The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844

III

To my memory come back darkly in the stilly midnight hour,
Dim and faded now, the pictures of Life’s early glow and power,
When the world was arched with halos of hopes unmixed with fears,
And I marvelled they should tell me but of sorrowing and tears!
When my spirit loved to revel in its palaces of dreams,
Lit with lightning-flash of fancy, rosy bloom and starry gleams;
Listening to the choral harmonies that filled each lofty dome,
Like the clear and liquid music in the Nereid’s azure home.
And it looked from its proud towers on the Future’s magic scene,
Till the Present grew all gladsome with the brightness of its sheen;
Far off-notes of triumph swelling, floated up from years to come,
Silver blast of clarion blending with the roll of stormy drum!

IV

I remember, I remember, in my vigils cold and lone,
Brilliant reveries, burning fantasies, forever fled and gone!
Stately visions passed before me in the mystic realms of Mind,
Shapes of glory lightly wafted on the balmy summer wind;
Forms of pale and pensive loveliness, with eyes like pensile stars,
Such as never yet were beaming ’mid this world’s discordant jars.
And their whispers wild, unearthly, unutterable, fell
like a harp-string’s dying echo, or a fair young spirit’s knell,
On my soul amid the shadows of my native forest trees,
Rustling melancholy, lowly, in the wailing of the breeze,
Till, unknowing pain or agony, I’ve wept such blissful tears
As shall never, never flow again ’mid darker later years!

V

I am dreaming, I am dreaming of the bright ones that are gone,
The gifted and the beautiful, from Time’s sad wasting flown,
Of those beings pure and gentle, like the passing glow of even,
Sent to teach us of a better, higher heritage in Heaven!
Sweet they were as first wild flowers that herald coming spring,
Or a mellow gleam of sunset through the storm-cloud’s raven wing.
Fragile as that opening flower, fleeting as that golden ray,
Like the snow-wreath of the morning, full soon they fled away!
And fit it is it should be so; their mission here was brief
’Mid the blighting and the bitterness of Earth’s unquiet grief;
So their hands were meekly folded, and closed their dreamful eyes,
And they passed in stainless innocence to dwell beyond the skies!

VI

I am dreaming, I am dreaming of the lordly minds of old,
Whose ‘winged-words’ of power had once like glorious music rolled;
Lofty intellects that kindled as a far-off beacon flame,
Sending down the stream of ages the light of deathless fame;
Bursting through the rusty shackles of dark and spectral fears,
Leaving Freedom as a legacy to men of coming years.
And I’ve read in hoary records solemn story of the dead,
The mighty, the immortal, with their souls’ vast treasures fled.
The piercing eyes of Genius, lit with unearthly fire,
Seemed to thrill me as I listened to his wild and burning lyre;
And their spell was on my spirit in the starry cope above,
In the gush of morning sunlight, and the fervent glance of love.

VII

I am lonely, I am lonely! In the palace of my soul,
As I walk its lofty corridors, I read a mystic scroll,
And it seemed a fearful warning, yet I knew not whence it came,
Writ in wild and wondrous characters of rosy-colored flame;
And a deep voice murmured: ‘Destiny, that wrought thy web of life,
Hath inwoven fierce unrest, brilliant dreams, and fiery strife.
And this solemn spell shall bind thee, be thy shrinking what it may,
Strength, and Faith, and earnest Suffering to thy latest earthly day!’
Ever since a dusky Presence seemeth phantom-like to brood,
Dim and shadowy and tearful, o’er my haunted solitude;
And a wind-harp waileth lowly ‘mid the swell of joyous song,
Breathing from the lips of beauty o’er the listening festal throng.

VIII

I am weary, I am weary! Cometh not across my breast
Transient thought of that which shall be, presage of better rest?
And the sounds of early spring-time with an inner meaning fraught,
Seem the last notes of a requiem from some old minster brought;
Solemn mass for gentle spirits, the unsullied and the true,
Gone with all their bright aspirings, like the fragrant morning dew.
Yet the visions of their soulful glance, and the intellectual brow,
The memory of their poet words, is present with me now!
Oh! I would that I were slumbering where moaneth the sea-wave,
Where the setting sun might linger with a smile upon my grave!
Emblems fit of life’s dark heaving, and of that blessed shore
Where these weary Dreams and Memories shall sadden me no more!

A FIRST NIGHT OF RACINE

FROM DE JOUY’S ‘HERMITE’ OF THE FOURTH OF JANUARY, EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND TWELVE

Voilà de vos arrêts, Messieurs les Gens de Goût!

    Prior La Metromaine.

Every-body has a hobby-horse, as the English say, on which he is mounted, even when sneering at the steeds of his neighbors. The wits themselves are not exempt from this mental preöccupation, which brings every taste to bear upon only one point. Some ruin themselves in books, some in pictures and statues, others in minerals, shells, or medals. The bibliomaniac, the picture-dealer, the naturalist, the numismatist, all appear to me equally absurd. I speak of course of those who have the collecting mania without the love of science. They play at science as we play at cards, and the ridiculous part of the matter is, the perfect seriousness with which they do it.