"And I alone was cursed and loathed;
'Twas in a garden bower
I knelt one eve, and scalding tears
Fell fast on many a flower;
And as I rose I marked with awe
And agonizing grief,
A frail mimosa at my feet
Fold close each fragile leaf."
"Alas! how dark my lot if thus
A plant could shrink from me;
But when I looked again I marked
That from the honey-bee,
The falling leaf, the bird's gay wing,
It shrunk with pain and fear,
A kindred presence I had found,
Life waxed sublimely clear."
"I climbed the lofty mountain height
And communed with the skies,
And felt within my grateful heart
Strange aspirations rise.
Oh! what was this humanity
When every beaming star
Was filled with lucid intellect,
Congenial, though afar."
"I mused beneath the avalanche,
And traced the sparkling stream,
Till Nature's face became to me
A passion and a dream:"
Then thirsting for a higher lore
I left my childhood's home,
And stayed not till I gazed upon
The hills of fallen Rome.
"I stood amid the forms of light,
Seraphic and divine,
The painter's wand had summoned from
The dim Ideal's shrine;
And felt within my fevered soul
Ambition's wasting fire,
And seized the pencil with a vague
And passionate desire"
"To shadow forth, with lineaments
Of earth, the phantom throng
That swept before my sight in thought,
And lived in storied song.
Vain, vain the dream—as well might I
Aspire to build a star,
Or pile the gorgeous sunset clouds
That glitter from afar."
"The threads of life have worn away,
Discordantly they thrill,
But soon the sounding chords will be
Forever mute and still.
And in the spirit-land that lies
Beyond, so calm and gray,
I shall aspire with truer aim—
Ave Maria! pray!"