Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

'T was thus of yore the Minstrel sung,
When wo was rankling in his breast,
But oh! extatic beauty flung
A veil o'er grief, and he was blest;
For me no ray of pleasure gleams,
No seraph smiles, no hope appears,
Dark, dark, lone Sorrow haunts my dreams,
And Misery blasts my orient years.

Oh! he who sighs had once a heart,
That beat responsive unto glee,
But Fate—ah! no—Man sped the dart—
Hope withered in its revelry:—
Affection wrung—the heart's deep core
Rent—cankered by misfortune's bane,—
The aspic's venom in each pore—
Who would not quit this scene of pain?

Caressed, deserted, lauded, curst—
Met with a smile, and then a sneer—
From friendship comes the rapier thrust,
And blooming love and faith are sear;
And fiends have long beset my path
In cherub-robes, but demon hue.
But virtue scorns their vaunted wrath,
And worth appals their covert view.

Time was, when hope flew smiling by,
When waved Love's pinions on the breeze,
When tranquil breathed the bright blue sky,
And rustled green the laurel-trees:
In sooth, then rung my roundelay,
O'er mead, and pure waves hyaline,
My descant then was blithe, but nay—
The contrast wrings this heart of mine!

Grief cries, our life's a bitter boon;
Love is the nuncio of despair,
Youth smiles in beauty—but too soon
Vengeance awakes from misery's lair!
The long dark lashes of the lid
Secrete an eye, whose glance is flame,
Deep, deep, within corroding, hid,
A spirit burns, no power can tame.

O'er mirth's unruffled lineament
Grief fiercely drives her redhot share,
Each feature's now by smiles unbent,
And ebon-throned sits fell despair;
Oh once as blithe as mountain-roe,
Bright skies were childhood's canopy,
Now tainted is each breeze with wo,
And scorching is my panoply.

Around the halo of my prime
Misfortune winds her sable shroud,
And brambles throng the mount I climb,
And threat'ning lowers the sulph'rous cloud;

The thunderstorm of Fate hath broke,
And blasted fortune's shrivelled reed,
And I have quailed beneath the stroke—
Nemesis will avenge the deed.

Beneath the ornate vestment's glow,
Lurk thoughts no mortal ear can learn,
Dark dash the lava floods of wo,
Ah! fiery billows roll and burn;
The mimic smile, like osprey's wing,
Hides the deep death-wound of our fate,
The dying swan doth music fling,
On Nature's ear inanimate!

The pensive reverie cannot soothe
Demoniac agony's dire thrill,
Nor pleasure fill the void of youth,
That loves to tread the greenwood hill;
The leafless wilderness of soul,
Where e'en hath died the shrubbery,
Sighs not o'er nature's direst dole,
But gazes in stern apathy.

In Naxian bowers, in Daphne's grove,
Where fairy nymphs in wanton mood,
Perfume the pinions of blithe Love,
And beauty charm'd the solitude,
On her velvet roseous bed,
Ariadne smiling lay;
While phantom cherub-minstrels sped,
In blooming coronals of bay.

But ah! an asp, with venom sting,
Unheeded stole upon her breast—
And now Elysium's withering,
The flowery mansion of the blest.
And thus, beneath a cold world's frown,
The sympathetic soul expires,
Nor ocean-flood could whelming drown
The hopeless heart's corroding fires.

O I have known our life's extremes,
Elate with rapture, merged in wo—
Lured by fancy's fitful beams,
And scorch'd by passion's fiery glow.
And I—what boots it now to tell
The woes that madden manhood's brain?
No tongue will notes of pleasure swell,
No hand assuage my writhing pain.

Life is a mighty masquerade,
Conflicting scene of varied woes;
We enter on the promenade,
And toil awhile, and greet the close;
The phantom sprites that cross our way,
The gilded visions that beguile,
The glittering pageants light that play,
Allure us on—forsake—and smile.

O, that the desert were my home!
Cerulean skies would list the tale
Of bitter grief—and I should roam
No more, nor hear lone sorrow's wail;

Then man no more would desecrate
His heaven-born powers in calumny,
And I no more indulge a hate,
That's nurtured now by misery.

The magic landscape, woodland green,
Romantic grove, and blushing mead,
Where nature winds her mantling screen,
And rural minstrel tunes his reed,
The chequered shade, the sylvan bower,
The green wood's tinted drapery,
Would soothe the minstrel's vigil hour,
And shield him with their tapestry.

Beneath the bright blue sky's arcade,
From flowery arbour, oh! my gaze
Would hang upon the stream's cascade,
Gemmed by the sun's long-lingering rays;
And when the twilight melts away,
The pensive-pleasing queen of night
In beauty, through the milky way,
Impels the charioteer of light.

On every crannied cliff sublime,
On every roscid emerald spray,
Below, the rill's symphonious chime,
The feathered minstrels wake their lay;
The lark aloft in hymnic strain,
With carols hails the orient sun,
And Philomela's starry reign
Brings spirits down, by music won.

And o'er yon isles, where dwell the blest,
Hesperian groves of myrtle spread,
And Tempe's vales, once fondly prest
By her, beneath whose wanton tread
All Nature sprung to living bloom,
Wane in their pride, compar'd with fields
Where glory gilds the reckless tomb,
And death a heav'nly pathway yields.

Alas! the thrills of rapture thwart
Their own devotion—wane, expire—
The ray that sports around the heart,
Is but an ignis-fatuus fire;
The mists, that fled at Phosphor's glow,
And melted from the ruby heaven,
Condense in clouds of noon, that throw
Their sheeted flame athwart the even.

Sweet on the jocund ear of youth,
Aerial strains of music float,
But spurns the Æolian harp their truth,
And feeling strikes a different note;
We quit the arena of dire strife,
But flee in Tisiphone's pall;
We writhe—and wring—and curse the life
For ever twined with sorrow's thrall.

So Fancy cheats us of our wo,
Perchance an hour of bitter pain,
But ah! she sends a rush-light glow
O'er cells, where gloom and darkness reign;

The desert void of love and soul,
Man cannot fill—by tempests driven,
We hope and quake, court peace, and roll,—
Nor cease until we rest in heaven.