ORPHAN hours, the year is dead,
Come and sigh, come and weep!
Merry hours, smile instead,
For the year is but asleep.
See, it smiles as it is sleeping,
Mocking your untimely weeping.
As an earthquake rocks a corse
In its coffin in the clay,
So White Winter, that rough nurse,
Rocks the dead-cold year to-day;
Solemn hours! wait aloud
For your mother in her shroud.
As the wild air stirs and sways
The tree-swung cradle of a child,
So the breath of these rude days
Rocks the year:-be calm and mild,
Trembling hours; she will arise
With new love within her eyes.
January grey is here,
Like a sexton by her grave;
February bears the bier,
March with grief doth howl and rave,
And April weeps-but, O ye hours, Follow with May's fairest flowers. January 1st, 1821.
ROUGH wind, that moanest loud
Grief too sad for song;
Wild wind, when sullen cloud
Knells all the night long;
Sad storm, whose tears are vain,
Bare woods, whose branches stain,
Deep caves and dreary main,
Wail, for the world's wrong!
FAR, far away, O ye
Halcyons of memory,
Seek some far calmer nest
Than this abandoned breast;-
No news of your false spring
To my heart's winter bring;
Once having gone, in vain
Ye come again.
Vultures, who build your bowels
High in the Future's towers,
Withered hopes on hopes are spread,
Dying joys, choked by the dead,
Will serve your beaks for prey
Many a day.
ORPHAN hours, the year is dead,
Come and sigh, come and weep!
Merry hours, smile instead,
For the year is but asleep.
See, it smiles as it is sleeping,
Mocking your untimely weeping.
As an earthquake rocks a corse
In its coffin in the clay,
So White Winter, that rough nurse,
Rocks the dead-cold year to-day;
Solemn hours! wait aloud
For your mother in her shroud.
As the wild air stirs and sways
The tree-swung cradle of a child,
So the breath of these rude days
Rocks the year: -be calm and mild,
Trembling hours; she will arise
With new love within her eyes.
January grey is here,
Like a sexton by her grave;
February bears the bier,
March with grief doth howl and rave,
Follow with May's fairest flowers.
YE hasten to the dead! What seek ye there,
Ye restless thoughts and busy purposes
Of the idle brain, which the world's livery wear?
O thou quick Heart, which pantest to possess
All that anticipation feigneth fair!
Thou vainly curious mind which wouldest guess
Whence thou didst come, and whither thou may'st go,
And that which never yet was known wouldst know-
Oh, whither hasten ye that thus ye press
With such swift feet life's green and pleasant path,
Seeking alike from happiness and woe
A refuge in the cavern of grey death?
O heart, and mind, and thoughts! What thing do you Hope to inherit in the grave below?
NOR happiness, nor majesty, nor fame,
Nor peace, nor strength, nor skill in arms or arts,
Shepherd those herds whom tyranny makes tame;
Verse echoes not one beating of their hearts,
History is but the shadow of their shame,
Art veils her glass, or from the pageant starts
As to oblivion their blind millions fleet,
Staining that Heaven with obscene imagery
Of their own likeness. What are numbers knit
By force or custom? Man who man would be,
Must rule the empire of himself; in it
Must be supreme, establishing his throne
On vanquished will, quelling the anarchy
Of hopes and fears, being himself alone..
ALAS! good friend, what profit can you see
In hating such a hateless thing as me?
There is no sport in hate where all the rage
Is on one side. In vain would you assuage
Your frowns upon an unresisting smile,
In which not even contempt lurks, to beguile
Your heart, by some faint sympathy of hate.
Oh conquer what you cannot satiate!
For to your passion I am far more coy
Than ever yet was coldest maid or boy
In winter noon. Of your antipathy
If I am the Narcissus, you are free
To pine into a sound with hating me.
LIFT not the painted veil which those who live
Call Life though unreal shapes be pictured there,
And it but mimic all we would believe
With colours idly spread:-behind, lurk Fear
And Hope, twin destinies; who ever weave
The shadows, which the world calls substance, there.
|