University of Virginia Library

YOUTHFUL YEARS

The following lines were written by a young man who died last summer of the dysentery. An ancient poet has said:

The good die first:—
But they whose hearts are dry as summer dust
Burn to the socket.

Next week I will send you another performance from the same pen.

Once more the harp, that breath'd
By youth's fresh fount its numbers,
When beauty's hand had wreath'd
Her wild-flowers round its slumbers,
After long years of pain and tears
My hand from sleep hath woken,—
Though it has hung so long unstrung,
That Time the chords hath broken!
The joys of other days,—
That beauty may inherit,
Ere early love decays,
And youth's more buoyant spirit,—
Fade, as at night the dim twilight
O'er the storm-troubled ocean,
Or the soft lute, whose chords would suit
The songs of youth's devotion!
The records Time hath made
Are passionate revealings!
The page that has display'd
The wreck of wasted feelings!—
Time cannot hide my broken pride
Beneath his restless pinion,
Nor hope can heal the wounds I feel
From passion's dark dominion.
I thought the joys of earth
Would droop and wither never!
That hopes of mortal birth
Would live and bloom forever:—
Nor wind should wake time's silent lake,
When skies were fair above me,
Nor hearts grow cold in the earth's mould
I thought were form'd to love me.
But there are griefs I knew not then,—
And storms on life's dark waters—
Sorrow is for the sons of men,
And weeping for earth's daughters!
The cold, cold moon shall see full soon
The stranger's grave so lowly,
Ere yet again it wax and wane,—
Silent and calm, and holy!