FADED FLOWERS. I. FAREWELL, ye perish'd flowers 'Mid the brown wild, 'Neath summer's painted sky ;Pass'd hath your bloom away; Your stalks are sere and bent: On the howling blast The rain sweeps past, From the dim firmament. II. I think me of your pride, Then sigh to know What wreck and woe A few brief months may bring ! Ye say "Though bright and fair Life's morning be, Its eve may see The clouds of grief and care!" In III. you I scan the fate Life's sunniest hopes have met, In manhood's twilight set- As ye did fade, sweet blooms, Leaving behind, Upon the wind, Awhile your soft perfumes. IV. As waned each blossom bright, So doom'd were to depart Friend after friend And each to rend A fibre from the heart: Green Spring again shall bid Your boughs with bloom be crown'd; But alas! to Man, In earth's brief span, No second spring comes round! V. Yes! friends who clomb Life's hill Together, long ago, Are parted, and Their fatherland No more their places know! G We see them not, nor hear them, Like you, ye perish'd flowers! VI. Mourn not-we meet again, Where Faith and Love Taste Heaven's eternal year :— For though Time's winter bows grey head to the clod, The Dust goes to dust, But (as we trust) The Spirit back to God! THE NIGHT HAWK. Vox, et præterea nihil. I. THE winds are pillow'd on the waveless deep, I I. An Arab of the air, it floats along, Enamour'd of the silence and the night, The tall pine-tops, the mountains dim among, Aye wheeling on in solitary flight; Like an ungentle spirit earthwards sent, To haunt the pale-faced moon, a cheerless banishment. III. A lone, low sound-a melancholy cry, Loving amid the starlight-calm to float; Now sharp and shrill, now faint; and by degrees Fainter, like summer winds that die 'mid leafy trees. IV. Listening, in the blue solitude I stand The breathless hush of midnight-all is still; Nature through all her regions seems asleep, V. Moonlight and midnight! all so vast and void, And Thou of living things the dirge and last : |