Classic Poem

And dost thou faithlessly abandon me?
Must thy cameleon phantasies depart?
Thy griefs, thy gladnesses, take wing and flee
The bower they builded in this lonely heart?
O, Summer of Existence, golden, glowing!
Can nought avail to curb thine onward motion?
In vain! The river of my years is flowing,
And soon shall mingle with the eternal ocean.

Extinguished in dead darkness lies the sun
That lighted up my shriveled world of wonder;
Those fairy bands Imagination spun
Around my heart have long been rent asunder.
Gone, gone forever is the fine belief,
The all-too-generous trust in the Ideal:
All my Divinities have died of grief,
And left me welded to the Rude and Real.

As clasped the enthusiastic Prince of old
The lovely statue, stricken by its charms,
Until the marble, late so dead and cold,
Glowed into throbbing life beneath his arms,
So fondly round enchanting Nature's form,
I too entwined my passionate arms, till, pressed
In my embraces, she began to warm
And breathe and revel in my bounding breast.

And, sympathizing with my virgin bliss,
The speechless things of Earth received a tongue;
They gave me back Affection's burning kiss,
And loved the Melody my bosom sung:
Then sparkled hues of Life on tree and flower,
Sweet music from the silver fountain flowed;
All soulless images in that brief hour
The Echo of my Life divinely glowed!

How struggled all my feelings to extend
Themselves afar beyond their prisoning bounds!
O, how I longed to enter Life and blend
Me with its words and deeds, its shapes and sounds.
This human theater, how fair it beamed
While yet the curtain hung before the scene!
Uprolled, how little then the arena seemed!
That little how contemptible and mean!

How roamed, imparadised in blest illusion,
With soul to which the upsoaring Hope lent pinions,
And heart as yet unchilled by Care's intrusion,
How roamed the stripling-lord through his dominions!
Then Fancy bore him to the palest star
Pinnacled in the lofty æther dim:
Was nought so elevated, nought so far,
But thither the Enchantress guided him!

With what rich reveries his brain was rife!
What adversary might withstand him long?
How glanced and danced before the Car of Life
The visions of his thought, a dazzling throng!
For there was Fortune with her golden crown,
There flitted Love with heart-bewitching boon,
There glittered starry-diademed R ENOWN ,
And T RUTH , with radiance like the sun of noon!

But ah! ere half the journey yet was over,
That gorgeous escort wended separate ways;
All faithlessly forsook the pilgrim-rover,
And one by one evanished from his gaze.
Away inconstant-handed Fortune flew;
And, while the thirst of Knowledge burned alway
The dreary mists of Doubt arose and threw
Their shadow over T RUTH 's resplendent ray.

I saw the sacred garland-crown of F AME
Around the common brow its glory shed:
The rapid Summer died, the Autumn came,
And Love , with all his necromancies, fled,
And ever lonelier and silenter
Grew the dark images of Life's poor dream,
Till scarcely o'er the dusky scenery there
The lamp of H OPE itself could cast a gleam.

And now, of all, Who, in my day of dolor,
Alone survives to clasp my willing hand?
Who stands beside me still, my best consoler,
And lights my pathway to the Phantom-strand?
Thou, F RIENDSHP ! stancher of our wounds and sorrows,
From whom this lifelong pilgrimage of pain
A balsam for its worst afflictions borrows;
Thou whom I early sought, nor sought in vain!

And thou whose labors by her light are wrought,
Soother and soberer of the spirit's fever,
Who, shaping all things, ne'er destroyest aught,
Calm O CCUPATION ! thou that weariest never!
Whose efforts rear at last the mighty Mount
Of Life, though merely grain on grain they lay,
And, slowly toiling, from the vast Account
Of Time strike minutes, days, and years away.