(_For the Mirror._)
Hush'd are the groans of death, heart-piercing sound,
That mournful rose in peals on peals around;
Child after child by heav'nly darts expires,
And frequent corses feed the gloomy pyres.
Aghast she stands!--now here in wild amaze--
Now there the mother casts her madd'ning gaze:
In fixedness of grief, in dumb despair,
Her looks, her mien, her inmost soul declare:
Her looks, her mien, her deep-sunk anguish show
With all the silent eloquence of woe.
See! from her cheek the rosy lustre flies;
How dim the beams that sparkled in her eyes.
No more so softly heaves the throbbing breast;
The purple currents in their channels rest;--
No more the Zephyr's balmy breath can wave
The graceful locks which laughing Hebe gave;--
And fade those lips where fresh vermilion shone,
Cold as the clay, or monumental stone;--
O'er all her limbs an icy numbness spreads,
And marble death eternal quiet sheds.
[2]Great sculptor hail! whom Nature's self design'd
To trace the labyrinths of the human mind--
To read the heart, and give with strong control,
To stone the silent workings of the soul:
Thine all-creative hand, thy matchless skill
Could what unbounded genius plann'd, fulfil.
Hence sprang that grief-wrung form--the languid eye--
The bloodless lip, and look of agony--
That face, where mute contending passions play--
That life of pain, of anguish, and dismay.
To sink she seems beneath the afflictive weight
Of gloomy cares portentous of her fate;--
Yet on her brow still soft Affection beams,
Tho' Desperation prompts her sombre dreams.
Parental feelings thrill her tortur'd breast,
And all the frantic mother stands confest--
A very Niobe--sad, hapless name!
In figure, features, and in all the same:
The same in all as Vengeance fierce pursued
Far to a wild and cheerless solitude.
For Salmo's bard has sung (by Heaven's decrees)
In awful pomp she mounted on the breeze--
Borne by the buoyant wind--a ghostly form--
She sail'd along the region of the storm.
So oft 'tis said in Lapland's chill domain,
Where dreary winter holds a lengthen'd reign,
What time the Runic drum and magic spell
Evoke the rapt soul from its fragile cell,
Attendant spirits, won by charms and prayer,
In gliding motion float upon the air.
_Sydenham._