Classic Poem

Image of calm devotion, on thy brow
The peace of heaven is brooding, and thine eye
Is lifted to its glories; deeply thou
Hast drank of its pure fountain; therefore now
Thy thoughts are centred in the world on high.
Silently, as the midnight hours steal by,
Thy watch is on the firmament,—and there
Thou seest the hills of heaven in prospect lie,
As on the passing gale the light clouds fly,
And heave their fleecy folds, like curls of air,
So thin and so transparent is their veil;
Or dost thou mark some white-winged angel sail
Slowly athwart the moonbeam, shining through
His spiritual form in every lovely hue?
Or do more gentle thoughts than these prevail,
And is there in that fairy sky a bower
Sacred to love and friendship, where the heart
May all its unchecked tenderness impart,
And feel again the bliss of that fond hour,
When first affection budded, and its bloom
Opened to suns and zephyrs, still and warm,
Ere chilled and withered by that coming storm,
Of all our brightest hopes the common doom?
Young as thou art, thy heart must surely know
Bitter and keen-felt sorrows, for the tear
Is brimming on thine eyelids, and their flow
Has stained thy cheeks. I look, and seem to hear
From trembling lips a tone, that winds its way
Into my sympathizing heart. How fair
Thy soft, cherubic features! they were seen
By feeling Fancy in its peopled air,
That teems with all of beauty that hath been.
Backward in waving ringlets flows thy hair
Of auburn glossiness; thy brow of snow,
Smoother than sculptured marble, full and high,
And crowning with its graceful curve thine eye
Pregnant with thought and feeling, and its glow,
When kindled, like a blade of tempered steel;
Those lips, that move so touchingly, and send
Persuasion to the listening youth, and blend
In rapid flow their smiles and tremblings,—all
Around thy face so Grecian, and so holy,
That, as I gaze upon its charms, I feel
My rising heart swell with the tears that fall
In tender but delightful melancholy.
Such tears are of a holy kind, that shed
Brightness on those who weep them, like the veil
Of dewy light, whose liquid lustre throws
A clearer tint of beauty on the rose,
Or like the folds of morning mist, that sail
In iris pomp around the mountain's head.
With thy pure spirit, thy enchanted eye
Reading the visioned loveliness of air,
The bright celestial forms that wander there,
And often sweep with sounding pinion by;
With thy soft bosom, melting at the tone
Of tender, fond entreaty, burning still
To reach with tireless step the golden throne
That Truth has planted on her holy hill,—
With one so fair, so sweet, and yet so high
In all her aspirations, I could blend
Thought, wish, and feeling,—Time might hasten by,
And age invade us, Love could never end.