University of Virginia Library

Like the fierce war-horse on the battle's verge,
That sees the tumult and the fire, and pants
To be a sharer in the crimson strife,—
Youth stands upon the threshold of the world:
It sees the stir and struggle; courts a share,
Impatient, in the manly enterprise,
And burns to wreck its buoyancy of mind
And body in some province of the field
Where action would be glory. Health and hope
Fill every vein with fire, and urge the charge.
It cannot bear to be the thing it is,
Nor suffer other men to be so—thinks
All might be better, and resolves they shall.
Then, in the deep recesses of its breast,
Muses, and plans, and builds its vast designs,
Like the prophetic architect, who sees
The purposed fabric ere its columns rise,
And feeds in prospect on its future fame.
Or moved, it may be, with less generous aim,
The young adventurer for greatness pants;
And, cheated by that most perverted word,
Plots mischief, rides on ruin's wing, extends
The empire of his name, and lives on blood,
The vampyre of his age.—'Tis from these dreams
Of passionate youth the germ has sprung to life
That ripened into Cæsars. Praise to God,
Who baffles human madness as he will,
That schemes of such ambitious wickedness
So often fall, like bad, untimely fruit,
Blasted in early budding! But, alas!
A countless progeny of good resolves
Dies also in the flower,—whose ripened fruit
Exulting earth would hail, and heaven reward.

The pathway of my youth is strewed with wrecks
Of noble plans o'erthrown; and as I stray
Among the ruins, melancholy fills
My sad, regretful spirit. Not in Rome,
Nor glorious Athens, nor the older world
Entombed beside the Nile, the wanderer finds
More fruitful themes for curious, pensive thought
And meditative wisdom, than are given
By the strewed remnants of those brilliant schemes,
Those wasted day-dreams of magnificence,
Which built their splendid structures in my brain,
And rose and fell like visions of the night;—
Some proud and selfish, like that prodigal
Extent of stone and gold which Rome's bad lord
Reared on the Palatine—the wonder, shame,
And folly of the age—the monument of lust
Which preyed on others, and of pride which scoffed
At man, and virtue, justice, truth, and Heaven;—
Some pure and generous, like those huge-arched piles
Which stretch their haggard lines across the bleak
Campagna, formed, in better days, to bear
Refreshing streams of purity and health
To Rome's hot crowd; some consecrate to Heaven,
Like that rich house, the wonder of the world,
Which on the sacred mount received the cloud
Of God's symbolic presence, and the steps
Of his benignant Son. But all alike—
Fane, palace, conduit, fabric of the brain—
Have perished,—perished never to revive,—
The good and ill together.