Now the last day of many days,
All beautiful and bright as thou,
The loveliest and the last, is dead, _35
Rise, Memory, and write its praise!
And do thy wonted work and trace
The epitaph of glory fled;
For now the Earth has changed its face,
A frown is on the Heaven’s brow. _40
We wandered to the Pine Forest
That skirts the Ocean’s foam,
The lightest wind was in its nest,
The tempest in its home.
The whispering waves were half asleep, _45
The clouds were gone to play,
And on the woods, and on the deep
The smile of Heaven lay.
It seemed as if the day were one
Sent from beyond the skies, _50
Which shed to earth above the sun
A light of Paradise.
We paused amid the pines that stood,
The giants of the waste,
Tortured by storms to shapes as rude _55
With stems like serpents interlaced.
How calm it was—the silence there
By such a chain was bound,
That even the busy woodpecker
Made stiller by her sound _60
The inviolable quietness;
The breath of peace we drew
With its soft motion made not less
The calm that round us grew.
It seemed that from the remotest seat _65
Of the white mountain’s waste
To the bright flower beneath our feet,
A magic circle traced;—
A spirit interfused around,
A thinking, silent life; _70
To momentary peace it bound
Our mortal nature’s strife;—
And still, it seemed, the centre of
The magic circle there,
Was one whose being filled with love _75
The breathless atmosphere.