Classic Poem

Here museful Thought and Contemplation dwell;
Here Silence spreads her horrors round;
Hark! the dull tinkling stream from yonder cell!
The soul recoils at every sound!

Startled, I view new phantoms round me rise,
And seem to chide my dull delay;
View yonder spot where human greatness lies;
Thus all must moulder and decay.

Hark! from afar the solemn sounding bell
Fills the dull ear with plaints of woe;
'Tis Death awakes, and spreads the warning knell;
Through the sad gates the mourners flow.

The distant landscape fades; thick glooms arise;
Twilight the sombre scene surveys;
While tears, in dew drops, glisten in her eyes;
And faintly shroud her pitying rays.

When blooming spring adorns the verdant mead,
Zephyrs arise from every grove;
The notes of joy along the woodland spread,
And breathe the fragrant sweets of love.

O'er hill, o'er dale the nimble huntsmen bound,
And wake the morn to health's employ;
With variegated flowers the mead is crowned;
Spring wantons in the bowers of joy.

But sultry summer wings the Sirian ray,
Whose heat subdues the blooming field;
The fair blown flowerets wither and decay;
The trees unripened fruitage yield.

Now the black tempest gathers from afar;
With horror all the horizon's bound;
Now clashing clouds along the ether war,
And pour their inundations round.