Classic Poem

" Con Vistas del Cielo. "

The dearth is sore: the orange leaf is curled.
There's dust upon the marble o'er thy tomb,
My Edgar, fair and dear:
Though the fifth sorrowing year
Hath passed since first I knew thine early doom,
I see thee still, though Death thy being hence hath hurled.

I could not bear my lot, now thou art gone, —
With heart o'er-softened by the many tears
Remorse and grief have drawn, —
Save that a gleam, a dawn
(Haply of that which lights thee now), appears
To unveil a few fair scenes of Life's next coming morn.

" What, where, is heaven? " earth's sweetest lips exclaim.
In all the holiest seers have writ or said,
Blurred are the pictures given:
We know not what is heaven,
Save by those views mysteriously spread
When the soul looks afar by light of her own flame.

Yet all our spirits, while on earth so faint,
By glimpses dim, discern, conceive, or know,
The Eternal Power can mould
Real as fruits or gold,
Bid the celestial roseate matter glow,
And forms more perfect smile than artists carve or paint.

To realize every creed conceived
In mortal brain by love and beauty charmed —
Even like the ivory maid,
Who, as Pygmalion prayed,
Oped her white arms, to life and feeling warmed —
Would lightly task the power of life's great Chief believed.

If Grecian Phidias, in stone like this
Thy tomb, could do so much, what cannoThe,
Who from the cold, coarse clod
By reckless laborer trod
Can call such tints as meeting seraphs see,
And give them breath and warmth like true love's soul-felt kiss?

Wild fears of dark annihilation, go!
Be warm, ye veins, now blackening with despair!
Years o'er thee have revolved,
My first-born; thou'rt dissolved, —
All — every tint — save a few ringlets fair:
Still, if thou didst not live, how could I love thee so?

Quick as the warmth which darts from breast to breast
When lovers from afar each other see,
Haply thy spirit went,
Where mine would fain be rent,
To take a heavenly form, designed to be
Meet dwelling for the soul thine azure eye expressed.

Thy deep blue eye! — say, can heaven's bliss exceed
The joy of some brief moments tasted here?
Ah? could I taste again!
Is there a mode of pain
Which for such guerdon could be deemed severe?
Be ours the forms of heaven, and let me bend and bleed!

To be in place, even like some spots on earth,
In those sweet moments when no ill comes near;
Where perfumes round us wreathe,
And the pure air we breathe
Nerves and exhilarates; while all we hear
So tells content and love, we sigh, and bless our birth;

To clasp thee, Edgar, in a fragrant shape
Of fair perfection, after death's sad hour,
Known as the same I've prest
Erst to this aching breast, —
The same, but finished by a kind, bland Power,
Which only stopped thy heart to let thy soul escape, —

Oh! every pain that vexed thy mortal life,
Nay, even the lives of all who round me lie, —
Be this one bliss my share,
The whole condensed I'll bear,
Bless the benign creative hand, and sigh,
And kneel to ask again the expiatory strife, —

Strife, for the hope of making others blest,
Who trespassed only that they were not brave
Enough to bear or take
Pains, even for pity's sake, —
Strife, for the hope to wake, incite, and save
Even those who, dull with crime, know not fair Honor's zest.

If in the pauses of my agony
(Be it or flame, stab, scourge, or pestilence),
If, fresh and blest as dear,
Thou'lt come in beauty near,
Speak, and with looks of love charm my keen sense,
I'll deem iTheaven enough even thus to feel and see;

To feel my hand wrenched as with mortal rack,
Then see iThealed, and ta'en, and kindly prest,
And fair as blossoms white
Of cerea in the night;
While tears that fall upon thy spotless breast
Are sweet as drops from flowers touched in thy heavenly track!

In form to bear nor stain nor scar designed, —
Yes! let me kneel to agonize again;
Ask every torment o'er
More poignant than before:
Of a whole world the price of a whole pain
Were small for such blest gifts of matter and of mind!

Comes a cold doubt, — that still thou art alive,
Edgar, my heart tells, while these numbers thrill,
Yet of a bliss so dear,
And as Death's portal's near
I feel me too unworthy: dreary Time,
I fear, must bear his part ere Hope her plight fulfil!

Time, time was meet (so many a sacred scroll
Has told and tells) ere light was bid to smile;
Ere yet the spheres, revealed,
Gave music as they wheeled;
Warm, rife, eternal love — a time — a while —
Brooded and charmed and ranged till chaos gloomed no more.

As time was needful ere a world could bloom
With forms of flowers and flesh, haply must wait
Some spirits; and, lingering still,
Of deeds both good and ill
Mark the effect in intermediate state,
And think and pause and weep even over their own tomb.

Be it so: if, thin as fragrance, light, or heat,
Thine essence, floating on the ambient air,
Can with freed intellect
View every deed's effect,
Read even my heart in all its pantings bare,
When denser pulses cease, how sweet even thus to meet;

To roam those deep green aisles crowned with tall palms,
And weep for all who tire of toil and ill,
While moons of winter bring
Their blossoms fair as spring;
To move, unseen by all we've left, and will
Such influence to their souls as half their pain becalms;

On deep Mohecan's mounts to view the spot
Where, as these arms were oped to clasp thee, came
The tidings, dread and cold,
I nevermore might hold
Thy pulsing form, nor meet the gentle flame
Of thy fair eyes till mine for those of earth were not;

On precipice where the gray citadel
Hangs over Ladaüanna's billows clear,
How sweet to pause and view
As erst the far canoe;
To glide by friends who know not we are near,
And hear them of ourselves in tender memory tell;

Or, where Niagara with maddening roar
Shakes the worn cliff, haply to flit, and ken
Some angel, as he sighs
With pleasure at the dyes
Of the wild depth, while to the eyes of men
Invisible we speak by signs unknown before;

Or, far from this wild Western world, where dwelt
That brow whose laurels bore a leaf for mine,
When, strong in sympathy,
Thy sprite shall roam with me,
Edgar, 'mid Derwent's flowers, one soul benign
May to thy soul impart the joy I there have felt!

What though, " imprisoned in the viewless winds, "
'Mid storms and rocks, like earthly ship, we're dashed,
Unsevered while we're blent,
We'll bear in sweet content
The shock of falling bolt or forest crashed,
While thoughts of hope and love nerve well our mystic minds.

Wafted or wandering thus, souls may be found
Or ripe for forms of heaven, or for that state
Of which, when angels think,
Or saints, they weep and shrink,
And oft, to draw or save from such dread fate,
Are fain their beauteous heads to dash 'gainst blood-stained ground.

Freed from their earthly gyves, if spirits laugh
And shriek with horrid joy when victims bleed
Or suffer as we view
Mortals in vileness do,
The Eternal and his court may keep their meed
Of joy: far other cups fell thirsty Guilt must quaff!

O Edgar! spirit or on earth or air,
Seen or impalpable to artist's sketch,
In essence or in form,
In bliss, pain, calm, or storm,
Let us, wherever met a suffering wretch,
Task every power to shield and save him from despair!

Nature hath secrets mortals ne'er suspect:
At some we glance, while some are sealed in night.
The optician, by his skill,
Even now can show at will
Long-absent pheers in shapes of moving light:
If man so much can do, what cannoTheaven effect!

Shade, image, manes, all the ancient priest
Told to his votarists in fraud or zeal,
May be, and might have been
By means and arts we ween
No more of, in this age: for woe or weal
Of man, full much foreknown, to this late race hath ceased.

That souls may take ambrosial forms in heaven,
A dawning science half assures the hope:
These forms may sleep and smile
MidsTheaven's fresh roses, while
Their spirits free roam o'er this world's whole scope
For pleasure and for good, Heaven's full permission given.

I have not sung of meeting those we've loved
Or known, and listening to their accents meek,
While pitying all they've pained
On earth, while passion reigned,
To wreak redress upon themselves they seek,
And bless, for each stern deed, the pain they now have proved.

I have not sung of the first, fairest court
Of all those mansions; of the heavenly home,
Of which the best hath told
Who e'er trod earthly mould:
To courts of earthly kings the fairest come
Haply to show faint types of this supreme resort.

Haply the Sire of sires may take a form,
And give an audience to each set unfurled
With bands of sympathy,
Wreathen in mystery,
Round those who've known each other in this world,
Perfecting all the rest, and breathing beauty warm.

Essence, light, heat, form, throbbing arteries, —
To deem each possible, enough I see!
Edgar, thou knowest I wait:
Guard my expectant state;
Console me, as I bend in prayers for thee;
Aid me, even as thou mayest, both Heaven and thee to please!

This song to thee alone! Though he who shares
Thy bed of stone shared well my love with thee,
Yet in his noble heart
Another bore a part,
Whilst thou hadst never other love than me:
Sprites, brothers, manes, shades, present my tears and prayers!