University of Virginia Library

How deep a sanctity this grave-ground wears,
Oh! what an over-burthening weight of years
Rests on this solemn soil; oh! what a weight
Of human interest and of human fate!—
Trembling, my foot this drear enclosure nears,
Yet start no warm, no quick, no natural tears,
From my sad rivetted eyes—too dull and cold,
Is all I here confront—I here behold;
I feel I cannot weep—cold, cold, and dim,
The cup of death here filled up to the brim,
The dark and rugged cup of death appears,
And all too distant, yet too deep for tears;
And shadowed, fixed, and frozen o'er by time,
To something more mysteriously sublime,
Something the mind can scarcely comprehend;
Formless, vague, dim, abstracted—without end,
Without beginning—something which the thought
Recoils from, shuddering!—Death, thou seem'st thus fraught
With terrors not thine own—a deeper shade
Upon thy sombre semblance here is laid,
With more of drear obscurity endowed,
Thou lowerest round—a cloud-encinctured cloud,
New attributes of awe invest thee here,
I gaze, I tremble, but I shed no tear!
Death, Death! and can thy form of shadowy gloom,
By Time's petrific sceptre touched, become
More dim and icelike than before? Ah, why?
Is Time not thy sworn friend, thine old ally,
Thy zealous minister and faithful mate,
The sure abettor still of thee and Fate.
Time, who with thee still hand in hand hath gone,
Making all bow before thy cloud-black throne;
And if thy sharp stroke thou hast awhile forborne,
And left bright hopes uncrushed, dear ties untorn,—
And left awhile upon its stalk the rose,
To blush and smile in its most sweet repose,
Or the proud pine on its commanding height—
Unhurt by buffeting storm or withering blight,
Aye, if some favoured few thou hast thus passed o'er,
And left to enjoy their happiness' bright store,
Themselves unstricken by thy mortal dart,
Nor wounded through some dearer kindred heart;
He, blind as Justice' self, rough, rude, and hoar,
Plucks them from their vain tenure evermore,
And sweeps them one by one to thine embrace,
Their doom fulfilled, and closed their lengthened race.
The obsequious servant—and the officious friend—
Who biddeth all before thee cower and bend!
Still over thee a shadow he hath thrown,
Deeper, and yet more dismal than thine own!
Yea! over thee a shadow he hath flung,
Darker than all that erewhile round thee hung,
Until the surcharged spirit inly saith,
“This is the very ghost of ghostly Death!
The phantom's dreamy phantasm!” yet not less
But more, doth it dispirit and oppress.
Still, still 'tis strange, that Time should darkly spread
Round thee a dreariment more stern and dread,
Round thee, who in a moment changeth all
Beneath thy withering touch and ruinous thrall,
Who in one moment doth assert thy power,
That hideous victory in one fleeting hour—
At once that conquest doth resistless gain,
Which thou shalt ever unopposed maintain.
Aye, and its ghastlier after-revel too,
Dost thou with stern and savage zeal pursue,
Ere oft, with smooth and measured movements true,
Those hours have sped through their accustomed bounds,
Those hours have run their oft-repeated rounds,
Their courses never changed of day and night,
Sustaining ever their harmonious flight!
How seizest thou at once on thy marked prey,
Converting them to worthless dust and clay,
While the whole spirit is then at once expelled,
And the whole frame in leaden durance held;
Thus the dread change is direfully complete,
And low thy victim crouches at thy feet.
'Tis done! the work of terror and dismay
Look on the brow of one dead yesterday.
'Tis done! the work of horror and of woe,
Nor can the tyrant's self that work undo,
Nor can the tyrant's self that chain unwind
With which each pulse he could so strictly bind.
Look on the brow of one dead yesterday,
How full, how sweeping is the conqueror's sway;
How wide, how perfect is the drear divorce,
Clay! to thy clod! free spirit! to thy source.
A thousand barriers seem at once to rise,
(Where e'er we turn our foiled and baffled eyes)
Betwixt the quick and dead!—yea, dread and deep,
Rise those huge barriers between those that sleep,
And those that still must watch, and still must wake,
And toil and travail, and brief respite take,
Save when a slumber, not so deep nor sweet,
After the day's harsh tumult and fierce heat,
Comes to refresh their taxed and failing powers,
To enable them to bear the weight of hours,
The weight of feverish human hours again,
With all their tedium, and with all their pain.
Oh! stern and strong those frowning barriers are,
And none may lift the intermediate bar,
And none the intervenient pit may leap,
While life is theirs—that gloomy pit, and deep,
Which yawns, the living and the dead betwixt;
Howe'er before their very souls were mixed
In love or sympathy, or interest keen,
As though nought, nought could e'er be forced between!
'Tis done!—and they are sundered wide and far,
Dead! to your rest! ye living! to the war!
For what, indeed, is vexed and troublous life
But one long conflict—one protracted strife?

Look on the face of one dead yesterday,
Alas! of sense, of consciousness no ray
Doth there remain, that blank so dull and drear,
To fill, or even to make less harsh appear,
Far, far beyond our searching glance and thought,
Hath flown the spirit, then all vainly sought,
And what we look on, is, and can be, nought.
Yea, far that spirit is removed from earth,
As though it ne'er had known a mortal birth.
No ages can increase the vast gulph spread,
Between the soul to its new mansions sped,
And this low little world where once it dwelt,
And hoped, and dreamt, and knew, and proved, and felt.
No centuries can that yawning chasm extend,
Nor stretch the abyss that hath nor bounds nor end;
No chances and no change that may betide
Can make that separation yawn more wide;
No! when the soul hath gained its long release,
No time that dread partition can increase,
Nor e'er estrange the exiled being more,
From earth's forsaken and forgotten shore,
Than he is utterly and all estranged,
Soon as for Death's dim realm this earth's exchanged;
Nor shall a heavier interdict e'er sound,
To bar from all communion with this ground—
This mortal ground, of old so freely trod,
Ere the changed frame was laid beneath the sod,
Than was pronounced, when first the soul took flight,
What time the armed spectre sternly stooped to smite,
What time were closed the dimmed and clouded eyes,
'Gainst all fair Nature owns, and Heaven supplies;
Nor can the spirit be more lost to us
Than 'twas immeasurably then and thus.
Never may it more utterly be lost
Than 'twas when first the fatal bridge it crossed,
Lost unto us, to time, and to the world;
Even in a brief and breathless moment hurled
From all that it had ever loved or known,
To be the Great Eternity's alone!
The soil, heaped crumbling for a thousand years,
Above the mournful freight earth's bosom bears,
In stern selected spots of funeral gloom,
Drear, sombre, solemn privacies of the tomb,
Can ne'er a veil more frowning interpose
'Twixt us who breathe this free, fresh air, and those
Who are laid beneath in their deep dreamless rest,
(Like sleeping children cradled in her breast),
Than doth the fresh-strewn mould just press'd upon
Some all forgetful and unconscious one,
Whose earthly race is newly closed and done;
Where, brown and bare, the kindred earth appears,
Nor aught of borrowed beauty smiling wears;
By shadowing grass and wild flowers unadorned,
Blank as the clay the winged soul hath scorn'd,
The clay that mingleth a few feet below,
With those dull clods, in union chill and slow.
No, no—that loosely-heaped and fresh-strewn mould,
Doth all as close and rigidly enfold
The imprison'd sleeper in its darksome bed,
Left to the eternal silence of the dead,
As doth the o'ergrown soil for ages laid
Above the reliques that have there decayed;
As sternly doth it round its captive throw
A funeral mystery none may pierce below,
And yet—yet—while we walk 'mongst recent tombs,
A more familiar guise the grave assumes;
Death's awful presence there we recognize,
Nor shudderingly avert our conscious eyes,
Nor turn with faint and faultering step aside,
As though a mournful voice within us cried,
“Invade not the pale realms so long consigned
To the stern conqueror of all humankind!”
'Tis different all!—that consecrated ground
Where swells full many a lately fashioned mound,
Scarce seems all his dominion!—he must share
His reign with other Powers and Rulers there.
The Angel and Genius of bright life appears
To hover round that place of unstaunched tears;
And by that dread companion, yet unscared,
To keep o'er every grave a watchful guard;
And thus thy form, thou stern and terrible Death,
Seems almost shrouded and concealed beneath
A thousand linked associations sweet,
And freshly-twined remembrances, that cheat
The hard reality of half its gloom,
And throw a living beauty round the tomb!
The spot calls forth a thousand tender dreams,
Illusions soft, and visions blest, whose gleams
O'er all around a smiling lustre cast,
And mediate 'twixt the present and the past.
Of its most dreary shades the scene's deprived;
Amidst the dead we feel—but that they lived;
We picture to ourselves what once they were,
How strong, how brave, how noble, or how fair;
How full of human feelings, human hopes,
Though now assembled in such passive groupes;
And how alive to all that passed around,
Though now in apathy so frozen bound.
Their names—sweet sounds!—familiar to our ears,
Which, haply, old aoquaintanceship endears—
Their names in characters all uneffaced,
On their smooth tombstones are distinctly traced;
Their children move with soft steps round their graves,
And many a tear the mournful hillock laves;
The sheltering tree that late waved o'er their heads,
Still to the breeze its mighty foliage spreads;
The bower they fondly trimmed with careful hands,
Still in its frail fantastic beauty stands;
The hawthorn-sweetened way they ofttimes trod,
Still breathes its rustic incense far abroad;
Almost their very footsteps we might find,
While they are gone, like clouds seized by the wind,
And carried wildly, utterly away—
Whither no heart can dream, nor tongue can say.
Yet something doth it soothe the pensive soul
To pore o'er Memory's deeply-written scroll,
To dwell upon the thoughts of what hath been,
And from the past's tried, trodden field to glean
Pale scattered treasures, which faint-glistening seem,
Like aëry fragments of some broken dream—
Still, scarcely so; for, while we muse, we feel
It is the Truth that thus doth softening steal
Along the chastened and uplifted mind,
By tender feeling hallowed and refined;
And ever as we lingering brood and muse,
That Truth arrays itself in deepening hues;
That which hath been distinctly reappears,
Delivered from the yoke of breathless years.
Oh, Time! how dealest thou with all mortal things,
Shaking them off like dewdrops from thy wings,
Scoffer and fearful spoiler that thou art!—
And yet we open spread the burning heart
Unto thy ruthless stroke, and rashly load
Those wings with our soul's treasures, that o'erflowed
As they would flood the Eternity—to be
Ruined, undone, and overborne by thee!
But then our souls revenge themselves, and cast
Their own sweet light upon the o'ershadowed past;
And Memory, with her magic, magic wand,
Strikes down the blunted scythe from thy foiled hand.
We feed on recollections, until nought
But what is past seems present to our thought;
The tomb's pale prisoners burst their leaden bands;
For them afresh flow the hour's exhausted sands;
They are, once more—still growing on our souls,
We feel the cloud of death its gloom unrolls,
And the wan forms it veiled from our vain gaze,
On every side slow-opening, it displays.
These haunt us in full many a startling guise,
Passing—repassing—oft before our eyes;
These haunt us still where'er we turn and tread,
The strong—the mighty—yea, the immortal dead!
We feel their being so within—without,
'Tis but of their unbeing we can doubt!
We see the gorgeous universe they saw,
Fulfilling still each bright eternal law;
Still in perfection's radiant robe arrayed,
Unwithered, undespoiled, and undecayed,
The universe of which they formed a part.
And doth not something whisper at the heart
They are not, and they cannot be destroyed,
Since thus they leave no shadow, cause no void?
How perfect, how complete seems all around,
And are they vanished to be no more found?
Yet not one ray the less, one cloud the more,
To mourn that they are exiles from life's shore;
That they are silent prisoners of the past,
Fallen on annihilation's void at last;
They, whose quick thoughts were Form, Light, Life, Time, Space,
Since each they could reflect, and all embrace;—
Whose thoughts out-lightened the winged lightnings sent
In fierce resplendence from the firmament;
Transpierced dense matter, marked creation's laws,
And traced back that Creation to its Cause!

And can the Life, the Thought, the Breath, the Heart,
Unmissed, unmourned, thus ignobly depart?
Dream it not—fear it not! it cannot be,
'Twere, oh! too terrible a mystery.
Look in the face of yon transcendant sun;
Age after age his proud race he hath run
In undiminished strength and light, and seen
Myriads borne down to dust, himself serene
As when he first commenced his bright career,
The lord of light and life, the central sphere,
The chief of worlds, the monarch of the year!
Look on the empurpled heavens, the irradiate earth,
All beauteous as at their first splendid birth,
And think ye such a glory can have past
Still Life by Life, away from these, nor cast
A sad and sombre tint o'er all around?
That sun, that sky, the sea, the air, the ground—
A heavy cloud of change o'er these—o'er all
A something like the spreading of a pall,
By slow but sure degrees—no pause between—
O'er the whole boundless, Universal Scene,
While victory after victory swept to exalt
That conqueror's march who never knows to halt!
Aye! if the bonds were rent for evermore,
That linked her children to her breast before,
Would no fond pang be felt at nature's core?
No mournful faintness overspread her face,
And shadow o'er her glory and her grace?
If 'twere for ever they were snatched away,
Would not victorious Death, and strong Decay
Their cloudy banners haughtily display,
And with imperious exultation wave,
O'er this chill world—one death-bed and one grave?
Yea! their dark banners gloryingly unfold,
And tell the suns and stars that they were old;
And bid them shake before those boding tones
Even on the pillared firmness of their thrones,—
Still, step by step, advancing—hour by hour—
From strength to strength—from sovereign power to power—
Would not those dread and giant Terrors sweep
All, all before them to destruction's deep?

What! shall the Sense, the Feeling, and the Will
Be the chief spoil—the chosen victim still?
The wond'rous faculties of the ardent mind,
Free as the light, and strong as the unchained wind,
Be at one stroke extinguished and suppressed,
And all the quick thoughts which that mind confessed—
One moment all seemed theirs—say, dispossessed,
Even of the clay that clothed them, are they hurled
For ever from a proud surviving world?
For ever are they crushed and trampled down,
No place, no power, no will, no way their own?
Fear it not—dream it not, it may not be;
'Tis Reason's grand impossibility!
Learn nobler things of earth, and sky, and air,
Read brighter, purer, prouder meanings there.
Doth not that sky, that air, that eloquent earth,
Startle the soul to thoughts of loftier birth?
Doth not their fair, harmonious show dispense
A happier and a holier confidence?
Surely, in their perfection's strength, they know
That it may not be—that it is not so!
They know that 'tis not so, while we, hedged round
With sorrow and with sin, and strictly bound
By chains, which earth's lost habitants have rent
With doubts, and fears, and hopes together blent,
Too oft go trembling on our clouded way,
And close our eyes on the uncreated day:
The light that all creation's frame pervades—
The light that never sets—that never fades—
Shall that not pierce dim human nature's shades?
Surely they know it is not so! and own,
Even like a living mantle round them thrown,
A Presence—and a Passion—and a Power!
Since, gorgeous universe! the all regal dower,
Say, art thou not of those crowned spirits freed,
That snatch at last the palm—the wreath—the meed—
That burst at last from their restraining bars,
To o'erflow with added light the immortal stars;
With added fire and light the imperious sun
Glorying his lone, proud, central throne upon;
And to suffuse the ether and the air
With subtlest powers, pure, exquisite, and rare;
To impregnate the elements, and all that is
With their own essence—trebly blessed through this!
Thus they rejoin Creation's mighty whole—
The Pulse of nature, and of space the Soul!
A Motion—and a Feeling—and a Will—
And shall not many a quick, responsive thrill,
Deep quivering through that tranced creation go;
Oh! who shall rashly say it is not so?
Shall not an instinct of rich consciousness
The universal system kindling bless?
Shall not a glorious sympathy intense—
A strong vibration—an electric sense—
An answering impulse—an accordant glow—
A deep, reciprocating feeling's flow
Be felt through all the Almighty Maker's works,
Where many a hidden power unrecked-of lurks?
And most, where most at their mysterious springs
Quicken the eternal energies of things?
There most that consciousness shall pierce, inform,
There most inspire, control, illume, and warm,
Till all shall wake, glow, breathe, and live, and move,
In one existence of unbounded love!
One mighty and transcendant unity,
That shall eternal as consummate be;
One wond'rous harmony, that still shall spread.—
Oh! what are they whom we miscall the dead?

Who that hath lost a tried and trusted friend,
With whose deep soul his own rejoiced to blend
In free communion, hallowed and refined,
Spirit with spirit linked, and mind with mind;
Who that remembers the intercourse of hearts,
The soul's sublime escapes and thrilling starts,
As to the electric touch of some charmed wand
Waved by a mighty, though a viewless, hand;
When some chance word, some accidental tone,
Pierced through its depths and bade it, kindling, own
A thousand splendid sympathies august,
That nought in common have with earth and dust;
And to strong, eloquent life its silence woke,
As by the quick shock of a lightning-stroke!
The spirit's wild upspringings and keen flights,
And pinings for its liberties and rights;
The yearnings for a life more proud and free,
The hungerings after immortality,
Which, in so many and such various ways,
Man's restless nature evermore displays.
Who, that remembers this, can turn away
From strong conviction, open as the day?
Oh! who, remembering thus, in friendship's hours
Of confidential breathings (when to ours
Another's heart was clearly open laid,
With all its wond'rous change of light and shade),
How strong the impassioned aspirations were
For a more cloudless sky, a purer air;
How keen the questionings after secret things;
How great the impulse to spread forth its wings,
And bid the liberated spirit soar
To those empyreal heights ne'er scaled before!
How deep the love in the aching bosom set,
For those far realms, unreached, unviewed, as yet,
Can for one moment hesitate to own,
That truth so glorious, so distinctly shown.
Or who that recollects the living look,
(With all the immixed expressions which it took,)
Of one once bound to him by slighter ties,
Yet dear and hallowed in his softened eyes;
Of one o'er whom the dense veil now is cast,
For whom all things of earth are sealed and past;
Of one now banished from the light and air,
And darkly pent, and coldly prisoned there!
Who that remembers, too, that voice that seemed
The soul's best vehicle, the voice that teemed
With ever-varying modulations still,
Whether the speaker's soul was moved by ill
Or cheered by good—the voice of one now dumb,
Now speechless, 'mid the loud incessant hum;
(The unpausing din that echoeth not the less
Because they are fallen on silent nothingness;)
The thousand bright outbreakings of the soul,
That undesignedly bared to us the whole,
With its deep secrets and mysterious springs,
Its strange anomalies and wond'rous things,
Its gorgeous treasuries and exhaustless mines,
And shadowed sanctuaries, and dim-veiled shrines
(Yet, no!—not so!—of that deep human soul
No living eye hath yet embraced the whole;
Nor even can friendship's hand that veil upraise,
Which guards the inner being from the gaze;
That mighty veil o'er each existence thrown,
Each, each its own deep world—apart—alone.
Still those outbreakings, those unmaskings, told
Full many a thought and feeling—fold in fold,
That lay before religiously concealed,
As though on earth they might not be revealed.)
Who, that remembers these, can fail to feel,
Though worldly, vain pursuits may stain or steel,
Though worldly prejudice may bar and blind,
Or worldly sin with cramping chains may bind,
That the deep soul that there in might o'erflowed,
That there in all its native vigour glowed,
Can never alter and can never die?
The child and heir of all eternity!

Nay! who that looks back on his own past years,
While slow the shadowy prospect spreads and clears,
While Memory's soft pathetic light is cast
O'er the pale scenery of the buried past;
Who, that remembers the endless thoughts and dreams
That have illumed his spirit with their gleams,
The strange, mysterious, deep impressions there,
From time to time, stamped strongly, full, and fair;
That spirit's bright expectancies and hopes,
Its vigorous zeal that with Fate's harshness copes;
Its heavenly foretastes of a suture state,
Which it springs forward to anticipate;
Its fervent yearnings for its own far home,
Which, ever and anon, will startling come,
Strange as the fairy melodies that dwell
In the echoing windings of the ocean shell,
So spiritually delicate and clear,
We almost seem to feel them, more than hear.
Yet, oh! how deeply do they, murmuring, tell
Those magic sounds in the ocean's haunted shell,
Sweet tidings of their far off place of birth—
That surgy moan—no! 'tis not of the earth;
And still they breathe their long eternal sigh,
Sad as a breaking harp-string's plaintive cry!
Even so those promptings and those prophet tones
Which the pierced bosom tremulously owns,
Seem in one farthest heart of hearts enshrined,
Of our blest native regions to remind.
Who, that remembers these, can thrust aside
That heavenly hope, with all that's bright allied—
Can for one instant deign or dare to doubt,
That truth impressed within, inscribed without,
Inscribed in radiant characters sublime,
O'er all the shadowy things of earth and time,
In fulgent characters of living light,
More clearly traced than stars on blackest night.

Thou ancient, stern, and solemn burial-place,
Where sleep in peace a long-forgotten race,
Like waves that ran their bright, brief course of yore,
And broke and melted on the lonely shore.
Like leaves that the autumns of the pale Past shed
Upon their silent and discoloured bed;
Like clouds that long since from Heaven's marbled face
Have passed away, to leave no shadowy trace;
Like sparks trod out on hearths of other days,
Where now no light, no quick flame flickering plays;
Thou stern and solemn burial place of old,
Where rest in their securest, firmest hold,
The silent, shrouded dead, of ages dead!
Like them with mantling shadows overspread—
Like them for ever lost, for ever fled!
Thou canst no sweet, consoling visions bring
To bid bright Hope from faint Dejection spring.
No! when a friend's dear head is low-laid near,
Love, mighty love, is strong to banish fear.
In thought we follow to a happier sphere—
In thought we then in distant regions meet,
And track the soul to its august retreat;
We feel the light we saw in that loved eye
Was not created to decay—or die;
Nay! even if those, stretched near in their cold trance,
Had crossed our paths from time to time, perchance;
From time to time, as through life's walks we ranged,
With us had greetings and kind words exchanged;
Their well-remembered aspects rise once more
Our thoughtful-lingering, faint-drooped eyes before!
And can we call to mind each buried face,
Without remembering that deep eloquent trace
Which the immaterial and the undying part
Stamped on the features, as the skill of art
Stamps on the unmeaning canvas glorious forms,
Until it breathes, wakes, smiles, speaks, glows, and warms!
The soul's own sun-like image there forget?
Or not forgetting, deem it e'er could set?
No, surely no; the homeliest features wear
An impress of the spirit glowing there;
The living rays are brightly streaming seen
To light the least inspired, least thoughtful mien,—
And o'er the unloveliest lineaments to throw
A something that naught else can match below;
Aye! something is stamped there which claims at once
From kindred conscious natures deep response;
Something is there the eagle's eye must lack,
Though it hath flashed in glorious daring back
The sun's fierce, sultry lustre, when at noon
He seemed as he would fire Heaven's red depths soon,
Superbly scattering forth in kingly pride
His royal treasures, free, and full, and wide;
Something the lion's lordly front ne'er bore,
Though armed with awful terrors evermore;
Though the wild creatures of the forest fly
Before the tyrannous threatenings of his eye—
Though not the boldest of them dare to brook
The glorious savage's life-withering look;
Something with still, small voice, that startling saith,
“I am—and I am ne'er to stoop to death.”
The mighty ray of immortality
Gleams proudly forth from the least lustrous eye!
While some, oh! some rare aspects brightly shine
With angel-graces radiant and divine,
And the everlastingness of the unseen soul
Seems stamped thereon, as on a glowing scroll,
Where every look—the least and lightest glance—
The very stillness of the countenance
Bear a triumphant meaning, clear and deep,
From whence we may the august assurance reap!
That countenance illumined from within,
Seems but a light, transparent veil, and thin,
Between us and the immortal soul that lies
Deep in its shrine, one world of mysteries—
Deep in its living shrine, yet softly shown,
And by no light, no lustre but its own,
Unto the kindred mind even thus made known.
Aye! some transcendant countenances seem,
While with expression's radiant prints they teem,
All music, inspiration, light, and fire,
And like the fuming of an incense-pyre,
Scattering its subtle treasures far and wide,
Its delicate luxuries free on every side;
These seem to exhale a glorious effluence
Of pure and exquisite intelligence;
Celestial emanations quickening flow
From the lit eye, wreathed lip, and flashing brow;
While glows the cheek with many a varying hue,
As though you saw how the eloquent soul wrought through;
As though the quick thoughts ever as they past
Across the aspect, keen and kindling cast
Their burning shadows there, full, free, and fast!
As though from those flushed shadows still more bright,
And all transpierced with the inward-streaming light,
The living tablet of the human face,
Stamped with full many a clear and radiant trace,
Was as some lighted vase, through which we see
The flame's winged motions wavering swift and free;
Some alabaster vase of delicate mould,
Designed the glittering, quivering lamp to hold;
The lamp whose every flash there sostened plays,
No crest of wild-wreathed spires and scattered rays,
That break in many a luminous streak, and part,—
And with a meteor-brilliance wildering dart,
And stream,—and shoot,—and shift—an hundred ways,
But one smooth, undulating, mellowed blaze.
Thus, thus the etherial and effulgent mind
Within its living casket deep enshrined,
Shines clear unto the rapt beholder's view,
The lighted features brightly-kindling through,
Still to its strong, triumphant influence true;
The many-coloured thoughts that quickening dart
Along the mind, we may not mark apart;
Not as within the ever-coining brain,
In bright succession and luxuriant train,
They take their glowing and their winged way,
And in a thousand strange, wild flickerings play;
But as they are gathered, mingled, massed, combined,
In one fine finished harmony of mind—
One glorious unity, so perfect seems
That delicate confluence of those countless beams,
Which through the impressive aspect startling streams;
While breathes, and breaks, and brightens thro' the whole
A hue—a light—a motion of the soul!

But these that now around me silent dwell,
The clayey captives of the clayey cell—
But these, their eyes ne'er answered back our own,
Our ears ne'er drank their accent's varying tone;
We never marked the soul's own glorious trace,
In bright suffusions trembling o'er their face.
We never saw the immortal meanings rise,
Fraught with rich confirmation in their eyes!
These are the strangers of a severed age,
Their history is for us a close-sealed page;
Their children's children are like them inurned,
Like them have to the embodying dust returned!
Haply with age weighed down into the grave,
Whose peaceful shelter they were fain to crave;
Our fathers' fathers looked not on their face,
For them they were a past forgotten race!
For them they were a people of the tomb,
Nor knew they of them but their common doom.
Our children's children in the times to come,
Shall not be more estranged than we are now,
From these long swept, like dew-drops, from the bough.

Therefore my mind, from sympathy withdrawn,
Contemplates this deep scene, till slowly dawn
Clearer reflections on its struggling sense,
And springs a happier, tenderer mood from thence.
And gradually unfolding, come again
Familiar images to heart and brain,
(Though by that heart and brain shaped, moulded, coined!)
With human sensibilities conjoined,
And influences more gracious and more kind,
With soft controul prevail o'er my soothed mind.
Unto my quickened sense and deepened sight
The estranged from earth rise imaged forth aright;
Reason resumes her reign—I feel, I know,
These bore their measured share of bliss and woe,
The curious, complex, countless links and ties,
With deep emotions then I recognize,
Which bind, while ages their stern task fulfil,
To generation—generation still!
These deep traits too which time can ne'er efface,
Which reconcile the past and present race!

Ah! me! how lost to every feeling now,
That stamps humanity's ingenuous brow,
That thrills humanity's capacious heart,
That bids young smiles to shine, quick tears to start,
Are these cold slumberers, laid our feet beneath,
In all the still unconsciousness of death;
Though once, ere smitten by fate's envious blow,
Once, ere consigned to hungering worms below;
Though once, ere exiled to death's cheerless clime,
The paths, the various paths of good and crime,
They surely followed, and though once within
Their breasts glowed quick emotions, we can win
But little from these monuments to expose,
But little from these carved tombs to disclose,
Their deeds, their dooms, their aims, their joys, and woes!
And what but these dumb monuments remain,
To say they breathed, who ne'er must breathe again;
What but these tombs, these sepulchres are found,
To speak of them in earthy durance bound;
And of their death most, most, these speak and tell,
Most on that fearful consummation dwell!
And there 'tis made the chief, great, one event,
O'er all besides, how sternly prominent!
Thou mightiest Death! thou here remainest alone,
Conspicuous, on thine isolated throne!
Robed in the lengthened shadows of thy reign,
Attended but by thine own spectral train;
Girt proudly round with all thy state, that suits
Thy sombre emblems, and stern attributes.
Thou dwell'st here a palmed victor 'midst thy spoils,
While from thy contact the chill'd heart recoils;
Thou makest thyself a tyrant monarch here,
And rulest through prostrate awe and palsied fear;
Thou pullest down the pride of glorying life,
With its vain triumphs and tempestuous strife,
And makest it own itself a fleeting breath,
Before thy conquering might, thou mastering Death!
Thou seizest on its proud and daring hope,
And bidd'st it sickening wane and withering droop,
In harsh reprisals for the fiery scorn,
With which it joyed to paint thee still as shorn
Of each redeeming attribute of good,
Traduced, avoided, and misunderstood!
With which it sought thy memory still to erase
From each blessed haunt, each loved abiding place,
And still to wipe away thine every trace,
And to despoil thee of thy rightful share,
In all that chains men's thoughts, and claims men's care;
In harsh reprisals for the old disrespect,
The indignities, dishonour, and neglect,
To which thou'rt here exposed for evermore,
Where haughty life thus triumphs, passing o'er
Thy triumphs stern, oft spread her eyes before!

These long-bound tenants of the tomb, sleep well,
Earth's noisy strife ne'er shakes them in their cell;
And, oh! how long their slumber hath endured,
How long have they thus strictly been immured;
The race of beings that they left behind,
Are gone, like whirling dust upon the wind;
The hands that laid their reliques in this spot,
Long since their strength and cunning have forgot;
The tears that mourned them long since have been dried,
And those that wailed their deaths themselves have died,
Mourner and mourned here slumber side by side.

Lo! of their hues of life all disarrayed,
The beautiful, the valourous here are laid
Beneath our feet, their beauty is effaced,
Their valour tamed and crushed, and all that graced
Or glorified their past existence, seems
Gone, like that froth of nothingness—our dreams;
So far removed from our regards are they,
So far removed, so darkly rapt away,
That scarce can we our doubting minds persuade,
That once in mortal lineaments arrayed,
They moved along—no shadows of a shade,
No bodiless dreams—no imaged things ideal,
But living glowing forms, substantial, real;
No visionary phantoms, thin as air,
That momently appeared, then melted there;
But beings full of energies and hope,
Strong, strong with all, save one brief pang to cope!
And unto us while thus we muse and gaze,
And vainly strive oblivion's pall to raise,
Even of another different world unknown,
Appear to have been those parted ones and flown;
Yea, of some different world to ours, they seem
To have been the denizens, we scarce can deem
They once were, as ourselves—most futile dream!
It is not so! all that we are, they were,
The Votaries of the self-same hope and care,
The Followers of the same unwise pursuits,
From whence they reaped like rough and bitter fruits.
The Apostles of the same unheavenly creeds,
(For they, like us, leant still on faithless reeds),
That by example, practice, works, and deeds,
Too, too persuasive preaching, to their way
Haply won heedless converts, drawn astray—
The Adorers of the same vain idols too;
For what beneath the unvarying sun is new?
The Pilgrims of the same dull beaten road,
Bent, fainting bent, beneath the same harsh load;
That our bruised shoulders long o'er burthened bear
The crushing load of sufferings and of care!
The tired Performers on the same cramped stage,
The sad Possessors, too, from youth to age,
Still of the same dark dangerous heritage.
The struggling Prisoners of the same vile clay,
Pressed down to earth, as we are pressed to-day,
Subject to all the evils, trials, pains,
Which fetter us in close and galling chains;
The tasked Probationers, through wrong and strife,
Even of the same proud everlasting life!
And would we look on them indeed, and know
The secrets of their sojourn here below,
The counsels of their breasts, we must begin,
By gazing unreservedly within—
By lifting from our souls the covering veil,
And not disguising what is false and frail;
What wild and wayward in ourselves concealed,
Then much that was suppressed, shall be revealed;
Then shall we firmlier grasp, and clearer guess,
Far less confusing, and mistaking less,
Those truths that seemed before our search to evade,
Lost in a labyrinth of cloud and shade.
No florid flatteries carved on sculptured stone,
No heart-felt tributes, in affection's tone
Couched fondly, on the monumental urn,
That might even touch the cold and melt the stern;
No close details, no wrought descriptions long,
Where mingleth false with real, and right with wrong;
No pompous titles, spread in haughty style,
Graved on the funeral slab, the trophy pile;
No ostentatious blazonries embossed
On deep-dyed banners that had once been tossed,
By stormy winds, on battle's stirring plain,
Then mouldering hung o'er mouldering bones in vain,
With dust and cobwebs on each trailing fold,
With clouded broideries thick, and tarnished gold,
Can so discover, so betray, and show
The mysteries of their pilgrimage below,
As our own opened, probed, stripped, sounded breasts,
Where all life's feelings are by turns the guests,
As our own naked and dissected hearts
Their mirrors, shadows, nay, their counterparts;
For almost thus do they become at last,
When through life's various trials they have past.
Tinged to one colour, to one level brought,
Tuned to one key, and to one texture wrought;
Ruled by one law, and by one influence swayed,
And in one mould impressed, one balance weighed!
Oh! uniform our various natures grow,
Through life's too equalizing care and woe;

Aye, even in differing we resemble still,
As leaves that on the verdurous branches thrill;
Whose very veins and lines, that may to the eye
Of keen research, prove strange diversity,
Unto the common gaze but make appear
Their strong similitude more close and clear,
Their strict conformity more nice and near.

Their Counterparts, their Histories, too, are there,
Just chronicle, and copy, close and fair.
Lo! to have loved, lost, struggled, failed, and drooped,
Rallied, resisted, dreamed, dared, trusted, hoped;
To have essayed, and laboured, and endured;
To have been crossed, discouraged, reassured,
Chastened and tried, and shaken and subdued;
By hope misguided, by regrets pursued.
Is't not the Universal History, say,
The rapid summary of life's little day—
The general record of the sons of clay?
Their History is, indeed, in our own hearts,
That ape their passions, and that act their parts;
Chapter for chapter oft alike are found,
Column for column, as the web's unwound—
Character even for character might there
Be ofttimes traced, if marked with watchful care.
And, blazoned on the same dark treacherous ground,
Deep—shadowy—clouded—stretching without bound—
That ground of passions, feelings, frailties, dreams,
Where gleam out fond designs and cherished schemes,
(That still are meant unfailingly to lead
To radiant happiness, the all-worshipped meed),
That oft, too oft, in blank confusion end.
While dark Reality doth scowling rend
The veil from Fancy, and the wreath from Hope,
To bid the strong mind quail, the quick heart droop;
While Disappointment's harsh and angry train
Comes to distract the thought and cloud the brain;
Sharp discontents, regrets, and gnawing cares,
And sick despondencies and stern despairs,
And all varieties of chill disgusts—
For this the vain head plots, the fond heart trusts;
For this our restless spirits we consume,
And banish from our cheeks youth's healthful bloom.
Still looking forward, forward, as though nought
But what were far were worthy to be sought;
The future 'tis that must each wish fulfil—
Oh! could we look a little farther still!
Beyond life's tangled web—its restless wave,
And rest our eyes and hopes upon the grave!
This history—still repeated—still renewed,
Is theirs—is ours—is man's at once reviewed;
Mortality's brief tales are trite and poor,
Their course the same, and their conclusions sure;
And modelled in the same terrestrial mould
As those that suffered and succumbed of old;
Outline for outline oft, and trait for trait,
Feature for feature, we belike display
Unconsciously to others and ourselves;
For deep the pit that black Oblivion delves,
Wherein the nations of the past remain,
Though thus they rise up in their heirs again.
Another Resurrection than the one
Which waits them when the course of Time is done—
A Resurrection to the stir—the strife—
The strangely-mingling Heaven-and-Hell of life!
But happily for them, unfelt, unknown,
Their pangs are ours, their peace all, all their own;
We bear their cross, we struggle with their chain,
While they—they have forgotten toil and pain!

The deeper lineaments, broad, clear, and strong,
In greater or in less degree belong
To all that think and feel, to all that live,
And with the bondage and the burthen strive.
Doth not the phantom-demon, rampant Pride,
In every bosom in some shape reside?
What e'er the name it takes, the line it tries,
What e'er its revelation or disguise;
And still the love of power and love of praise
Break forth in thousand forms, in thousand ways;
Though smothered long, or disappointed oft,—
It is our nature's bent to soar aloft!
And still the eternal passion, love, is found
In every living bosom's throbbing bound;
Whether it be that vain, weak, worldlier love,
Too many a breast doth lightly, poorly prove,
Dyed with the rainbow, built upon the sands,
Which scarce its object's happiness demands;
But narrowed, lowered, still in its petty scope,
Fostered by Vanity and fed by Hope,
Begins and ends in Self—in self alone,
In sooth, the truest idol it hath known!
Or that deep passion, raised, sublimed, refined,
The love of heart and brain, and soul and mind,
That standing like the Sun sees all around,
In its own chains of burning glory bound,
With its own luminous tendrils wreathed and wound;
That may not know what 'tis to change or cease,
The law of whose bright Being is increase;
Still pouring forth its riches and its might,
Until it floods the universe with light,
By its own radiant gifts more glorious made!
Throned amidst living, glowing worlds, arrayed
In love, and light, and beauty—worlds that cast
A lustre round where else had frowned a waste,
And throw redoubled pomp of splendours o'er
Their glory's heavenly source, so bright before!
All-powerful passion! thus thou shedd'st around
Thy soul—thy self—thine essence without bound;
And all by thee is girt, and lit, and crowned;
Thou givest for ever from thy boundless store,
And ever as thou givest receivest more!

Oh! if aright their records we would read,
No distant paths must we divergent tread.
Nor let our judgment prompt—our fancies lead;
Their Histories are our Hearts!—each pulse that beats,
Some portion of their Annals still repeats,
Some fragment of their Story doth unfold,
Till throb by throb the whole strange tale is told!
The fevered burning, and the withering chill,
The aching, and the yearning, and the thrill;
The rich o'erflowing, and the yawning void,
The ecstatic sense—but waked to be destroyed;
These—these now—oh! too poignantly our own,
In all their shades and stages they have known!
No pang—no glow, can reach the bosom's core,
That they have felt not thrillingly before;
No joy unchecked—no ill unsoothed, uncured,
That they have not experienced and endured!
And met too, haply, in the self-same way
As we have met—as we do meet—to-day;
For strong similitudes connect our clay.
Howe'er we boast, while 'mid Life's wastes we pine,
That we chalk out our course and choose our line;
Or that to different fortunes we were born,
And differently from them rejoice, or mourn;
From them—long since from Earth's oppressive chain
Delivered, ne'er to know its weight again.
Not in this world—this narrow space—not here—
Not on this worn, dull, unelastic sphere,
Can aught original and new appear;
Alike our Nature's tendency and tone,
And all seem shaped and modelled after one.
Alike, the settled aspect and the hue
(Unto the unprejudiced, impartial view)
Of different passions and of various moods,
O'er which the eye of Contemplation broods;
And like to birds let loose in stranger woods,
That soon grow practised and experienced there,
And soar, and flock, and perch, and build, and pair,
And trim the plume, and trill the unstudied chaunt;
Choose their frequented bough, their favourite haunt;
Skim the clear pool, and pierce the embowering shades,
While every memory of their birth-place fades,
And with their feathered brethren play their part,
And, bold and buoyant, through the bright air dart
As though they recked not of that alien air,
And all things unaccustomed, strange, and rare.
Even thus Earth's practised denizens we grow,
And hold our way with all the rest below.
Too soon do we initiated become
In all the mysteries of our mortal home;
Too soon, too soon familiarised with all
The sinful thoughts man frameth since his fall,
And no exceptions—no exemptions start
In proud relief, distinguished and apart
From Life's dense mass—but all on this earth bend
Beneath stern influences, that chill descend
Upon this fated and o'ershadowed sphere,
(Which yet well-known, familiar things endear),
And with unconscious watchfulness minute,
Our conduct we to other's conduct suit;
While still we boast with exultation proud,
We walk not with the million—with the crowd!
And ofttimes dream, with self-complacent glow,
We lead the way, and the example show.
Oh! with the same temptations, trials, pains,
The same hopes, wants, trusts, duties, blessings, banes,
And with one end, one quest, one doom, one aim,
Humanity's another, and the same!

Well may this spot charm down to silent rest
The myriad feelings battling in the breast,
And even withdraw us from our worldly bliss,
If bliss be ours—or that which more than this
Chokes up the soul with earth's dross—its pursuit,
That oft yields bitterest ashes—'stead of fruit!
Here, for one calm hour, it is well to stay—
To muse—to moralize—to adore—to pray,
Until we feel uplifted for awhile
From Earth's vain care, and strife, and gloom, and toil,
And from its atmosphere of trouble borne,
Mount as upon the rushing wings of morn.
Such hour should teach sage lessons, strong and deep,
Yet every thought in peace religious steep,
And show the vanity of earthly things,
And stir the feelings in their inmost springs,
And loosen, too, the thousand thread-like ties
That bind to earth—while Time—for ever—flies!
Such hour might seem a touchstone of the past,
And Truth's own colours o'er its surface cast,
And make us prize alone those joys that last;
Those real and solid joys that know no end;
Whose memories pure, with heavenly hopes may blend!
Nor should it teach ennobling truths alone,
But make the soul their bright attractions own—
But make the soul even rapturously confess,
That they alone can lead to happiness!
These lessons are the loftiest we can learn,
And dull or rash are they who slight or spurn.
And yet, however forcible and true,
Such lessons may be—they're nor rare nor new.
Have we not met them oftentimes before,
And carelessly glanced o'er the sacred lore?
Each day—each hour that passes should proclaim,
And doth—would we but deign to attend—the same.
Each day—each hour that hurrieth o'er our head,
As on some great momentous message sped,
While still by sure degrees we're onwards led,
Minute by minute, nearer to our tomb,
While all things join to warn us of our doom.
The evanished cloud—the exhausted, ebbing breeze,
That moans in dying cadence through the trees;
The evaporating drop—the extinguished flame,
The shattered mirror in its fractured frame;
The scorched grass of the field—the harp's riven string,
In Nature and in Art, each several thing
Still speaks, with startling voice—of perishing!
And as we onwards on our progress wend,
Still all things ending, mind us of our end.
All that we love or prize, or seek or share,
All that we know, view, meet, trust, claim, or bear,
Still, still reminds us of the mighty change,
As though our thoughts from human things to estrange,
Still bears the impress of the great decay,
Which wide extends the terrors of its sway.
You need not quicken back to Life—old Dust!
To show us all the weakness of our trust—
The emptiness and folly of our aims,
The rash presumption of our baseless claims;
The vanity of all our cherished schemes,
The specious mockery of our worshipped dreams;
The illusions of our fond expectancy,
The uncertainty of all beneath the sky—
The slippery surface of the paths we try;
The narrowness, the meanness of our views,
The brittle nature of the tools we use,
In all our undertakings—our designs—
While some masked Power our vain work undermines!
The slight materials of the towers we build,
The bluntness of the weapons that we wield;
The imperfection of our Earth-formed ties—
While Passion changes and Affection dies!
(Alas! our towers too oft change to our tombs,
Our paths conduct but to Fate's funeral glooms;
Our arms are aidless—and our tools are toys,
Thraldom our cherished ties—and jests our joys.
Our schemes—the bright insanity of Hope;
Our dreams—the sparkles on the dewy slope;
Our trusts, our aims, our claims, all weak or wild,
Though to the last we move by these beguiled),
These are the truths that dimly must o'ercloud
All hopes encouraged—all delights enjoyed;
But ye need not arise from your repose,
Cold ashes!—to confirm these—or disclose;
Our own experience should suffice full well
To play the prompter and the oracle.
The evidence of every day should come
Home to our feelings, to our bosoms home,
And serve to teach us, as on truth's own page,
And make the thoughtless think—the senseless, sage.
You need not startle back to Life, cold clay,
To bring us these stern tidings of dismay,
Since Man's and Nature's works combine to show
How false and fleeting are all things below;
Since every being, every object here,
Unite to prove that Change and Death are near;
Yet we're so wedded to each dear deceit,
So bigotted to every gilded cheat,
So pledged to all delusions we have made
Our treasures and our idols, and arrayed
In coloured light that we must yet see fade,
That all proves insufficient to remove
From these our fond, deep, rooted, 'stablished love.
Deafened are we by our own Folly's din,
Blinded by cloudy vapours of our sin,
Involved in dire and ever-spreading snares,
Which our own prejudice or pride prepares;
Fettered by chains, forged, fixed by our own hands—
Too surely fixed—too closely fastened bands,
And blind and deaf we would unchanged remain,
And trapped and fettered—dear to us the chain—
Welcome the snare—and lovely too the cloud—
And musical those deafening clamours loud.
And thus we journey on Life's rugged road,
As Earth were formed our permanent abode,
Till haply wakened roughly from our dream,
Too late we find it is not as we deem;
With blank dismay and wild remorse we wake,
To find our life was one long, long mistake.
Yet let me seek to win some gift of Good,
Some charm to temper this rebellious blood;
One passion mortified—one fault subdued,
From this strict School—this lone and stern Retreat
For retrospection and reflection meet.
From this deep haunt of silence and of shade,
Where many an heir of wretchedness is laid!
Oh! desolate Theatre of conquering Death,
Whose tiers and galleries frown our feet beneath!
Oh! shadowy City of the past away!
On whose mute halls shines no warm beam of day,
How gloomy 'mid this glad enchanted land,
So laughing, and so radiant, and so bland!
Earth's cities have their names!—thy Capitals,
Oh! princeliest Death!—with their damp crumbling walls,
Are nameless—undistinguished—and unknown—
Marked on no map—and by no splendours shown;
They all are One—the under Earth is all
Thy mighty Fortress and masked Capital!
Life interferes not with those boundaries drear,
Where thy pale standard thou dost frowning rear!
This solemn City now beneath our feet,
This nameless, viewless, undisturbed Retreat,
'Tis but the counterpart of all that spread
Beneath Earth's surface, and beneath our tread!
A City peopled with a peaceful throng,
Where is no strife, no noise, no wrath, no wrong;
A Harbour where the long-tossed barks abide,
Rocked by no breeze, and shaken by no tide;
A sad Encampment of a slumbering Host,
Where Life seems like but to a troubled Ghost!
By some strange wayward power o'erruled—possessed—
A dream's creation—and a moment's guest!
Thou art the goal to which all paths conduct,
Whose entrance no proud barriers can obstruct;
The approach and the avenues are ever free—
Victory's triumphal arch but leads to thee,
Still place of peace—where no rejoicings be!
And proud Philosophy's long labyrinth-maze
In thee concludes, though branched ten thousand ways;
And Love's sweet bowery verdurous-wreathed Arcades,
These, these too terminate in thy stern shades;
And harsh Adversity's rough paths of thorn,
They finish here—where all forget to mourn!

In darker climates, where great Nature seems
To encourage and to inspire deep solemn dreams,
The grave-grounds wear indeed, a look austere,
But not the terrors that invest them here;
Here, in this glowing Garden of the Earth,
Which seems but made for Love, and hope, and mirth,
Death's presence here lowers trebly drear and stern,
And heavier shades surround the burial-urn.
Oh! sad it is to turn from such a sky
To the last dwellings of mortality!
(Where the lost natives of these regions rest,
With sightless eye, and with unconscious breast),
Dark frowns the grave, contrasted thus with thee,
Poetic Land—bright purple Italy!