University of Virginia Library

Silence hung listening from the pale blue sky,
And Nature slumbered in a deep repose,
When on the maniac mother's sleepless eye
The Phantom Spirit of her lost son rose;
His long loose shroud seemed swelling into life,
His pale brow quivered in mysterious strife!
His step was echoless, and through the gloom
Of the lone hut he glided to the place,
Where, mid the sheeted victims of the tomb,
He stood,—the ancient fathers of his race,
With fixed eyes gazing on the widowed one
Left in a dark and cruel world alone.
In shadowy awe and solemn stillness there
He stood; the mortcloth of the grave,—the earth
Piled o'er him,—nor the might of death could bear
His spirit down, when she, who gave him birth,
Called from the depths of sorrow on her son,
Her loved, her lost, her true and only one.
The ghastly pallor of his veinless brow,
The unearthly light of his mysterious eye,
His thin wan lips, that wont to blush and glow,
And his proud bearing as he left the sky,—
All spake the spirit raised at midnight hour
By Love,—the crowning spell of magic power!

And well that mighty Love may dare to look
Upon the Death-King, for it doth discern
Through every change that lovely face which took
Its features from the mother; though the urn
Hold the cold ashes of the dead, the heart
Retains its empire o'er the better part.
Though that may moulder into dust, yet still
Its fine affections live and breathe and glow
Forever,—and the soul may drink at will
The thoughts of the departed; they will flow,
Like limpid waters from a quenchless spring,
Till Life on earth mounts on its heavenly wing.
For though weighed down by countless woes and ills,
The atrophy and paralysis of mind,
Yet in the twilight woods of sky-crown'd hills,
And the blue tents of the mysterious wind,
The spirit soars sublime and finds its home
Where Love, without its woes, may ever come,
And spread abroad its beauty and its bliss,
The hallowed joys of memory shrined and blest,
The perfect peace of happier worlds in this,
The glory of a high and endless rest!
Unbar thy portals, Death! thou canst not quell
The heart that triumphs in its doing well.

The unseen presence of the Dead pervades
The very atmosphere we hourly breathe:
Its voice is heard among the rustling shades
Where wild birds sing and fragrant woodbines wreathe;
It blends with thought and with the feeling glows
Of all it loved mid earthly sins and woes.
So thou didst think, O maniac mother! when
Thy voice was heard, at midnight's awful hour,
Amid the darkness of thy native glen,
Summoning thy lost son to his native bower;
E'en in thy madness dwelt the conscious trust
That he would hear and meet thee from the dust.
And here he stands in thy lone shealing,—now
Cease thy wild coronach and speak to him!
Affection hovers o'er his pallid brow,
And his lips quiver and his eyeballs swim;
Now lift thy voice and on the spirit call,—
Now while his shadow rests upon the wall!
Alas! in deep dreams of the night alone
In the mind's depth strange voices utter words,
That waft us wildly o'er the past and gone,
And bind our bosoms like unbreaking cords:
But while the spirit wakes in weary clay,
The spectre speaks not,—nor in light of day.
His reign is silent, shadowy, awful,—none
Can paint the viewless fear that all must feel;
At Nature's hour of feebleness alone
Dim wavering forms upon the wrought soul steal,
And their fixed searching eyes, where'er we turn,
In fleshless sockets roll and o'er us burn.
Then fantasie o'erworn doth give to air
A visible consistence, shape and breath,
And the loved form doth those sweet graces wear
Which long since left the shrunken brow of death.
The breathing image of the dead is shrined
Deep in the living temple of the mind.
All else is veiled from hope and prayer, and fear
And doubt hang o'er the unrevealing tomb;
Bereavement calls, with many a wild vain tear,
The unconscious sleepers from the deep of gloom;
They wake no more, though Love stands weeping by,
They have no more to do beneath the sky!
Their task is ended and their toil is done,—
Hope not for them her roselight torch displays,
Nor Envy blasts the wreath of glory won,
Nor sorrow darkens Virtue's sunny days;
Their joys and griefs and honours,—all are past,
And others tread Affliction's boundless waste,
And trust, as they have trusted, to their wo,
And love, as they have loved, to be deceived:
For Earth hath shown and will forever show
How man hath warr'd and toil'd and wish'd and grieved,
The same sad scene of helpless hopes and fears,
Vain mirth and laughter,—vainer sighs and tears;
Change, disappointment, poverty and wrong,
Insult and calumny from foes in power;
The secret rapture of a lonely song,
The solemn joy of one forgetful hour,
Drowned in the torrent of the cold world's scorn,—
—“Would,” sighs the Bard, “I never had been born!”

Yet the dim vision of her long lost son
Came o'er the mother like a glimpse of heaven,
And she gazed wildly on the lovely one
As lovers gaze upon the star of even,
And caught quick rays of reason from the eye
Whose radiance lightened from eternity.
Ever, 'tis said, Death's cold pale light dispels
The gloom that shadows the distempered mind,
And solemn music through broad ether swells
As harping angels sailed upon the wind:
And thus the erring and bereft once more
Regain their gifts and praise and sing and soar.
The cock crows,—daylight tints the orient blue,—
Now fades the form, the face so young and dear;
The voiceless mother looks her brief adieu,
From eyes that gleam like planets from their sphere.
No sound is heard,—no last, long, wild farewell
Shrieks its loud echoes up the mountain dell.
In mercy taken from the ill to come,
With shrivelled hands outspread and upcast eyes,
She seeks the refuge of a holy home,
With all she loved and lost in yon far skies.
A deep low sound,—life fades from cheek and brow,—
Lovely and loved! ye dwell together now!