As Life's receding sunset fades
And night descends,
I calmly watch the gathering shades,
As darkness stealthily invades
And daylight ends.
Earth's span is drawing to its close,
With every breath;
My pain-racked brain no respite knows,
Yet shrinks it, from the grim repose
It feels in death.
The curtain falls on Life's last scene,
The end is neared;
At last I face death's somber screen,
The fleeting joys which intervene
Have disappeared.
And as a panoramic scroll
The past unreels;
The mocking past, beyond control,
Though buried, as a parchment roll,
Its tale reveals.
I stand before the dread, unknown,
Yet solemn fact;
I see the seeds of folly sown
In wayward years, maturely grown,
Nor can retract.
My weaknesses rise to my sight;
And now, too late,
I fain would former actions right,
Which years have buried in their flight;
Now sealed by fate.
My frailties and iniquities
I plainly see;
Committed acts accusive rise,
Omitted duties criticise
In mockery.
I feel I have offended oft,
E'en at my best
Have failed to guide my course aloft;
Perhaps in trival hour, have scoffed
With idle jest.
Prone to misgiving, prone to doubt,
And frail from birth;
More light and frivolous than devout;
With life's brief candle flickering out,
I speed from earth.
Can grief excuse indifference
With groan or tear?
Can deep remorse and penitence,
Or anguish mitigate offense
With pang sincere?
Ah! Tears can ne'er unlock the past
Which opens not;
And what is done is welded fast,
Through all eternity to last,
Nor change one jot.
Whate'er may lie beyond the veil
I calmly face,
And sink, as grievous tears bewail
My faults and imperfections frail,
In death's embrace.
And as I think the matter o'er,
Pensive and sad,
While its shortcomings I deplore,
The fruits which my existence bore
Were not all bad.
From all which can rejoice or grieve
I shortly go,
And now, in life's declining eve
I wonder, hope, try to believe--
Soon I shall know!
My spirit flees, as night enwraps,
To its reward;
The earth recedes, I feel it lapse;
I sink as dissolution snaps
The silver cord.
O, Thou whose presence I can feel
Each hour I live,
While passing through death's stern ordeal,
Wilt Thou Thy mercy still reveal,
And still forgive?
Deprive This Strange and Complex World.
Deprive this strange and complex world
Of all the charms of art;
Deprive it of those sweeter joys
Which music doth impart;
But oh, preserve that smile, which tells
The secret of the heart!
The world may lose its massive piles
Which point their spires above;
May spare the tuneful nightingale
And gently cooing dove;
But woe betide it, if it lose
The sentiment of love!
The Legend of St. Regimund.
St. Regimund, e'er he became a saint,
Was much imbued with vulgar earthly taint;
E'er he renounced the honors of a Knight
And doffed his coat of mail and helmet bright,
For sober cassock and monastic hood,
Leaving the castle for the cloister rude,
And changed the banquet's sumptuous repast
For frugal crusts and the ascetic fast;
Forsook his charger and equipments for
The crucifix and sacerdotal war;
While yet with valiant sword and blazoned shield
He braved the dangers of the martial field,
Or sought the antlered trophies of the chase
In forest and sequestered hunting place;
Or, tiring of the hunt's exciting sport,
Enjoyed the idle pleasures of the court,
Whiling away the time with games of chance,
With music and the more voluptuous dance,
The hollow paths of vanity pursued,
Laughed, jested, swore, drank, danced, and even wooed;
No tongue more prone to questionable wit,
Nor chaste, when time and place demanded it;
His basso voice, both voluble and strong,
Excelled in wassail mirth and ribald song;
He swore with oaths most impious and unblest;
Ate much, drank more, on these lines did his best;
Caroused by day, caroused by candle light,
In fact behaved like any other knight.
This medieval knight (the legend saith)
For months would scarcely draw a sober breath;
But as his appetite grew more and more
Drank each day worse than on the day before;
Was drunk all night, all day continued so,
Indulged in every vice he chanced to know.
But long debauch and riotous excess
Reduce their strongest votaries to distress;
When nature can the strain no longer stand
She chastens with a sure and irate hand,
So when the day of reckoning had come,
She smote with fever and delirium
This valiant knight whom we have tried to paint;
A very slim foundation for a saint!
The crisis reached, his fever stricken brain
Surrendered reason to excessive pain;
Nor moment's respite, comatose and kind,
Relieved the raging furnace of his mind;
And gruesome spectres, awful and unreal,
Through his disordered vagaries would steal;
When last his scorching temples sought repose
In hasty nap or intermittent doze,
His eyes beheld, though starting from his head,
A grizzly figure leaning o'er his bed,
With aspect foul beyond descriptive word,
As one for months in sepulchre interred,
Restored again to animated breath,
A weird composite type of life and death;
With countenance most hideous and vile,
Leering with ghastly and unearthly smile;
Pointing its shriveled finger, as in scorn,
Of mockery and accusation born.
As he beheld in terror and surprise
This gruesome shape which mocked before his eyes
He could distinguish in its haughty mien
A bearing, something as his own had been;
Nor had its withered visage quite the look
Of vampire, ghoul or evanescent spook;
And as the apparition o'er him bent,
He saw that every seam or lineament,
Contour of feature, prominence of bone,
Bore all a striking semblance to his own.
The horror stricken knight essayed to speak,
But words responded tremulous and weak,
And mustering his dissipated strength,
A sitting posture he assumed at length,--
"Whate'er thou art, thou harbinger of gloom,
Thou fiend or ghoul, fresh from the new made tomb,
Thou vampire, diabolical and fell,
Thou stygian shade or denizen of hell,
I charge thee, thing of evil, to confess
Why thou hast thus disturbed my sore distress.
Why hast thou burst my chamber's bolted door
Where guest unbidden never trod before?
Break this suspense, so horrible and still!
Declare thy tidings, be they good or ill,
Be thou from Heaven or from the realms below.
I charge thee speak, be thou a friend or foe;
Break thou thy silence, ominous and deep,
Or hence! Pursue thy way and let me sleep!"
The grizzly spectre, still more ghastly grown,
Surveyed with visage obdurate as stone,
Then smiled with grimace of derisive craft,
And in a most repugnant manner, laughed,
But all the knight discerned with eye and ear,
Was his own maudlin laugh and drunken leer.
"Breathe thou thy message," shrieked the frantic knight
"Discharge thy purpose, though it blast and blight,
I charge thee, speak, by all that is most fair.
By all most foul, I charge thee to declare;
By my bright armor and my trusty sword;
I charge thee, speak, by Holy Rood and Word!"
He sank exhausted, in such pallid fright
The snowy sheets looked dark beside such white.
The spectre paused in silence for awhile,
Then broke into a most repulsive smile,
And answered in a weird and hollow tone,
Enough to freeze the marrow in the bone:
"I am thy blasted spirit's counterpart,
A body fit for thy most evil heart,
I am thy life, its psychic image sent
To bear thee company, till thou repent."
'Tis said, for forty days the spectre stayed.
For forty days the knight incessant prayed;
With scourge, with vigil and ascetic rite,
With fast, with groan remorseful and contrite,
He cleansed his blackened spirit by degrees,
And purified it from its vanities;
And as he prayed, the spectre's gruesome scowl
Grew day by day less hideous and foul,
As he waxed holy, it became more bright;
And after forty days, arrayed in white
It spread its spotless arms, devoid of taint
Above this erstwhile knight and henceforth saint
In benediction, as he knelt in prayer,--
Then vanished instantly to empty air.
Such is the tale, embellished by the Muse,
'Tis true or false, believe it as you choose;
Some folks accept the story out and out,
While some prefer to entertain a doubt.
But if it be fictitious and unreal,
'Tis not subscribed and sworn, and bears no seal;
It points a moral, as the legend old,
If it conveys it, 'twas not vainly told,
For should I such an apparition see--
I think t'would almost make a monk of me.
As The Indian.
_Lo, the poor Indian, whose untutored mind
Sees God in the clouds and hears Him in the wind.
--Pope._
Within the wind, my untaught ear
The voice of Deity can hear,
And in the fleeting cloud discern
His movements, vast and taciturn;
For in the universe I trace
The wondrous grandeur of His face.
I see him in each blade of grass,
Each towering peak and mountain pass;
Each forest, river, lake and fen
Reveals the God of worlds and men;
His works of wisdom prove to me,
A wise, creative Deity.
The Fragrant Perfume of the Flowers.
The fragrant perfume of the flowers,
Exuding in the summer hours,
E'en as the altar's incense rare
Disseminated through the air,
May never reach the azure skies,
Yet can the earth aromatize.
And so the voice of secret prayer,
Ascending on the wings of air,
Though it should reach no listening ear,
Of Deity inclined to hear,
Still soothes the anguish of the mind,
And leaves a tranquil peace behind.
An Answer.
When passing years have streaked with frost
These tresses now as jet,
When life's meridian is crossed
And beauty's sun has set,
When youth's last fleeting charm is lost,
Wilt thou be constant yet,
Nor time thy sentiment exhaust
And cause thee to forget?
If so--
My answer, I confess,
Shall be a calm, decided "Yes";
But otherwise a "No"!
Fame.
There is a cliff, no matter where,
Which softened by the agencies
Of rain, exposure to the air,
And alternating thaw and freeze,
Most readily admits the edge
Of chisel, or the sharpened wedge.
The travelers, while passing by,
Within its shade find welcome rest;
And one of them mechanically,
As is a custom in the west,
Upon its surface stern and gray
Carved out his name, and went his way.
Though inartistic and uncouth,
That effort of a novice hand
Exemplifies a striking truth,
And may Time's ravages withstand,
To be by future ages read,
When years and centuries have fled.
So on life's mighty thoroughfare,
The multitude of every class
Leave no inscriptions chiseled, where
Their transient footsteps chanced to pass,
And waft to each succeeding age
No echoes from their pilgrimage.
Though many pass, yet few record
Their names in characters sublime,
By grand achievement, work or word
Upon the monolith of Time;
But few inscribe a lasting name
On the eternal cliffs of Fame.
The First Storm.
The leafless branch and meadow sere,
The dull and leaden skies,
Join with the mournful wind and drear
In dirges for the passing year,
Which unreturning flies.
The night in starless gloom descends,
Nor can the pale moonshine
Break through the clouds whose veil extends
In boundless form, and darkly blends
With the horizon's line.
Fond nature, in a playful mood,
In cover of the night,
Arrays the plain and forest rude,
The city and the solitude,
In robe of spotless white.
Thoughts.
I dug a grave, one smiling April day,
A grave whose small proportions testified
To empty arms, and playthings put away,
To ears which heard, when only fancy cried;
I wondered, as I shaped that little mound,
If in my home such grief should e'er be found.
I dug a grave, 'twas in the month of June;
A grave for one who at his zenith died;
When, on that mound with floral tributes strewn,
The tear-drops fell of one but late his bride,
I wondered if upon my silent bier
Should rest the moist impression of a tear.
I dug a grave by Autumn's sober light,
A grave of full dimensions; 'twas for one
Whose hair had changed its raven hue to white,
Whose course had finished with the setting sun;
I wondered, as I toiled with pick and spade,
Where, and by whom, would my last home be made.
From A Saxon Legend.
Within a vale in distant Saxony,
In time uncertain, though 'twas long ago.
There dwelt a woman, most unhappily,
From borrowed trouble, and imagined woe.
Hers was a husband generous, and kind,
Her children, three, were not of uncouth mold;
Hers was a thatch which mocked at rain and wind;
Within her secret purse were coins of gold.
The drouth had ne'er descended on her field,
Nor had distemper sore distressed her kine;
The vine had given its accustomed yield,
So that her casks were filled with ruddy wine.
Her sheep and goats waxed fat, and ample fleece
Rewarded every harvest of the shear;
Her lambs all bleated in sequestered peace,
Nor prowling wolf occasioned nightly fear.
With all she fretted, pined, and brooded sore,
Harbored each slight vexation, courted grief,
Shut out the smiling sunshine from her door,
And magnified each care to bas relief.
Still waxed her grievous burden more and more,
Till, with a resolution, rash and blind,
At dead of night she fled her humble door,
As if to leave her grievous load behind.
She journeyed as the night wore slowly on,
Unmindful of the tuneful nightingale,
Till in due time her footsteps fell upon
A hill, the demarcation of the vale.
As Lot's wife, in her flight, could not refrain
From viewing foul Gomorrah's funeral pyre,
From one last glance across that ancient plain,
At guilty Sodom wreathed in vengeful fire;
So when this woman reached the summit's crest,
She turned her eyes in one last farewell look,
The fruitful vale lay stretched in placid rest,
And all was silent save the breeze and brook.
The moon in partial fullness, mild, serene,
Flooding the landscape with her mellow light,
Illumined every old familiar scene,
Brought their associations to her sight.
When, lo! as if by touch of magic wand,
On every roof, of tile, of thatch or wood,
As instantly as magic doth respond,
A cross, of various size and form there stood.
O'er homes unknown to frown or grievous word,
O'er homes where laughter hid the silent wail,
O'er homes where discontent was never heard,
Huge crosses glistened in the moonlight pale.
A cross o'er every habitation rose,
O'er ducal palace, and the cottage small
Where slept the husbandman in deep repose;
And, lo, her cross was smallest of them all!
Christmas Chimes.
Once more the merry Christmas bells,
Are ringing far and wide;
Their chime in rhythmic chorus swells,
While every brazen throat foretells,
A joyous Christmastide.
What is the burden of your chime,
Ye bells of Christmastide?
What tidings in your clangorous rhyme,
What message would your tongues sublime
To human hearts confide?
Our chime is of salvation's plan,
And every Christmastide
Since Christmas bells to chime, began
We've caroled Heaven's gift to man,
A Saviour crucified.
The Unknowable.
O! Sun, resplendent in the smiling morn,
As thou dost view the wastes of earth and sky,
Canst thou behold the realms of the Unborn,
Canst thou behold the realms of those who die?
Where dwells the spirit e'er its mortal birth,
E'er yet it suffereth
The pain and sorrow incident to earth?
Where after death?
The Sun gave answer, with refulgent glow:
Child of a fleeting hour, thou too must die to know.
Canst tell, thou jeweled canopy of space,
Bewildering, and boundless to the eyes,
Knowest thou the unborn spirits' dwelling place?
Knowest thou the distant regions of the skies
Where rest the spirits freed from mundane strife,
From mortal grief and care?
Knowest thou the secret of the future life?
Canst thou tell where?
From Space infinite echoed the reply:
Child of a transient day, thou too, to know, must die.
Ye Winds who blow and cleave the formless skies,
Ye Winds who blow with desolating breath,
Can ye reveal pre-natal mysteries,
And can ye solve the mystery of death?
Within thy ambient and viewless folds
Imprisoned in the air,
May not the spirits wait their earthly moulds?
Then tell ye where.
The answer came invisible and low:
Frail child of earthly clay, thou too must die to know.
What are your tidings, O ye raging Seas?
Do your waves wash the islands of the blest,
Or view the Gardens of Hesperides?
Know you the unborn spirits' place of rest?
And do your waters lave that unknown shore?
And when the night is gone,
Shall the freed spirit, tired and faint no more,
Behold the dawn?
The sad sea murmured, as its waves rolled high:
As all those gone before, thou, too, to know, must die.
The Suicide.
What anguish rankled 'neath that silent breast?
What spectral figures mocked those staring eyes,
Luring them on to Stygian mysteries?
What overpowering sense of grief distressed?
What desperation nerved that rigid hand
To pull the trigger with such deadly aim?
What deep remorse, or terror, overcame
The dread inherent, of death's shadowy strand?
Perhaps the hand of unrelenting fate
Fell with such tragic pressure, that the mind
In frenzy, uncontrollable and blind,
Sought but the darkness, black and desolate.
Perhaps 'twas some misfortune's stunning blight,
Perhaps unmerited, though deep disgrace,
Or vision of a wronged accusing face
Pictured indelibly before the sight.
Perhaps the gnawing of some secret sin,
Some aberration fraught with morbid gloom,
A buried hope which ever burst its tomb,
Despondency, disaster, or chagrin.
That heart which throbbed in pain and discontent
Is silent as the grave for which it yearned;
That brain, which once with proud ambition burned,
Now oozes through the bullet's ghastly rent.
Those eyes, transfixed with such a gruesome stare,
Once beamed with laughter, innocent and bright;
The morning gave no presage of the night;
A smile may be the prelude of despair.
Whate'er his secret, it remains untold,
For why to human anguish add one groan?
Is grief the deeper grief because unknown?
So let the grave his form and burden hold.
Ye who have felt no crushing weight of care,
From blame profuse, in charity refrain;
Some depths of sorrow overwhelm the brain,
Some loads too great for human strength to bear.