With step as noiseless as the summer air,
Who comes in beautiful decay?--her eyes
Dissolving with a feverish glow of light,
Her nostrils delicately closed, and on
Her cheek a rosy tint, as if the tip
Of Beauty's finger faintly press'd it there,--
Alas! Consumption is her name.
Thou loved and loving one!
From the dark languish of thy liquid eye,
So exquisitely rounded, darts a ray
Of truth, prophetic of thine early doom;
And on thy placid cheek there is a print
Of death,--the beauty of consumption there.
Few note that fatal bloom; for bless'd by all,
Thou movest through thy noiseless sphere, the life,
Of one,--the darling of a thousand hearts.
Yet in the chamber, o'er some graceful task
When delicately bending, oft unseen,
Thy mother marks then with that musing glance
That looks through cunning time, and sees thee stretch'd
A shade of being, shrouded for the tomb.
The Day is come, led gently on by Death;
With pillow'd head all gracefully reclined,
And grape-like curls in languid clusters wreath'd,
Within a cottage room she sits to die;
Where from the window, in a western view,
Majestic ocean rolls.--A summer eve
Shines o'er the earth, and all the glowing air
Stirs faintly, like a pulse; against the shore
The waves unrol them with luxurious joy,
While o'er the midway deep she looks, where like
A sea god glares the everlasting Sun
O'er troops of billows marching in his beam!--
From earth to heaven, from heaven to earth, her eyes
Are lifted, bright with wonder and with awe,
Till through each vein reanimation rolls!
'Tis past; and now her filmy glance is fix'd
Upon the heavens, as though her spirit gazed
On that immortal world, to which 'tis bound:
The sun hath sunk.--her soul hath fled without
A pang, and left her lovely in her death,
And beautiful as an embodied dream.