YOUTH AND CALM.
’Tis death! and peace indeed is here,
And ease from shame, and rest from fear.
There’s nothing can dismarble now
The smoothness of that limpid brow.
But is a calm like this, in truth,
The crowning end of life and youth?
And when this boon rewards the dead,
Are all debts paid, has all been said?
And is the heart of youth so light,
Its step so firm, its eye so bright,
Because on its hot brow there blows
A wind of promise and repose
From the far grave, to which it goes;
Because it has the hope to come,
One day, to harbor in the tomb?
Ah, no! the bliss youth dreams is one
For daylight, for the cheerful sun,
For feeling nerves and living breath;
Youth dreams a bliss on this side death.
It dreams a rest, if not more deep,
More grateful than this marble sleep;
It hears a voice within it tell,—
Calm’s not life’s crown, though calm is well.
’Tis all, perhaps, which man acquires,
But ’tis not what our youth desires.
A MEMORY-PICTURE.
Laugh, my friends, and without blame
Lightly quit what lightly came;
Rich to-morrow as to-day,
Spend as madly as you may!
I, with little land to stir,
Am the exacter laborer.
Ere the parting hour go by,
Quick, thy tablets, Memory!
Once I said, “A face is gone
If too hotly mused upon;
And our best impressions are
Those that do themselves repair.”
Many a face I so let flee—
Ah!-is faded utterly.
Ere the parting hour go by,
Quick, thy tablets, Memory!
Marguerite says, “As last year went,
So the coming year’ll be spent;
Some day next year, I shall be,
Entering heedless, kissed by thee.”
Ah, I hope! yet, once away,
What may chain us, who can say?
Ere the parting hour go by,
Quick, thy tablets, Memory!
Paint that lilac kerchief, bound
Her soft face, her hair around;
Tied under the archest chin
Mockery ever ambushed in.
Let the fluttering fringes streak
All her pale, sweet-rounded cheek.
Ere the parting hour go by,
Quick, thy tablets, Memory!
Paint that figure’s pliant grace
As she toward me leaned her face,
Half refused and half resigned,
Murmuring, “Art thou still unkind?”
Many a broken promise then
Was new made—to break again.
Ere the parting hour go by,
Quick, thy tablets, Memory!