University of Virginia Library

Scene I.

—The Paradise of Cœlis.
Cœlis, alone.
CŒLIS.
‘Summer and winter changing hands
The green leaves hang mid red and yellow;
The fruits are over-ripe and mellow;
Cracked to the core their germ expands
And hope is heir to nature's sway,
Though now embowelled in decay.
Even while they vanish, Nature drapes
In her autumnal pride their lovely shapes.
Beyond the forest's brink pale clouds
Float o'er the foliage to take up its blaze,
While the sun glittering through the woods
Steeps their last beauty in his slumbering rays.
But he that set the stamp of death on man
At the fate-haunted tree still guards the portal
To thwart my soul that would escape the ban
And upon earth recover days immortal.
Nature's High Fast begins: life's latter stage
Glows in the ruddiness of age;
Then, as the pomp of dying holds the scene
In slow procession, proud that it has been,
All drops; the wondrous death its heritage.
So we approach the end; o'er sodden leaves
The naked boughs stretch forth their dripping eaves,
Sapless and dark; their potent virtue spent
Whose leaf-dome was the world's green firmament.
The skies are humbled in their grey attire,
And from the tree of life the fruit is gone;
The flowers no more put forth their meek desire:
All things, one with another; yet alone!