How beauteous o'er the blue expanse
Pencilling their shadows on the evening sky,
The gathering clouds with gauze-wings unfold
Their heaven wove tapestry:
Veiling in mist the dim and wearied sun,
Ere yet the drapery of his couch is won!
Behold! behold them now!
Tossing their gold-edged tresses on the breeze!
Gliding like angels o'er the star-gemmed floor
To heavenly symphonies!
While distant seen, like hope to faith's clear view,
Sleeps in calm splendour the cerulean blue!
Ere yet imagination's wand
Has traced the vision on the teeming brain,
The fleeting pageant floats in mist, away
Beyond the billowy main:
But forms more beauteous wing again their flight,
While eve reposes on the lap of night.
Yon castellated tower
As proudly cuts its turrets on the sky,
As if the portals of its airy halls
Blazoned with heraldry!
And who shall say, but in its chambers glide
Pale courtier's shadows--disembodied pride?
The mimic ship unfolds
Her swelling canvass on the airy main;
And horsemen sweep in graceful circles o'er
Th' etherial plain:
While forms of light unknown to mortals here,
People in myriads the celestial sphere!
And many-coloured flowers,
Changing their hues with every passing breeze,
Crown the far summits of the mountain steeps;
The shadowy trees
Fling their gigantic branches wide and far,
Dimming the lustre of full many a star.
How oft in childhood's hour
I've watched the cloudlets pale the evening beam,
While the bright day-god quenched his waning fires
In ocean, pool, and stream.
Oh, then the clouds were ministers of joy
To the rapt spirit of the dreamy boy!
Mother and sister! Ye
Have passed from earth like suns untimely set!
Do ye not look from yonder throne of clouds
Upon me yet,
Beckoning me now, with eager glance to come
To the bright portals of your heavenly home?
Skeptic! whose chilling creed
Would chain the spirit to life's bounded span,
Learn from the clouds that _upward_ poise their wing,
To value _man_!
Nor deem the soul divested of its shroud--
Less glorious in its essence than a _cloud_!