Classic Poem

'T was upon a Southern desert, and beneath a burning sky,
That a pilgrim to the gold-clime sunk, o'erwearied, down to die!
He was young, and fair, and slender, but he bore a gallant heart,—
Through the march so long and toilsome he had bravely held his part.
His companions round him gathered, with kind word and pitying look,
As in fever-thirst he panted, like “the hart for the water-brook”;
While their last cool drops outpouring on his brow and parched lips,
Sorrowed they to mark his glances growing dim with death's eclipse.
Turning then, and onward passing, left they there the dying man,
For a weary way to westward still the promised river ran.

One there was, a comrade faithful, who the longest lingered there,
While he wrung his hand in parting, bidding him not yet despair;
For they would return at morning, from the riverbanks, he said,
And, a silken scarf unfolding, laid it o'er the sufferer's head,
Then, full often backward glancing, took the weary march again,
Onward pressing toward the waters, gleaming far across the plain.

Silent lies the one forsaken, in this hour of pain and fear,
While their farewells and their footsteps die upon his failing ear,—
With the withered turf his death-couch, 'neath the burning heat of day,
All unhearing and unheeding, for his soul is far away!
In the dear home of his childhood, in a pleasant Northern land,
He beholds about him smiling the familiar household band;
Sees, perchance, his father coming homeward through the twilight gray,
Listens to his merry brothers, laughing in their childish play,
Feels the fond arms of his mother, as of old, about him thrown,
And the fair cheek of his sister pressing soft against his own!
Or he strays amid the moonlight, in a cool and shadowy grove,
Looking down with earnest glances into eyes that look back love!
All belovèd tones are calling sweetly through his heart again,
And its dying pulse is quickened by the phantoms of his brain!
And belovèd names he murmurs, while his bosom heaves and swells,
For in dreams again he liveth through his partings and farewells!

Slowly sinks the sun,—night's shadows round the lonely pilgrim spread,—
While the rising night-winds gently lift the light scarf from his head,
And the soft and pitying moonbeams glance upon his forehead fair,
And the dews of night, descending, damp the dark locks of his hair;
Cool upon his brow they're falling, but its fever-throbs are o'er,
And his parchèd lips they moisten, but those lips shall thirst no more!

His companions come at morning, come to look on his dead face,
Come to lay him to his grave-rest, in that dreary, desert place,
Where the tropic sun glares fiercely on the wild, unsheltered plain,
And where pour, from darkest heavens, rushing floods of winter rain,—
Where shall come the wild-bird's screaming, and the whirlwind's sounding sweep,
And the tramp of herded bisons shall go thundering o'er his sleep.

There are piteous sounds of mourning in a far-off Northern home,
Where o'er childhood's kindling dawn-light sudden clouds of darkness come;
There are heard a father's groanings, and a mother's broken sighs,—
There a voiceless sorrow troubleth the clear deeps of maiden eyes.

In their fearful dreams, at midnight, they behold him left to die,
With the hard, hot ground beneath him, and above a brazen sky,—
In his fainting, in his thirsting, in his pain and wild despair,
Vainly calling on his dear ones, through the heavy desert air!
O, the bitter self-reproaches mingled in the cup they drain!
O, their poor hearts, pierced and tortured by a sharp remorseful pain,—
That they sent their best and dearest from his homelove's sheltering fold,
In the madness of adventure, on that pilgrimage of gold!