Night Thoughts.
DARKNESS.
Go, bring the harp that once with dirges thrilled,
But now hangs hushed in leaden slumbers,
Save when the faltering hand untimely chilled
Steals o'er its chords in broken numbers.
It hangs in halls where shades of sorrow dwell,
Where echoless Silence tolls the passing bell,
Where shadowless Darkness weaves the shrouding spell
Of parting joys and parting years.
Go, bring it me, sweet friend, and ere we part,
A lay I'll frame, so sad 'twill wring thy heart
Of all its pity, all its tears
As fitful shadows round me gather fast,
And solemn watch my thoughts are holding,
Comes Memory, Panoramist of the Past.
The rising morn of life unfolding,
Now fade from view all living toil and strife;
Time past is now my present; death, my life;
All that exists is obsolete;
While o'er my soul there steals the pensive glow
Of sainted joys that young years only know,
And past scenes, looming dimly, rise and throw
Their lengthening shadows at my feet.
I see a morn domed in by pictured skies;
The dew is on its budding pleasures,
The gladsome, early, sunlight on it lies,
And to it from this dark my pent soul flies,
As misers nightly to their treasures.
And, as I look, I see a glittering train,
In airy throng, across the dreamlit plain,
Come dancing, dancing from the tomb;
Flitting in phantom silence on my sight;
In silence, yet all beautiful and bright,
The ghosts of joy, and hope, and bloom.
But passed me by; their lines of fading light
Tell of decay, of youth's and beauty's blight;
Then, like spent meteors shimmering through the night,
The vision melts in closing gloom.
Another day in sable vesture clad,
All drear with new blown pleasures blighted,
Comes blindly groping through the twilight sad,
As one in moonless mists benighted.
O! Day unhappy! could oblivion roll
Its slumberous billows o'er my shrinking soul,
Thee scarce I could, e'en then, forget:
A life, bereft of light, no memory need
To tell of night that ne'er to morning leads,
Of day that is forever set.
From yonder sky the noonward sun was torn,
Ere day dawn's rosy hues had banished;
A starless midnight blotted out the morn,
Ere childhood's dewy joys had vanished.
No slow paced twilight ushered in the night;
A spangled web, the Heavens were swept from sight;
The full moon fled and never waned;
And all of Earth that's beautiful and fair.
Became as shadows in the empty air—
A boundless, blackened blank remained!
I heard the gates of night, with sullen jar,
Close on the cheerful day forever;
Hope from my sky sank like the evening star,
Which finds in darkness, zenith never,
For scarce she knew, blithe offspring of the day,
How there to shine, where night held boundless sway;
And shapes of beauty, grace and bloom,
And fair-formed joys that once around me danced,
Bewildered grew, where sunbeams never glanced,
And lost their way in that wide gloom.
Pensylla, o'er me many sunless years
Have flown, since last the beams of heaven,
The soft ascent of morn through smiles and tears,
The sweet descent of dreamy even—
Or sight of wood and fields in green arrayed,
Vernal resplendence or Autumnal shade,
Or Winter's gloom or Summer's blaze;
Bird, beast or works that trophy man's abode,
Or he divine, the image of his God,
Met my rapt gaze.
Look, gentle guide! Thou see'st the imperial sun
Forth sending far his ambient glory,
O'er laughing fields and frowning highlands dun,
O'er glancing streams and woodlands hoary.
In orient clouds he steeps his amber hair,
With beams far slanting through the flaming air,
Bids Earth, with all her hymning sound, declare
The praise of everlasting light.
On my bared head I felt his pitying ray,
He loves to shine on my benighted way;
But ah, Pensylla! he brings to me no day—
Nor yet his setting, deeper night.