Or looming up the heights,
Those awful spectres of the frozen zone
Splinter the crystal of heaven's sapphire dome,
With arrowy-glancing lights.
The while hoarse night winds rave,
The old year looking backward to his prime
With dim fond eyes, down the last steps of time
Goes maundering to his grave!
A FAREWELL
Down the steep west unrolled,
I watch the river of the sunset flow,
With all its crimson lights, and gleaming gold,
Into the dusk below.
And even as I gaze,
The soft lights fade,-the pageant gay is o'er,
And all is grey and dark, like those lost days,
The days that are no more.
No more through whispering pines,
I shall behold, in the else silent even,
The first faint star-watch set along the lines
Of the white tents of heaven.
Before the earliest buds
Have softly opened, heralding the May
With tender light illuming the gray woods,
I shall be gone away.
Ah! wood-walks winding sweet
Through all the valleys sloping to the west,
Where glad brooks wander with melodious feet,
In musical unrest,—
Ye will not miss me here
With all the bright things of the coming May,
And the rejoicing of the awakened year,—
I shall be far away.
Yet in your loneliest nooks,
I know where all the greenest mosses grow,
And where the violets lift their first sweet looks,
Out of the waning snow.