University of Virginia Library

ON A TOMB.

Thou solemn, sainted, lone, and lovely spot,
Where all but immortality's forgot!
My worn heart hails thee with no shrinking sigh,
For many-featured death in majesty
Of calm, heaven-breathing peace seems here to rest,
Tempting the long-tried and the long-tired breast!
Is it the eternal real that doth assert,
Barred from the world, its empire o'er the heart?
While touched by Death's wand earth's dark trials take
Their proper shade and shape, and stir and wake
The immortal in the heart! the heart which mourns,
Yet mourning, still disdains its griefs! and burns
For other worlds than this of vain regrets,
Of Heavens that thunder, and a Sun that sets,
Of rainbows still unreached, spring-flowers arrayed
In dazzling glory but to droop and fade!
Of glorious harmonies that float away,
And all things beautiful that cannot stay—
Of meteors bright that sparkle but to fly,
Of love, deep love! that only smiles to die!
O, but it is! it infinitely is!—
Death's world of shadows casts eclipse o'er this—
Only, like night, ten thousand worlds to unfold—
To shew creation's glorious page unrolled!
Ah! 'tis even so!—avaunt, all idle fear!
The true—the real, is developed here!
O, but it is! it infinitely is!—
Life hath her thousand tones of bale, of bliss,
Solemn, or jubilant, or piercing sweet,
And the heart's thousand echo-cells repeat
Those changeful breathings! Life's rich voices still
With every varying modulation thrill!
Ay, life hath language fervid and intense!
Death—silence! vague, stupendous eloquence!
And well it is with us if we perceive
Its mighty drift, and fittingly receive!
How awful is that deep, that breathless hush!—
Our trembling spirits crowd, and heave, and rush,
To fill up the dread pause, which seems to press
The future through the soul! that breathlessness
Which holds suspended every pulse of life,
In midst of all its stormy play and strife!
It is—is infinitely! Death! stern Death!
Thy language, soaring high o'er sound and breath,
Outpierces far all music of the earth!
All golden melodies we've loved from birth,
Whether the murmured sweetnesses that dwell
In the deep lyre, the poet's chorded shell,
Or passionately glad the wild bird's note,
Which winged with happiness through heaven doth float,
Like our unsheathed, upspringing thoughts, when glow
Those chainless thoughts in quick and starry flow.
Yes! thou hast whispers soft, like sounds in dreams,
Or haunting murmurs of faint far-off streams,
Still to detach from earth, to draw, to wean
The soul from every sublunary scene!
Lo! when a mighty warrior's tomb is crowned
With sculptured pomps, and banners sweeping round,
With helm and shield and high armorial crest,
(Ah! can they soothe that stern and marble rest?)—
With lengthened scrolls and proud emblazonries,
That bid his memory crowned with triumph rise,
(Ah! can they lift his spirit to the skies?)—
When a dead monarch's burial-thunders peal,
Teaching us ermine's vulnerable as steel!
Or humbler clay to clay consigned demands
Our kindred care, since bound in brethren-bands,
In sheaves of brotherhood, are all mankind,
By Heaven's own hand!—what hand shall then unbind?
—Or all we love unpityingly departs,
Leaving us to the silence of our hearts,
Bequeathing us a burdening weight of care,
And ever-yearning souls, scarce stilled by prayer;—
Thou still arraignest every inmost thought,
Thou still dost teach, as thou hast ever taught,
The present's nothingness, the future's weight—
The arrowy swiftness of our mortal date.
Thou still hast tones too deep and too distinct,
Wherewith our spirit-breathings all are linked
Unbrokenly! till the earth with echo-cells
Of the far heavens is sown, in scented bells
Of spring's first flowers, still lurking; and in leaves
Of beauty, rustling round our household eaves—
—The thousand-tendrilled ivy, or the vine,
Purpling the hills where southern suns outshine;—
And midst the light or thunder-burthened clouds
That hide the sky with their beleaguering crowds,
Or with sweet murmurings of the lapsing rill,
Or sounds that float along the breezy hill;—
And with low sighings of the wandering breeze,
And tremblings running through the whispering trees,
With shells from jewel-fretted grots uptorn,
That blush beneath the wave like the red morn,
And melt in melody for evermore,
Like links of lovely sounds from shore to shore!—
Mournfully still awakening! still abounding,—
Commingling, or conflicting!—still resounding!
Ay, with all music of the flower or tree,
All music of the earth or of the sea—
Still, still those tones are mingling, faint, more faint
Than sigh of reeds, or night-winds' shivery plaint;
But yet, however faint, however low,
With every language, sound, or breath below,
Commingling or conflicting!—with sad power
O'erwhelming us from thy absconding hour!
O Death! strong Death! still wheresoe'er we tread,
By thee we're chasteningly admonished!
Boundless thine influence is o'er this frail world—
This bridge, whence thousands momently are hurled,
Even as by viewless winds! far, far away
From the blue warm dominions of the day!
Far, far away! to regions where even thought
May follow not!—to realms begirt and fraught
With mysteries unimaginably deep,
Unreached by fancy, and unglimpsed in sleep!—
Realms where the piercing winds ne'er shaped their flight—
Where never rolled the o'ersweeping tide of night;
Where the swift-rushing morning never flew,
Her dewy crowns o'er vale and mount to strew!
But from those realms full many a token strange
Thou'st sent, O, Death, unto this world of change!
Full many a sign we sorrowingly descry,
Where'er we turn a contemplative eye!
Midst every earth-born wreath we sadly find
Thy shadowy, cold night-blowing flowers entwined!
Thou writ'st mysteriously, o'er sun and sea—
Lands vintage-crowned, where summers loveliest be—
Deserts where ancient Silence sternly broods,
And ever-rocking forest solitudes!—
O'er capitals of old regality—
O'er all the beautiful beneath the sky!—
Even o'er bright aspects in the light of youth,
Lovely and radiant as the sunny south,—
Mysteriously thou'st charactered even there
Thy mournful truths—thou that ne'er deigned to spare!
Boundless thine influence is, strong Death, and deep,
Thou viewless and unknown! whose shadowy keep
Encloseth all earth e'er hath loved or feared—
All man hath scorned, despised, admired, revered!
Boundless thine influence and thy conquering thrall!
And, O! beneath thy shadow the' endless All,
The infinite, seems hid! the unknown, untried,—
The impervious secrets to our grasp denied—
The mysteries none may ever dream or tell—
The vague—the dread—the incomprehensible!—
For which the human heart still pants and aches,
Even whilst for human griefs it bleeds and breaks!
And the unquenched soul, whose conquest-heightened thirst
Rages unslaked—the sould that fain would burst
From every fetter, every cloud, away,
And seize its proud inheritance of day!—
The soul that seeks and strives for evermore—
That rushes on—a sea without a shore!
Uncalmed, insatiable—though it possess
Treasures of knowledge, still to happiness
Uncoined! Though, all victoriously swelling,
Fountains of genius in its wastes are welling;
And in its strongholds, ne'er by eye explored,
Harvests of wisdom—pure and priceless hoard!—
Are proudly heaped, and richly piled and gathered,
Strengthening its glorious energies, when withered
By time or grief, or sharp corroding care,—
(Which, like the ever-falling drop, doth wear
The strongest and the mightiest mind at length,
Making a very mockery of its strength.)
Though in its awful depths, enshrined, amassed,
Marvels and mysteries dwell! though deeply glassed
Within those mighty boundless depths may be
The o'erpowering wonders of eternity!
Still, still that haughty soul shall know not rest,
But ever rush upon its endless quest!
Still, still for the unattainable, the unknown,
It yearns!—Power, Grandeur, Knowledge, Bliss, Renown,
Can never fill that aching void profound—
Which nought can search nor reach—which nought can sound!
Still, most sublime to its strong passion seems
The vague stupendousness of shadowy dreams,
That haunt unceasingly the aspiring thought—
The soul, inflamed, concentrated, o'erwrought—
Ambitious for the impossible! In vain
It doth extend its space-o'ermastering reign—
In vain it triumphs in victorious might,
Careering, like the wind, on its free flight;
In vain it clasps, weighs, interpenetrates
All worlds!—all universes!—and creates
More wonders than it conquers! still, afar,
A beckoning mystery lures from sun and star—
Still wild ambition aims beyond—above—
Triumph of triumphs! could it melt in love!
Death! I have wandered far and long away
From thy deep themes, thy purifying sway—
The calm pervading thy untrodden haunts;—
But now once more my wearied spirit pants
For full repose! Pale Angel of the Grave,
O, let it turn to thee! fain, fain 'twould crave
Thy deep immeasurable quiet now;
So softly reared thy visionary brow
Appears—so cloudlessly thy form's impressed
On all around, in traits of beauty dressed—
In tenderest hues and loveliest flowers arrayed,
Forming a paradise of this sweet shade!
Pale Paradise of shadows and of thee—
Oasis-isle of immortality!
O! the heart almost doubts thee—thou'rt too much
Like happiness that shrinks from every touch!
The heart, so oft betrayed, so oft deceived—
So oft of its most cherished hopes bereaved—
Doth almost doubt thee—as its fears doubt all
That proffereth honey-dews instead of gall!
Thou seem'st, for even imagination's grasp,
Too mighty, and too vast. We fain would clasp
Thy phantom form of beauty—wan, but fair—
We clasp, and gaze, and, lo! thou art not there!
Thou seem'st, with all thy crowning mystery deep—
Like visions shadowed forth in feverish sleep—
Alas! to melt away—to float—to flee
From the ardent gaze—too beautiful to be!
Too, too much to be wished for, to be won! too rife
Of uttermost blessedness from this bleak life
Estranged, to be on earth achieved or gained;
Or, in thine hour of conquering might sustained,
Too precious, too inestimably dear—
Thou spring of victory! to be tasted here;
Too wondrous and too glorious to be true,
(For immortality hath still wrought through
Thy dusky veil of clouds, revealing bright
The intense transcendence of undying light);
Or to be aught save a deceptive vision,
Flushing the atmosphere with glows Elysian—
Too promising on this earth to be proved
A universe of love to the unloved!—
And, O! to those, the blessed on earth—to those
Who on the trusted answering heart repose,
Love, endless love, without change, bound, or shade—
Perfect as undestructible!—arrayed
In panoply of glorying strength, and girt
With charmed powers all ills, all harms to avert!
And now in thine own hallowed haunts I feel
Thy solemnizing influence round me steal!
My trembling soul thou seemest to surround
With dreams! Dreams? No! with certainties thou'rt crowned—
Thou precious hope! thou that must be fulfilled!
The ever-restless heart shall so be stilled!
The heart of many tendrils!—it shall cease
To ache and yearn! gathered to breathless peace,
And all its trials, all its sorrows o'er,
Shall reach at last the calm and golden shore!
And even the soul of fire—th' aspiring mind—
The bliss, the triumph, and the peace shall find!
Farewell! O, solemn tomb! all must be well
With thee, calm home! and those who in thee dwell—
With me! Well! be it so! whate'er it be,
No mote's o'erlooked through all the infinity
Of gathered worlds, stretched to their thundering race
Through fixed duration and unmeasured space!
Well—be it so! whate'er it be, I know
From whence th' unerring dispensations flow;
O, be it so!—though it be grief, I feel
The inflicting hand the aching wounds can heal!—
Yet—yet again, farewell! I turn with pain
Back to earth's myriads and myself again!
I must renounce this rich forgetfulness
Of earth and care—than every happiness
Less holy and less high—how far more dear!—
Pure as are death-bed thoughts, or childhood's tear!
Yes! 'tis a spiritual luxury this—
A spring of soul-intoxicating bliss—
A draught of strange bewildering delight,
Mantling with precious dews, rich, fervid, bright—
A draught of solemn ecstasy and deep—
Mighty the soul in glorious dreams to steep—
That must not be too freely quaffed, nor sought
When virtuous action might crown virtuous thought!
Then let me tear myself away! alas!
Even as the lights and shadows swiftly pass
O'er these low mounds of dewy, flowery grass.
Too soon the immortal hues, the Elysian gleams,
Will pass from my changed thoughts and wandering dreams!
Still must I tear myself, and turn
Where kindred beings smile!—ah! oftener mourn!