Thou desolate and dying year!
Emblem of transitory man,
Whose wearisome and wild career
Like thine is bounded to a span;
It seems but as a little day
Since nature smiled upon thy birth,
And Spring came forth in fair array,
To dance upon the joyous earth.
Sad alteration! now how lone,
How verdureless is nature's breast,
Where ruin makes his empire known,
In Autumn's yellow vesture drest;
The sprightly bird, whose carol sweet
Broke on the breath of early day,
The summer flowers she loved to greet;
The bird, the flowers, Oh! where are they?
Thou desolate and dying year!
Yet lovely in thy lifelessness
As beauty stretched upon the bier,
In death's clay cold, and dark caress;
There's loveliness in thy decay,
Which breathes, which lingers on thee still,
Like memory's mild and cheering ray
Beaming upon the night of ill.
Yet, yet, the radiance is not gone,
Which shed a richness o'er the scene,
Which smiled upon the golden dawn,
When skies were brilliant and serene;
Oh! still a melancholy smile
Gleams upon Nature's aspect fair,
To charm the eye a little while,
Ere ruin spreads his mantle there!
Thou desolate and dying year!
Since time entwined thy vernal wreath,
How often love hath shed the tear,
And knelt beside the bed of death;
How many hearts that lightly sprung
When joy was blooming but to die,
Their finest chords by death unstrung,
Have yielded life's expiring sigh,
And pillowed low beneath the clay,
Have ceased to melt, to breathe, to burn;
The proud, the gentle, and the gay,
Gathered unto the mouldering urn;
While freshly flowed the frequent tear
For love bereft, affection fled;
For all that were our blessings here,
The loved, the lost, the sainted dead!
Thou desolate and dying year!
The musing spirit finds in thee
Lessons, impressive and serene,
Of deep and stern morality;
Thou teachest how the germ of youth,
Which blooms in being's dawning day,
Planted by nature, reared by truth,
Withers like thee in dark decay.
Promise of youth! fair as the form
Of Heaven's benign and golden bow,
Thy smiling arch begirds the storm,
And sheds a light on every wo;
Hope wakes for thee, and to her tongue,
A tone of melody is given,
As if her magic voice were strung
With the empyreal fire of Heaven.
And love which never can expire,
Whose origin is from on high,
Throws o'er thy morn a ray of fire,
From the pure fountains of the sky;
That ray which glows and brightens still
Unchanged, eternal and divine;
Where seraphs own its holy thrill,
And bow before its gleaming shrine.
Thou desolate and dying year!
Prophetic of our final fall;
Thy buds are gone, thy leaves are sear,
Thy beauties shrouded in the pall;
And all the garniture that shed,
A brilliancy upon thy prime,
Hath like a morning vision fled
Unto the expanded grave of time.
Time! Time! in thy triumphal flight,
How all life's phantoms fleet away;
The smile of hope, and young delight,
Fame's meteor beam, and Fancy's ray:
They fade; and on the heaving tide,
Rolling its stormy waves afar,
Are borne the wreck of human pride,
The broken wreck of Fortune's war.
There in disorder, dark and wild,
Are seen the fabrics once so high;
Which mortal vanity had piled
As emblems of eternity!
And deemed the stately piles, whose forms
Frowned in their majesty sublime,
Would stand unshaken by the storms
That gathered round the brow of Time.
Thou desolate and dying year!
Earth's brightest pleasures fade like thine;
Like evening shadows disappear,
And leave the spirit to repine.
The stream of life that used to pour
Its fresh and sparkling waters on,
While Fate stood watching on the shore,
And numbered all the moments gone:--
Where hath the morning splendour flown,
Which danced upon that crystal stream?
Where are the joys to childhood known,
When life was an enchanted dream?
Enveloped in the starless night,
Which destiny hath overspread;
Enroll'd upon that trackless flight
Where the death wing of time hath sped!
Oh! thus hath life its even-tide
Of sorrow, loneliness, and grief;
And thus divested of its pride,
It withers like the yellow leaf:
Oh! such is life's autumnal bower,
When plundered of its summer bloom;
And such is life's autumnal hour,
Which heralds man unto the tomb!
NEW-YORK:
Printed by SCATCHERD & ADAMS,
No. 38 Gold Street.
FOOTNOTES:
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[A] Goethe and his Faust.
[B] Cuvier.
[C] Spurzheim.
[D] Scott.
[E] Champollion.
[F] Crabbe.
[G] Jeremy Bentham.
[H] Adam Clarke.
[I] The Duke of Reichstadt.
[J] Charles Carroll.
[K] Not the sportsman's favourite (_scolopax minor_) of our Atlantic
shores, but the large crested woodpecker, so called in the
western counties.
[L] Or "Lake Kau-na-ong-ga," meaning literally "_two wings_." White
Lake, which is the unmeaning modern epithet of this beautiful
sheet of water, is situated in the town of Bethel, Sullivan
County, N. Y. It is in the form of a pair of huge wings expanded.
[M] The Rev. James W. Eastburn, by whom, in conjunction with
Mr. Sands, the poem of Yamoyden was written,
in separate portions.
[N] _Hesiod. Theog._ 1. 1. 60. 30.
[O] It may perhaps, to some, appear incongruous thus to mingle Heathen
musicians among the Hebrews; but it is believed the incongruity
will disappear on a moment's reflection upon the history and
character of Herod the Great. His expeditions to Rome, Greece,
and Syria, &c., were frequent, and he was not scrupulous in the
introduction of games, sports, and gorgeous customs of the
oriental nations, to heighten the effect of his own pageants.
He built and rebuilt divers Heathen temples, and among them the
Temple of Apollo, in Greece. Some historians deny that he was a
Jew; but say that he was originally the guardian of the Temple
of Apollo at Askalon, who, having been taken prisoner among the
Idumeans, afterwards turned Jew.
[P] These lines, so musical in the original, and susceptible of
equally melodious translation, were penned by the unfortunate
Mary a few hours before her execution.
[Q] The substance usually called French chalk has this singular
property, that what is written on glass, though easily rubbed
out again so that no trace remains visible, by being breathed
on becomes immediately distinctly legible.
[R] The above lines were translated by Dr. Mitchell, in October 1796,
from the Italian of Dr. Gian Baptista Scandella, an accomplished
gentleman, who afterwards, in September 1798, fell a victim to
the yellow fever in the city of New York, just as he had finished
his American tour, and was on the eve of embarking for Europe.
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