Classic Poem

" O'er hill, o'er dale; the careless morning's sun
Binds up the wounds of night and makes all sweet.
New flowers flow forth and wander o'er the ground,
Like paradise encumbered by its wealth,
As the ancestral twain delighted roamed. "

A boy's fond verses, when my days were rich
In happiness. Careless I threw away
A long life's joy, in one emotion blest,
Not reckoning on the future creeping in,
Stooped and forlorn, a beggar with his scrip.
And later thus: " In youth, we feel so rich,
We draw uncounted sums, we fling about
The revenues of a king, we live and spend
As if unfathomable mines of ore
Gleamed on our bidding. Fame steps smiling in,
Her bonnet on her head, her silken scarfs,
Her laces point device! Sweet fame, good fame!
We do not feel the goblin in the shade,
The pale indifference that leers at hope.
Youth is the glass of fortune, blithe in form.
I follow where you lead, the bridge I cross
That leads to Hela's depths, where Baldred went;
And still hope cheats. Alas! our feet too slow
Go trailing helpless as the future flies.
Success so hovers past the shores of life,
Half seems to light, half touches the cold wave;
We view his bright reflections in the ooze,
Where the slow stream crawls sadly through her weeds,
With newts and sodden tortoises of eld,
Or stagnant mosses. The small light that shot
Across our painted youth, and showed her curls,
Was a faint, flickering moonbeam, was the end.
And then comes moldering age, prudent and lame,
A skeptic manifold. " And was it I
Who shaped this hollow revery?
Could this be mine?
The page is with her letters, in my hand.
Such days were joy, when I had thoughts like those,
When I had thoughts at all; for now I shrink,
And strive to dam the flow of sentiment,
And leave the turbid pool to clear itself.
There is a grave that opens while we live,
There is a life that ends ere we are dead.
I 'm passing hence; I shall not live the week.
But on this tattered scroll I would express,
Like the brave surgeon who at life's last beat
Held at his pulse his hand, and dying said:
" It fails, it ceases, " then indeed he died. —

Another verse: " Spirit of the wood,
Who build your bowers amid the forests tall,
And paint the banks of water-courses green
With delicate ferns, or feathery grass, that sways
Like cobwebs at the sighing of the stream,
And the high clouds that gaze below, at peace,
Far by ethereal culture raised from care! "

In those my early days, amid the trees,
I thought to raise an altar to the Muse,
And with these lines to consecrate its front, —
The Muse that haunts these bowers and bends their lives.

Time rubs away the outward, leaves within,
Merely the cerements that once owned life.
And, when my numbers failed me, I essayed
To dwell as might some anchorite austere;
O'er the cold stones to drag the nights with prayer,
And mortifying arts the convent knew.
Questions I may not answer, may not ask
In this vain world, track my slow flight to death.
I can but make my will, — what things to leave,
And to whom, to be left. Who are my heirs?
Beating upon the sphere no human heart
Claims the least hope in mine; all stone alike,
Corroded by their unbelief in me.
I see them joyous o'er their cottage fire,
Encased in peace, fretted in comfort's robes;
Bright shines the ruby blaze upon the group, —
Domestic, cheerful, see the children go,
Playing their evening games, the dance, the jest, —
Who spoke for me, their father, cast away,
A fettered outlaw, to the forest drear.
To them shall aught be left? To them my couch,
Yon pile of deerskins that have warmed my limbs,
In the extremity that winter dares;
And my poor books, sallow with damp and years.
What! could they read the poets, with such hearts,
(Pimping with hollow lies for selfish greed,)
Shakspere and Spenser. And my gun, whose sight,
Baffled by naught, would be a hunter's pride.
Give these, — to hearts like theirs?
I wake once more.
Since those last words a dizziness came up

And took possession of my soul. I went
From out this region of old woods, afar;
I fled this dreary day, this drearier night;
Thought for to-morrow's food, the hunter's watch,
The lurking foe, the chill mistrust of time, —
All these were buried in that swooning fear,
That came upon me as a sudden night
Falls on the face of Nature, when the sun
By interruption dies. I wake so long
I dreamed I ne'er should sleep.
Farewell! thou world!
Unpaid I owe thee naught, — no gratefulness,
No debts of love, no balance of delight.
Thou didst not smile on me, nor crook thy brows
To the contemptuous mockery which poor fools
Adore, and great men name Success! not mine
The Halls of Fame, nor sons nor maids, who prize
Their father's life. Only within the grave
One faithful thing, Eliza's sunny heart.
Wealth never fawned on me, and men forbore
To press their knees to flatness before him,
Who could not coin such suppliance. Not a friend,
I ever had upon the fields of time,
Who was not false to me, but him I killed.
And oh! was not that fearful act from God?
Could I, this crouching shadow, in the dust,
With the chill avalanche of fate to bear,
Of my own purpose, shatter Gordon's form?
It might have been. I should have bent
Had I been different; but in this life
Men take upon the wild and boundless pulse
That floats our frontier world, there is a calm,
And it will bear through all things, till it bends,
And then the blow; the shot, fierce as remorse,
Flashed in a second to infinity.
I shall not see this night. The dying eve
Will take me to itself and be my shroud;
And there upon my skins I will compose
My form as if for slumber, to be found
By whom I know not, — hunters in a storm,
Or some foot-weary traveller in the bush,
Who not infrequent tempt the iron door.
All is in order, all that Lisa had,
All that she ever gave me. Be it so;
I could not die should I destroy her gifts.
What is repentance? Can it outwear sin?
Vengeance is Thine, and on the worms of earth
It blighting falls, and blinding all things else.
We are made by Thee, predestined from the womb;
Nor shrine of peaceful monk, nor convent-bell
Tolled up the Alpine passes of the soul,

To lead the blinded traveller through the snows,
Can keep one sob of anguish from his heart
Who 's doomed to suffering! Days shall go and come,
And seasons fade and fall, and life renew
More intermittently its palsied beats;
Still woe survives to wring the dying thought,
And on the Cross of Doom the sufferer nail!