 | Later Lays and Lyrics |  |
NEW YEAR MUSINGS.
I.
How swiftly pass, on cloudy wing, the years,With all their joys and woes, their hopes and fears,
Bound to a dark, dead sea that knows no sail,
Nor billow foam-flecked by the ruffling gale;
The vast receptacle of empires dead,
Heroic shapes, and dreams of glory fled,
Within whose peaceful depths of silence lie
All that of mortal memory can die.
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II.
Come back, ye vanished hours! and bring againForms of the loved and lost, bewailed in vain;
Bring me lost May-time, with its rosy wreath,
And change to Fairy-land life's “blasted heath!”
Bring me the romance that so warmed of old,
Giving to common clay the gleam of gold.
Once more, once more, ye vanished hours, return!
For the sweet dreams of innocence I yearn.
Oh! let me feel the calm that once I felt
When, at my mother's knee, in prayer I knelt,
And, starred with hope, my fair, unclouded brow
Told no sad tale of lines that seam it now;
When my brave brother, who untimely died,
Stood in his rosy beauty by my side;
Forget, a few brief moments, that my life
Must pass away in storm and doubtful strife—
That nought is certain underneath the skies
Save useless tears, and tombs, and broken ties:
And feel those throbbings of tumultuous joy
That swelled my bosom when a shouting boy;
The burning glow that flushed my cheek to read
Of martyr, patriot and chivalric deed,
And catch one ray of the strange light that made
Earth in Elysian loveliness arrayed.
III.
I call—but no responsive echo wakes;Through the black cloud no beam of beauty breaks;
Gone are emotions that my soul up-bore,
Tossed on the sea, or standing on the shore:
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One grain of vanished time, that man awhile
May warm his frozen veins in childhood's smile.
Youth! a frail, tender violet of the Spring,
Lies in his misty tomb, a withered thing;
And though our bosoms ache, our tear-drops flow,
We cannot wrest one flower from Long-Ago.
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