Of Memory, and Hope, and Peace, and Youth;
And with imploring hands beckon us back,
To list the precepts of our better days.
which on my brow pour out
Your holy light! - Orbs of unearthly glory!-
Altar-fires, before Jehovah's shrine
Forever burning; or, the living eyes
Of seraph-hosts, that round his mighty throne,
Veiling their faces, bow, while myriad voices
Shout in sweet seraph-music their rejoicing, -
Ye are the types of Fate, if ye are not,
As hoary men of old have loved to dream, -
Its arbiters; and, on the giant scroll
Of the blue pillar'd, boundless firmament,
Glitt'ring all o'er with gorgeous heraldry,-
Is writ the record of another year!
Star after star ceaseth to shine on high,
Year after year passeth from human life
And earthly being!
How like a knell upon the thoughtful mind,
How like a requiem on the Fancy's ear,
How like a dirge upon the wearied heart,
Sinks the deep cadance of those mournful words, ANOTHER YEAR HATH FLED! - Gone! - it is gone! With all its smiles and tears,
- its woes and joys! Gone with all its anguish, which hath wrung the heart; Gone with its rapture, which hath made earth Heaven; Its hopes and dreams, — its sighs and agonies, —
Its weariness and bitterness of life,
Its yearnings for a happier world to come.
Spring, with her forest-plume and em'rald fields,
Hath gone,
and Summer's flowers and vine-leaves;
Autumn, sad Autumn, with her rainbow woods,
While Winter's stern and melancholy form
Hangs o'er his harp and wails the year's decay.
Another star hath vanish'd from the sky, -
Another wave hath broken on the shore,
Another leaf hath quiver'd from the tree
Of mortal being; and their last, low moan,
Upon the night, in mystic minstrelsy, -
Like music to the dreaming slumberer,
Is dying on the ear.
Hath fled, but, upon ev'ry brow its recording
Is writ; and ev'ry breast hath its own register
Of joy and woe. And human hearts have bled,
And tears have flowed; Affection bowed her o'er
The pale, sweet form, and the still, marble brow
Where all- - where all Life's hopes were garnered.
And Hope hath waked to watch, but watched in vain!
Yet, Love, the phoenix, from his ashy grave
Again shall rise! Hope's flowers shall bloom and wave
Around Despair's dark tomb! Ambition's torch,
Rekindled and relumed, more brightly burn;
And human hearts will dream, as they have dreamed,
And they will bleed, as they have bled before.
Upon Time's vestal altar ever flames
His sacrificial fires, consuming hopes,
And joys, and youth -
to be renew'd no more.
Through some deserted chamber of each breast,
Some phantom shape, some spectre of the past,-
The wand'ring ghost of some departed joy,-
The troubled spirit of some happy dream,-
Forever glides; and, in its desolate aisles,
Seeketh a sanctuary - finding none.
The year hath passed! And, as with all mankind
And the fair forms of Nature, it hath passed
With nations,-kingdoms,-thrones.
Change after change!
Upon all earth, thy shadow rests!
On ev'ry land, on ev'ry race, thy seal
Is sternly set; and change succeedeth change.
In an unending, everlasting round.
One thing alone, in all our life, is sure;
One thing alone is changeless, that is Death!
How doth this changeless course of Nature show,
That there are other, brighter worlds than this!
That there are other beings, other laws,
And other purposes, than cannot be scann'd
By the dim, darken'd powers of human sense!
We do not know the laws which rule our being,
Nor can we pierce that deep, mysterious veil,
Which shrouds our destiny and its design.
But this we know, that as hath been, will be,
The shriek of sorrow, and the wail of woe,
The knell of death, - bereavement, and despair, -
And stifled moans of anguish'd human hearts.
The sound of joy, — the sigh of agony;
The veil, the pall, the bridal and the bier.
And this we know, that God's vast Universe
Is sway'd by sov'reignty unchanging, — just;
While all Man's sufferings and Nature's throes
Are but the features of one mighty plan.
But list! From the lone turret of yon sacred Fane,
From which so oft, in other years, have gone
The self-same mournful tones, — Time's iron tongue
Again again, in solemn numbers, tolls
The heavy boom of a funereal knell!
THE YEAR IS DEAD!
And now, the midnight hour is come,
The spirit-hosts are forth! Illusive voices, -
Well-remember'd tones upon the ear
Of the sad watcher fall; and whispers seek him
From that misty shore beyond the billows
Of Death's spectral flood; and pale, sweet faces,
With their gaze of more than mortal fondness,
On the mystic wave an instant linger,
Beck'ning him away; then, in the vapor veil
Which shrouds the tomb, they melt- they melt forever! And Memory, the great Magician, lifts the pall
Of the dead Past, and myriad visions throng
Her magic halls; and all those visions,
And those spirit-tones, and the deep meanings
Of that mournful bell read to the lonely watcher,
Ay! - to him,
to all Earth's dwellers,
That, ere long, Time shall to each,
As to the year now in Oblivion buried,
Be no more forever!
With her twin-sister Art, hath sealed th' Empyrean!
Science, like the dread angel of th' Apocalypse,-
Hath destined Space and Time to be no more!
From the immortal mind now leaps the thought,
And, yet unspoken, on the lightning's wing
Girdleth the globe! -Away-away flasheth
The magic line of thought and feeling!
Over land, o'er sea,-o'er mountain, stream, and vale,—
Through forest dense, and darkest wilderness, -
'Mid storm and tempest, fleets the electric spell:
Then to its home, through earth's deep entrails, speeds
Backward in fiery circuit to its rest;
While earth's green bosom doth itself evolve
Magnetic flame to light the flashing line!
No more the viewless couriers of the winds
Are emblems of the messengers of mind.
The speed of sound, the speed of light surpass'd,-
The speed of thought,- Mind's magnetism,—
And th' omnipotent power of Fancy's flight,
Alone can rival the electric charm!
Swifter than earth upon its axle whirl'd, —
for Time itself's outsped,
More swift than speech,- for unembodied thoughts,
And feelings unconceived, and words unformed,
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