Classic Poem

TOE. N. G.

Here , where thy presence, like a rare,
Sweet perfume, lingers everywhere,
Elusive shadows haunt the air.

The dimly-pictured walls expand
To mountain sceneries, wild and grand,
Where war-worn castles proudly stand,—

Bastions and barbacans that gleam
In the old mirror's crystal stream,
Like far-off palaces of dream.

A censer, curiously enwrought,
That burned in some barbaric court,
Drowsed in the Orient's dusky thought,

On the long centuries seems to brood,
When in Mongolian halls it stood,
Breathing of myrrh and sandal wood.

From an amphora, quaint and tall,
Funereal mosses float and fall,
And waver down the chamber wall,

Dark southern mosses that have hung
The wild sea-island woods among,
And o'er their deep morasses swung.

The hands that twined with flexile grace
Their garlands round my flower-lipped vase,
Shrouding the corbel's sculptured face,

Fair-folded in a southern clime,
Absolved from all the toils of time,
Await the eternal morning's prime:

Fair-folded by the Atlantic wave,
'Mid the dark race she died to save,
Where homeless sea-winds haunt her grave.

But when the sunset fires are low,
And twilight fancies come and go,
And mystic winds of memory blow,—

When the heart feels its courage fail,
Its visioned hopes without avail,
Untouched, unfound its Holy Grail,—

Some solemn rapture, like a strain
Of music's beautiful disdain,
Uplifts beyond all mortal pain:

A sudden splendor rifts the gloom,—
A light that seems to bud and bloom
From out the shadows of the room:

A silken stir anear the door,
Like rose-leaves rippling o'er the floor,
And lo! glad-smiling, as of yore,

Close at my side I see thee stand
In shining garments, ghostly grand,
A palm-branch budding in thy hand,

And, sweet as morning's music breath
Across the hills of Nazareth,
A low voice murmurs, “No more death!”