Midnight is on the sea:
A soft and still repose
Steals o'er the untroubled lea
That darkly glows.
Hushed in their ocean caves
The winds their sleep prolong,
Or mourn along the waves
In dreamlike song.
Midnight is in the Heaven:
The planets of the air
To her as vassals given,
Wander and worship there.
No sound comes from her throne,
Piled in those lofty skies,
Calmly she broods upon
Her own deep mysteries.
Yet in her silence deep,
There breathes a language fraught
With spell to wake and keep
The energies of thought;
And on her awful brow
Strange characters appear,
The portraitures to show
Of the advancing year.
Night is a fearful book,
And in her darkling skies
Did Seers and Magi look,
Searching earth's destinies.
But oh! had I the power
To ancient science given,
I would not use this hour
To rifle Heaven.
The night is Memory's sphere,
In light and shadow cast;
In her dim disk appear
The last—the past.
The lov'd ones of our youth
Hasten'd to life's last bourne;
Dear to the heart's deep truth,
Will they return?
Ask of the phantoms pale
That haunt the hollow sky,
Ask of the fitful gale
That mourns and passes by,
Invoke the spirits' home,
Unsearchable, unseen—
Where do the wanderers roam?
Are they as they have been?
Silence is on the land,
No voice comes from the sea,
No spell can reach thy strand,
Thou dim Eternity!
Fled like the cloudy rack
With morning's early breath,
What night shall bring them back?
The night that brings us death!
STETE SUPER VIAS ANTIGUAS.
My heart lies buried with the past,
'Mid scenes where fleeting memory strays
And time its darkening shadows cast
O'er all the marks of by-gone days;
I look in vain for ancient ways—
The olden paths are worn and gone;
No friend that trod them here delays,
I pass benighted and alone.
Yet in this mist of life and mind,
Which ever dark and darker grows,
There is one living lamp enshrin'd,
Whose ray in deathless lustre glows.
That star-like light my God bestows
To break the deep sepulchral gloom;
Its beams Eternity disclose,
And show the garden round the tomb.