He comes with herald clouds of dust;
Ecstatic frenzies rend his breast;
A moment, and he graced the earth--
Now, seek him at the eagle's nest.
Hark! see'st thou not the torrent's flash
Far shooting o'er the mountain height?
Hear'st not the billow's solemn roar,
That echoes through the vaults of night?
Anon the murky cloud is riven,
The lightnings leap in sportive play,
And through the clanging doors of heaven,
In calm effulgence bursts the day.
Hope, peering from her fleecy car,
Smiles welcome to the coming spring,
And birds with blithesome songs of praise
Make every grove and valley ring.
What though on pinions of the blast
The sea-gulls sweep with leaden flight?
What though the watery caverns deep
Gleam ghostly on the wandering sight?
Is there no music in the trees
To charm thee with its frolic mirth?
Must Care's wan phantom still beguile
And chain thee to the stubborn earth?
Lo! Fancy from her magic realm
Pours Boreal gleams adown the pole.
The tidal currents lift and swell--
Dead currents of the ocean's soul.
Yet never may their mystic streams
Breathe whispers of the mournful past,
Or Pallas wake her sounding lyre
Mid Ether's columned temples vast.
Grave History walks again the earth
As erst it did in days of eld,
When seated on the golden throne
Her hand a jewelled sceptre held.
The Delphian oracle is dumb,
Dread Cumae wafts no words of fate,
To fright the eager souls that press
Through sullen Lethe's iron gate.
But deeper shadows gather o'er
The vales that sever night and morn;
And darkness folds with brooding wing
The rustling fields of waving corn.
Then issuing from his bosky lair
The crafty tiger crouches low,
Or thunders from the frozen north
The white bear lapped in Arctic snow.
Thus shift the scenes till high aloft
The young moon sets her crescent horn,
And in gray evening's emerald sea
The beauteous Star of Love is born.
_Anonymous_.