Classic Poem

And now, courteous reader, perchance thou art weary with thy
wanderings, and the flowers we have gathered may appear withered to
thee, and devoid of beauty or fragrance, and the peep into memory's
inner chambers may not have afforded thee the pleasure that I have
derived from the survey. If so, farewell, I will intrude no more upon
thy time or patience. The curtain has fallen, the dim, misty curtain,
and memory has turned her golden key, closed her portfolio, and sat
down with folded hands, to brood over her hoarded treasures, placing
each in its proper place, to be brought forward again at her mandate,
to beguile, perchance, other weary midnight hours with their magic
spell. The past cannot be redeemed, and the future is hid in
uncertainty; but the present, the golden present is ours, and while
our little bark is floating upon the stream of time, let us improve
the precious moments as they fly, and spend them in a cultivation of
the best affections of the human mind. The mind, that boundless ocean
of human thought that is placed within each individual, stretching
on throughout the ceaseless ages of eternity. But there must come a
solemn time to all who live. Death is upon our track, and will surely
soon overtake us, and our decaying bodies must be hid forever from
sight beneath the clods of the valley: but these minds shall then
live, and happy they who, by a cultivation of the best principles of
our nature, have an antepast of heaven while upon earth.

May this be our happy case, gentle reader, if we meet not again on
earth, we shall meet in heaven, "for we must all stand before the
judgment seat of Christ." I have spread out before you the secret
musings of many a midnight hour, and I feel that I am responsible for
what I have written. May God grant forgivness for the wrong. And thus
we part, gentle reader, to toss yet a little longer upon the stream of
time, ere its waves and its billows pass over us forever.

"When midnight o'er the moonless skies,
Her shades of mimic death has spread,
When mortals sleep, when spectres rise;
And nought is wakeful but the dead.
No bloodless shape my path pursues;
No shiv'ring ghost my couch annoys,
Visions more sad my fancy views,
Visions of dear departed joys,--
The shade of youthful hope is there."