| |
| TAKE back into thy bosom, earth, | |
| This joyous, Ma-eyed morrow, | |
| The gentlest child that ever mirth | |
| Gave to be rear’d by sorrow! | |
| ’T is hard—while rays half green, half gold, | 5 |
| Through vernal bowers are burning, | |
| And streams their diamond-mirrors hold | |
| To summer’s face returning— | |
| To say we ’re thankful that his sleep | |
| Shall never more be lighter, | 10 |
| In whose sweet-tongued companionship | |
| Stream, bower, and beam grew brighter! | |
| |
| But all the more intensely true | |
| His soul gave out each feature | |
| Of elemental love—each hue | 15 |
| And grace of golden nature; | |
| The deeper still beneath it all | |
| Lurk’d the keen jags of anguish; | |
| The more the laurels clasp’d his brow | |
| Their poison made it languish. | 20 |
| Seem’d it that like the nightingale | |
| Of his own mournful singing, | |
| The tenderer would his song prevail | |
| While most the thorn was stinging. | |
| |
| So never to the desert-worn | 25 |
| Did fount bring freshness deeper, | |
| Than that his placid rest this morn | |
| Has brought the shrouded sleeper. | |
| That rest may lap his weary head | |
| Where charnels choke the city, | 30 |
| Or where, mid woodlands, by his bed | |
| The wren shall wake its ditty; | |
| But near or far, while evening’s star | |
| Is dear to hearts regretting, | |
| Around that spot admiring thought | 35 |
| Shall hover, unforgetting. | |
| |
| And if this sentient, seething world | |
| Is, after all, ideal, | |
| Or in the immaterial furl’d, | |
| Alone resides the real, | 40 |
| Freed one! there ’s a wail for thee this hour | |
| Through thy lov’d elves’ dominious; | |
| Hush’d is each tiny trumpet-flower, | |
| And droopeth Ariel’s pinions; | |
| Even Puck, dejected, leaves his swing, | 45 |
| To plan, with fond endeavor, | |
| What pretty buds and dews shall keep | |
| Thy pillow bright for ever. | |
| |
| And higher, if less happy, tribes, | |
| The race of early childhood, | 50 |
| Shall miss thy whims of frolic wit, | |
| That in the summer wild-wood, | |
| Or by the Christmas hearth, were hail’d, | |
| And hoarded as a treasure | |
| Of undecaying merriment | 55 |
| And ever-changing pleasure. | |
| Things from thy lavish humor flung | |
| Profuse as scents, are flying | |
| This kindling morn, when blooms are born | |
| As fast as blooms are dying. | 60 |
| |
| Sublimer art owned thy control: | |
| The minstrel’s mightiest magic, | |
| With sadness to subdue the soul, | |
| Or thrill it with the tragic. | |
| Now listening Aram’s fearful dream, | 65 |
| We see beneath the willow | |
| That dreadful thing, or watch him steal, | |
| Guilt-lighted, to his pillow. | |
| Now with thee roaming ancient groves, | |
| We watch the woodman felling | 70 |
| The funeral elm, while through its boughs | |
| The ghostly wind comes knelling. | |
| |
| Dear worshipper of Dian’s face | |
| In solitary places, | |
| Shalt thou no more steal, as of yore, | 75 |
| To meet her white embraces? | |
| Is there no purple in the rose | |
| Henceforward to thy senses? | |
| For thee have dawn and daylight’s close | |
| Lost their sweet influences? | 80 |
| No!—by the mental night untam’d | |
| Thou took’st to death’s dark portal, | |
| The joy of the wide universe | |
| Is now to thee immortal! | |
| |
| How fierce contrasts the city’s roar | 85 |
| With thy new-conquer’d quiet!— | |
| This stunning hell of wheels that pour | |
| With princes to their riot! | |
| Loud clash the crowds—the busy clouds | |
| With thunder-noise are shaken, | 90 |
| While pale, and mute, and cold, afar | |
| Thou liest, men-forsaken. | |
| Hot life reeks on, nor recks that one— | |
| The playful, human-hearted— | |
| Who lent its clay less earthiness, | 95 |
| Is just from earth departed. | |
| |
