NOTHING.
'O quantum est in rebus inane!'
'Tis nothing all--our hopes our fears,
Our pleasure's smiles, our sorrow's tears,
Our dreams of pride, our thoughts of care,
Are lighter, emptier than air.
'Tis nothing all--the splendid earth,
The boons of art's, or Nature's birth,
With all that memory recalls,
From nothing rose--to nothing falls.
The emmet Man toils on in vain
To monument his hours of pain,
While giant Time pursues his way,
And marks his footsteps with decay;
Tracing on all that he destroys
The epitaph of man's short joys,
The sentence of the great and small,
The certainty--'tis nothing all.
'Tis nothing all--the mighty man
Who conquer'd realms and world's o'erran;
What is he now? Himself? his fame?
A heap of dust--an empty name.
Rome! Rome! Where is the wealth, the power,
The pride of thy meridian hour,
Thy tyrant standard which, unfurl'd,
Waved o'er a tributary world?
'Tis nothing all--and Canæ's plain,
And Carthage towers, and Leuctra's slain,
And all the deeds that deathless seem
Are broken, like an idle dream.
Without the better hope that flows
From the pure skies o'er human woes,
Like sunset ere the night succeed,
All would be nothingness indeed.
And yet we love to leave behind,
Some faint memorial to mankind,
A trace to fellow things of clay
Of something kindred passed away.
And when Time's work is wrought on me,
Some eye perchance these lines may see,
Without which, to the world and you,
My memory had been nothing too.
One of the families of which our little circle was now composed had passed some time in Brittany; and amongst the first stories contributed was one by Colonel C----, under the awful title of "Le Sorcier," preceeded by some observations upon that province.