Classic Poem

The sun glimmer'd pale and the north-wind was bleak,
When, dejected, young Isabel stray'd o'er the plain;
Her tears had effac'd the sweet bloom of her cheek,
And she sung in her grief this disconsolate strain:

" Thou faint-gleaming Phaebus that now from afar
Feebly shin'st on the earth with a wintery ray,
As pale and as cold as the beams of the star
That illumines my path at the close of the day;

" Yes, thou wilt soon finish thy wintery race,
And chace the cold snow from the hill and the plain;
And dispelling the clouds that o'ershadow thy face,
Thou wilt raise this sad land from dejection again.

" But my Cyprian's coldness no change will e'er know,
'Tis the cold northern winter where coldness reigns still;
'Tis the cold indissolvable stratum of snow,
That eternally crowns the Olympian hill."

The summer returned with her bright sunny days,
But past, ere those days, was young Isabel's doom:
The sun shone, — but she felt not the pow'r of his rays,
He shone, — but he shone upon Isabel's tomb.