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IN YOUTH I HAVE KNOWN ONE”

How often we forget all time, when lone

Admiring Nature’s universal throne;

Her woods—her wilds—her mountains—the intense

Reply of Hers to Our intelligence!

I

IN youth I have known one with whom the Earth

In secret communing held—as he with it,

In daylight, and in beauty, from his birth:

Whose fervid, flickering torch of life was lit

From the sun and stars, whence he had drawn forth

A passionate light such for his spirit was fit

And yet that spirit knew—not in the hour

Of its own fervor—what had o’er it power.

II

Perhaps it may be that my mind is wrought

To a fever* by the moonbeam that hangs o’er,

But I will half believe that wild light fraught

With more of sovereignty than ancient lore

Hath ever told—or is it of a thought

The unembodied essence, and no more

That with a quickening spell doth o’er us pass

As dew of the night-time, o’er the summer grass?

III

Doth o’er us pass, when, as th’ expanding eye

To the loved object—so the tear to the lid

Will start, which lately slept in apathy?

And yet it need not be—(that object) hid

From us in life—but common—which doth lie

Each hour before us—but then only bid

With a strange sound, as of a harp-string broken

T’ awake us—’Tis a symbol and a token

IV

Of what in other worlds shall be—and given

In beauty by our God, to those alone

Who otherwise would fall from life and Heaven

Drawn by their heart’s passion, and that tone,

That high tone of the spirit which hath striven

Though not with Faith—with godliness—whose throne

With desperate energy ‘t hath beaten down;

Wearing its own deep feeling as a crown.

* Query “fervor”?—ED.

A PÆAN.

I.

How shall the burial rite be read?

The solemn song be sung?

The requiem for the loveliest dead,

That ever died so young?

II.

Her friends are gazing on her,

And on her gaudy bier,

And weep!—oh! to dishonor

Dead beauty with a tear!

III.

They loved her for her wealth—

And they hated her for her pride—

But she grew in feeble health,

And they love her—that she died.

IV.

They tell me (while they speak

Of her “costly broider’d pall”)

That my voice is growing weak—

That I should not sing at all—

V.

Or that my tone should be

Tun’d to such solemn song

So mournfully—so mournfully,

That the dead may feel no wrong.

VI.

But she is gone above,

With young Hope at her side,

And I am drunk with love

Of the dead, who is my bride.—

VII.

Of the dead—dead who lies

All perfum’d there,

With the death upon her eyes,

And the life upon her hair.

VIII.

Thus on the coffin loud and long

I strike—the murmur sent

Through the grey chambers to my song,

Shall be the accompaniment.

IX.

Thou died’st in thy life’s June—

But thou did’st not die too fair:

Thou did’st not die too soon,

Nor with too calm an air.

X.

From more than friends on earth,

Thy life and love are riven,

To join the untainted mirth

Of more than thrones in heaven—

XII.

Therefore, to thee this night

I will no requiem raise,

But waft thee on thy flight,

With a Pæan of old days.