University of Virginia Library

ANOTHER “CASTLE IN THE AIR.”

“To me, like Phidias, were it given
To form from clay the man sublime,
And like Prometheus, steal from heaven
The animating spark divine!”
Thus once in rhapsody you cried;
As for complexion, form, and air,
No matter what, if thought preside,
And fire and feeling mantle there.
Deep on the tablets of his mind
Be learning, science, taste impressed;
Let piety a refuge find
Within the foldings of his breast;
Let him have suffered much; since we,
Alas! are early doomed to know
All human virtue we can see
Is only perfected through woe.
Purer the ensuing breeze we find
When whirlwinds first the skies deform,
And hardier grows the mountain hind
Bleaching beneath the wint'ry storm;
But, above all, may heaven impart
That talent which completes the whole—
The finest and the rarest art—
To analyze a woman's soul.
Woman—that happy, wretched being,
Of causeless smile, of nameless sigh,
So oft whose joys unbidden spring,
So oft who weeps, she knows not why!
Her piteous griefs, her joys so gay,
All that afflicts and all that cheers;
All her erratic fancy's play,
Her flutt'ring hopes, her trembling fears—
With passions chastened, not subdued,
Let dull inaction stupid reign;
Be his the ardor of the good,
Their loftier thought and nobler aim.
Firm as the towering bird of Jove,
The mightiest shocks of life to bear;
Yet gentle as the captive dove,
In social suffering to share.
If such there be, to such alone
Would I thy worth, beloved, resign;
Secure, each bliss that time had known
Would consummate a lot like thine.
But if this gilded human scheme
Be but the pageant of the brain,
Of such slight “stuff as forms our dream,”
Which waking we must seek in vain,
Each gift of nature and of art
Still lives within thyself enshrined;
Thine are the blossoms of the heart,
And thine the scions of the mind;
And if the matchless wreath shall blend
With foliage other that its own,
Or destined not its sweets to lend,
Shall flourish for thyself alone,
Still cultivate the plants with care;
From weeds, from thorns, oh, keep them free!
Till ripened for a purer air,
They bloom in immortality!