W. H. MAGEE.
(A friend of early days.)
You saw, my friend, when last we met, Time’s sober reckoning on my face; But neither time nor change of place Can cause my spirit to forget One honest throb, one living trace Of friendship, till life’s sun shall set,—
Such friendship as I’ve found in you,— A glory that unites and binds The poetry of kindred minds, Forever stedfast, ever true.
The years are drifting fast and far; We half-way hear the haunted river Whose monody is, Never, never! We half-discern the misty bar Past which no soul returneth ever; Our lamp is not the morning star.
Nor can we of our lot complain; We’ve had of bliss an ample share; We banquet on ambrosial fare And nectar wines of heart and brain.
No heritage of goods or lands We owe to an ancestral line; Obedient to the voice divine, We earn our bread with willing hands.
No drones nor parasites are we; And hence brave comrade, you and I Can lift our foreheads to the sky And plead our lawful right, to be,— To be, enjoy, and sternly try To leave the world more fair and free
Than when upon its round we fell,— Two feeble rays that wandered far From nebula, or hidden star— Whence? wherefore? whither? who can tell?
We only know that we are here, That life is brief and death is sure; That it is noble to endure, And keep the eye of conscience clear. Will love and knowledge ever cure The evils of this troubled sphere?
We look in Nature’s face, and doubt Whether she means us good or ill; We know that she can stab and kill, And blow our taper-joys all out.
An angel and a fiend by turns, A grace, a fury,—all we find As shapings of the human mind In her strange aspect shines and burns; One moment infinitely kind; The next, a breaking heart she spurns.
Her lightnings smite; her arctic breath Congeals the traveller’s blood, and lo, He sinks into a tomb of snow! No prayer can bribe the clutch of death.
She lets her savage cyclones loose, She bids her flaming lavas flow, And sudden as a ruffian’s blow Great cities perish! What excuse? Does God, indeed, ordain it so? Is not the problem more abstruse?
If we but mark how finely blend The foul and fair, the dark and bright That in this Mother-Sphinx unite, We may believe her still our friend.
Excessive beauty floods the sky, And earth is fair through all the year;— In autumn, when the woods are sere, In winter, when the white winds fly, And blow their trumpets far and near, There’s beauty for a loving eye.
The sculptor, in long ages past, Enamoured, taxed his glorious art That he might press his hungry heart To Nature’s charms, and hold her fast.
Like him, we shall not fail to find On earth, in sky, in air, in sea, Many a dazzling deity, If pure in heart, and great in mind.
Then let us live as best we may, And bid our souls ascend, and sing Like birds and brooks that greet the spring. Shall we be found less wise than they? Hence, Care, upon thy ebon wing! I’m happy with my friend to-day.