Filled with the kindred life which we respire?
We give thee passionate love that is not thine,
Thou vibratest before us, Nature's lyre,
Mute, till awaked to life by thought's enkindling fire!
By the vast memories thou dost create,
The rise and fall of empires typed by thee:
By the irrevocable laws of fate:
The fading of our own humanity,
Imaged on thy rich ground so tenderly;
By the affections that life's trials soothe,
Loves, hopes, and joys, that soon shall cease to be:
By the signs shown of thy departed youth,
I read thee as thou art, GOD's mirror of the truth.
Then be my bosom like yon open heaven,
Or the clear river, or ethereal air,
Thy images reflected in it given ;
Let me my faith and strength from thee repair:
Let me feel, gazing on thee, I, too, bear
In me the stamp of an immortal thing,
That I shall join the beauty which I share;
Pure as is now my thoughts' imagining,
My life a deathless change of everlasting spring.
THE Old Year on his couch was laid
Like an aged king forsaken,
In his need by those betrayed
Who had loved him and obeyed:
They had fled, alas! and left
That old man to pine away,
Of his state and strength bereft :
Fallen from him like leaves shaken
From the oak in winter's day,
When the breeze no answers waken
From its branches seared and grey.
SPRING who loved him in his youth,
With clear brow and opened eye
Looked like heaven-descended Truth
Smiling as she tended nigh:
With the golden crocus bound
Round her amaranthine hair,
And her brow with violets crowned;
While the young Hours round them circled,
Till youth seemed as if it were
An immortal green that myrtled
From her life embodied there.
But, at last, thought overcast
Her clear forehead, for she felt
That her pensile flowerets failed,
And their finer breath exhaled,
As air sultrier round them dwelt:
Till she gently from him passed:
For she knew her Sister drew
Nearer, as from him she flew.
On she came, that joyous creature,
Sunlight laughing from each feature!
Glorious SUMMER! her bright eyes
Lustreing forth from galaxies
Of flowers her crowned head enwreathing;
The rich life of roses breathing
From her lips entranced the heart:
Till the King forgot coy Spring
With her pale wreaths blossoming:
For the enchantress held a wand
That made time and life forgot:
Till he asked no heaven beyond
Being with her own inwrought,
Of her own bright life a part:
Taintless of earth's base alloy,
While intoxicate with joy.
But alas, the cup, while blending
Earth with heaven, its lees imparts:
And the longest day hath ending,
And joy, shadow-like, departs:
And she knew the hour was nearing
She her sister must pursue,
To guard chill or blight from searing
Flowers that from her breath renew
The fine life they from it grew.
But on him a look she stole
Of a long and last regret;
For she knew herself the soul
Of his spirit since they met ;
And on him her full eyes shed
Their latest lustre while she fled.
Then the staid King sighed, but sighing,
Stood a Vision by his side,
As if his own thought replying,
His heart's aching want supplied;
Raised like some immortal thing
Of the poet's imaging,
So she stood in glory there;
By her golden zone avowed,
And her cheeks' empurpled hue,
Full-eyed AUTUMN! while she threw
Round her, like an amber cloud,
Her rich threads of glittering hair!
Vine-leaves round her forehead twining,
That Bacchante rare poured forth,
From her cup of rubies shining,
Wine, the inspirer! that with mirth
The ecstatic soul convulses:
That inflames or soothes love's dart,
That restores the sinking pulses
Of the life-oppressed heart;
And the monarch gazed on her
As he were the idolater
Of that Nymph so wild, as she
Could not leave him like the rest:
As if immortality
Grew but from that panting breast.
But, alas! such may not be:
For she saw his locks were whitened,
That his eyes no longer lightened ;
That his heart no more expanded,
Nor his lip of pride commanded:
Yet, oh yet, life's sands withhold,
Ere from him for ever rolled!
In red harvest-fields, in bowers
With grapes' bacchanalian showers
Gushingly above him streaming,
Give the hours to rapture dreaming.
But such fleeting joys are hollow:
She must leave that scene enchanted:
Duty calls, and she must follow;
For the fruits her sister planted
Wither, if withheld the tone
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