 | Lectures on art, and poems |  |
I.
O, who hath lived the ills to know
Which make the sum of life below,
That hath not felt, if, 'mid the brood
Of half-wrought beings, hither sent
As if in promised punishment
Of vicious ancestry, there stood
A Form of purest symmetry,—
Where Nature seemed as she would try,
In spite of Vice, to keep on earth
Some vestige of primeval birth;—
Ah, who on such a form hath dwelt,
And hath not in his gazing felt
A sudden stream of horror rush
Back on his heart, to think how soon,
Ere yet perchance she reach her noon,
The Giant Sin may grinning crush
This living flower of Paradise,—
May send its fragrance, born to rise,
Downward, a hellish sacrifice!
Which make the sum of life below,
That hath not felt, if, 'mid the brood
Of half-wrought beings, hither sent
As if in promised punishment
Of vicious ancestry, there stood
A Form of purest symmetry,—
Where Nature seemed as she would try,
In spite of Vice, to keep on earth
Some vestige of primeval birth;—
Ah, who on such a form hath dwelt,
And hath not in his gazing felt
A sudden stream of horror rush
Back on his heart, to think how soon,
Ere yet perchance she reach her noon,
The Giant Sin may grinning crush
This living flower of Paradise,—
May send its fragrance, born to rise,
Downward, a hellish sacrifice!
372
There is a deep, foreboding flush,
That fain would seem a truant blush,
Doth in the smooth and lovely cheek
Of youthful Beauty oft bespeak
The victim of a swift decay;
And, when the light of love doth rise
Effulgent in her lucid eyes,
Full many a heart, that joyous fell
A captive to their radiant spell,
May now in bitter sadness tell
How, like the last protracted ray
Of the last Greenland summer day,
That flashes on the western wave,
They flashed, and sunk,—but sunk into the grave!
That fain would seem a truant blush,
Doth in the smooth and lovely cheek
Of youthful Beauty oft bespeak
The victim of a swift decay;
And, when the light of love doth rise
Effulgent in her lucid eyes,
Full many a heart, that joyous fell
A captive to their radiant spell,
May now in bitter sadness tell
How, like the last protracted ray
Of the last Greenland summer day,
That flashes on the western wave,
They flashed, and sunk,—but sunk into the grave!
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