University of Virginia Library

THOUGHTS ON A DISTANT VIEW.

I will descend! yet ere I leave this spot,
Will turn again and take another glance
To where the sea foam breaks in long, white lines
Upon the beach below; or far away,
Boils up in distant points, like snowy tops
Of mountains, in the eddies of a flood.
And let me look once more at the green plain,
And the small hills that dot the country-side,
O'er which, clothed with the shadowy robes of mist,
The giant storm is striding; and the town,
Whose long, dark streets, obscured and desolate,
Might well beseem some city of the dead
Seen from the misty distance. All the sky
Presents a gloomy aspect to the sight.
But stay! In yonder western heavens dark
One tiny speck of azure now breaks through
The clouds, and quivering like the lights of dawn
That strike along the sleeping world, and put
To flight the mists, which like the spell of night,
Hang phantom-like o'er every glade and dell,
The sunbeams find a passage, and go forth
Rejoicing through the tempest. As it dies,
On yonder darkest cloud that climbs the East,
And born, like hallowed hopes, of some fair world
We seek and all the trouble of this life,
The rainbow brightens forth. The newer hope,
God's promise unto man that still He reigns
Supreme above the storms and sorrows of the world;
To give our faith re-birth, that hope may still
Spring up eternal in the human breast.