Yet in my dreams a form I view,
That thinks on me, and loves me too;
I start, and when the vision's flown,
I weep that I am all alone.
If far from me the Fates remove
Domestic peace, connubial love,
The prattling ring, the social cheer,
Affection's voice, affection's tear,
Ye sterner powers, that bind the heart,
To me your iron aid impart!
O teach me when the nights are chill,
And my fireside is lone and still;
When to the blaze that crackles near,
I turn a tired and pensive ear,
And Nature conquering bids me sigh
For love's soft accents whispering nigh;
O teach me, on that heavenly road,
That leads to Truth's occult abode,
To wrap my soul in dreams sublime,
Till earth and care no more be mine.
Let bless'd Philosophy impart
Her soothing measures to my heart;
And while with Plato's ravish'd ears
I list the music of the spheres,
Or on the mystic symbols pore,
That hide the Chald's sublimer lore,
I shall not brood on summers gone,
Nor think that I am all alone.
Fanny! upon thy breast I may not lie!
Fanny! thou dost not hear me when I speak!
Where art thou, love?—Around I turn my eye,
And as I turn, the tear is on my cheek.
Was it a dream? or did my love behold
Indeed my lonely couch?—Methought the breath
Fann'd not her bloodless lip; her eye was cold
And hollow, and the livery of death
Invested her pale forehead. Sainted maid!
My thoughts oft rest with thee in thy cold grave,
Through the long wintry night, when wind and wave
Rock the dark house where thy poor head is laid.
Yet, hush! my fond heart, hush! there is a shore
Of better promise; and I know at last,
When the long sabbath of the tomb is past,
We two shall meet in Christ—to part no more.
FRAGMENTS.[1]
Saw'st thou that light? exclaim'd the youth, and paused:
Through yon dark firs it glanced, and on the stream
That skirts the woods it for a moment play'd.
Again, more light it gleam'd,—or does some sprite
Delude mine eyes with shapes of wood and streams,
And lamp far beaming through the thicket's gloom,
As from some bosom'd cabin, where the voice
Of revelry, or thrifty watchfulness,
Keeps in the lights at this unwonted hour?
No sprite deludes mine eyes,—the beam now glows
With steady lustre.—Can it be the moon
Who, hidden long by the invidious veil
That blots the Heavens, now sets behind the woods?
No moon to-night has look'd upon the sea
Of clouds beneath her, answer'd Rudiger,
She has been sleeping with Endymion.
* * * * *
The pious man,
In this bad world, when mists and couchant storms
Hide Heaven's fine circlet, springs aloft in faith
Above the clouds that threat him, to the fields
Of ether, where the day is never veil'd
With intervening vapours, and looks down
Serene upon the troublous sea, that hides
The earth's fair breast, that sea whose nether face
To grovelling mortals frowns and darkens all;
But on whose billowy back, from man conceal'd,
The glaring sunbeam plays.
Lo! on the eastern summit, clad in gray,
Morn, like a horseman girt for travel, comes,
And from his tower of mist,
Night's watchman hurries down.
There was a little bird upon that pile;
It perch'd upon a ruin'd pinnacle,
And made sweet melody.
The song was soft, yet cheerful, and most clear,
For other note none swell'd the air but his.
It seem'd as if the little chorister,
Sole tenant of the melancholy pile,
Were a lone hermit, outcast from his kind,
Yet withal cheerful. I have heard the note
Echoing so lonely o'er the aisle forlorn,
——Much musing——
O pale art thou, my lamp, and faint
Thy melancholy ray:
When the still night's unclouded saint
Is walking on her way.
Through my lattice leaf embower'd,
Fair she sheds her shadowy beam,
And o'er my silent sacred room
Casts a checker'd twilight gloom;
I throw aside the learned sheet,
I cannot choose but gaze, she looks so mildly sweet.
Sad vestal, why art thou so fair,
Or why am I so frail?