoes to the errant music
That looses their own tongues, and shows the secret,
And where in harbors, in their own dumb hearts.