And shew, by contrast, what distress,
What blind and blacken'd dreariness
Frowns o'er the wide and waste abyss
Of baffled hopes, and ruin'd bliss!-
So mortal joy and beauty flee,
But happier planets smile on thee;
For spring, with favouring hand, will shed
Reviving verdure round thy head;
The flowers again will bloom around,
And bees to sip thy sweets be found,
And birds that sport on wanton wing,
Amid thy sheltering boughs to sing.—
But ah! the bosom's wintry state,
No second spring can renovate;
No second summer can restore
The happy years that now are o'er ;
Childhood, with all its flowery maze
Of artless thoughts, and sinless plays;
Boyhood, devoid of cares and tears,
Of sordid acts and selfish fears,
And rising o'er the bonds of art,
Ardour of thought, and warmth of heart!
Or youth, when brightly over all
Love spread her rich and purple pall:
When lake and mount, and sea and shore,
A borrow'd pride and beauty wore,
And visions pass'd before the eyes,
Bright with the hues of paradise!-
A glory from the summer day
Hath slowly sunk, and waned away ;
A splendour from the starry night
Hath pass'd to nought, and mock'd the sight;
For clouds have gloom d, and sail'd between,
To darken, and bedim the scene,
And o'er th' unshelter'd head hath past,
With wailing sound, Misfortune's blast.
The fond, the fairy dreams of Youth
Have vanish'd at the touch of Truth;
And o'er the heart, all sear'd and riven,
The ploughshare of the World hath driven.
The play-mates of our infant years,
Our boyish friends, and young compeers,
Are some estranged in heart and thought,
By fortune dark, or happy lot,
Depress'd too low, or raised too high,
By anguish or prosperity;
Are some, by many a weary mile,
Though bent on home, removed the while;
Are some, who, changed by wizard Time,
Even in a far and foreign clime,
Love best the pleasures usher'd last,
And, in the present, lose the past;
Some on the wild, and tossing wave,
But many-most-within the grave !
Man has in heart, in hope, in all,
Like Lucifer, a fate and fall!
Alas! our young affections run to waste,
Or water but the desert; whence arise
But weeds of dark luxuriance, tares of haste,
Rank at the core, though tempting to the eyes,
Flowers whose wild odours breathe but agonies,
And trees whose gums are poison.
THE stars are dim, the moon is not in heaven; And Silence, brooding, spreads his noiseless wings Over this midnight landscape. Far away,
Into the mazes of the tractless dark,
list the murmuring of old Ocean's waves, Dull, hollow, and continuous, like the sound Of spiritual voices from another world:
And Darkness 'o'er the vast, umbrageous woods,
Like barrier walls, that circle me around
In wild majestic gloom, reigns wizard-like.-
Yea, in the midst, I mark the taper spire,
That stretches o'er the mouldering abbey vaults;
Where Superstition, in the ancient time,
Sadly sojourn'd, or, with unsmiling look,
And robes of penitential sackcloth, knelt
Before the altar with her rosary !
Hark! how the circling monitor of time
Tolls out sonorously the hour of twelve.-
No more the voice of merriment is heard ;
The bustle of daylight hath died away;
Hush'd is the tongue of eloquence in sleep,
Commercing not with the unanswering night:
This is an hour of deep-descending thought-
A scene of most impressive loneliness.-
If ghosts from out their charnel cells come forth,
If spirits walk-and so our fathers deem'd-
Leaving the precincts of the grave, to haunt,
With noiseless step, and unterrestrial scowl,
The murderer's midnight chamber, dark with gloom,
'Twere at an hour like this,—so sad,—so lone,—
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