A Williams Anthology | Page 4

thou, where shine,?As garlands wove about a kindled shrine,?The beauties of a godlike art and more?Etherial thought fashioned to high design,?But a remembrance of that unknown shore?Where youth and love eterne on spirit pinions soar.
"O'er the hushed vales and gulfy hills of Greece?Night brooded on her darkly jewelled wing,?Binding in drowsy chains of dewy peace?Sweet birds, white flocks and every living thing,?And lapsing streams which to the forest sing.?Beneath that pillared fane which guards the place?Where spirits twain sleep in the charmed ring,?I slept after the banquet, and the rays?Of a past heaven flashed on my soul's astonished gaze.
"The emerald isles that sail a silver sea,?Caverned by plumy groves of sunny palm,?Broke on my startled vision suddenly;?When as but quickly parted, sweet and calm,?That long forgot yet ever haunting psalm?Floated from lips that flew to greet me home.?A meteor flamed; I woke in rude alarm;?Above me orbed the temple's sullen dome;?Around me swam the early morning's starless gloom.
"Of that fair dream thou art the memory,?My genius, in its wildest fancy, bound?And petrified to immortality!?A holy presence seems to hover round?The deep, perpetual loveliness, as crowned?With angel radiance, and plumed for flight,?Thy pinioned sandals spurn the flowerless ground,?Striving to gain that far Olympian height?Towards which in rapturous awe upturns thy longing sight.
"Why are thy parted lips so dumb and cold??Else with my eager arms about thee thrown?And folded in thy soft embrace, had rolled?The Lethean tide of love, in which, unknown?And all unheeded in their state, had flown?The future and the past, merged in that sea?The present, whose far deeps are felt alone?By the pale diver, reaching breathlessly?Through pearled and coral caves concealed from mortal eye.
"Oh, shape divine! Such madd'ning grace must have?A soul, a consciousness of love and life?Though tombed in pallor, with no epitaph?But silence! What mighty spell with power rife?Can wake thee into Being's passion strife??Yet if there be such, let it rest unsought;?For every boon thou couldst from breath derive?I would not wrest from thee that higher lot,?The need of deathlessness, thou pale, embodied thought!
"Great poet souls and people yet unborn?Shall lay their speechless homage at thy feet,?And still thy life be in its rosy dawn,?Whose eve eternity alone shall greet.?While I, to whom thy changeless smile were sweet?As heaven, long mingled with earth's vilest mould,?Shall be forgot! What wealth of fame can mete?The loss of love? None, none! Thy fate is cold,?But oh, what starry treasures might it not unfold!"
He ceased. A lambent halo seemed to play?About her head, as lightnings round the moon;?Her marble tresses streamed in golden spray--?A tremor throbbed along her limbs of stone,?And sky-hued veins with life's warm pulses shone.?One thought of wordless love beamed from her eyes,?Then, gently floating from her shining throne?'Mid blushing smiles half drowned in tearful sighs,?She faded slowly heavenward through the sunset skies.
Quarterly, 1853.
[Footnote 1: Died 1900.]
OPPORTUNITY
JOHN J. INGALLS '55
Master of human destinies am I;?Fame, love, and fortune on my footsteps wait.?Cities and fields I walk; I penetrate?Deserts and seas remote, and, passing by?Hovel and mart and palace, soon or late,?I knock unbidden once on every gate.?If sleeping, wake; if feasting, rise before?I turn away; it is the hour of fate,?And they who follow me reach every state?Mortals desire, and conquer every foe?Save death; but those who doubt or hesitate,?Condemned to failure, penury, and woe,?Seek me in vain and uselessly implore;?I answer not, and I return no more.
The date of first appearance of this sonnet is not known to the editors. It is extracted here from Professor A.L. Perry's?Williamstown and Williams College, (1899), and of it Dr. Perry remarks "Ingalls also wrote a notable sonnet on 'Opportunity,' which will no doubt survive, for it has a fine form and considerable literary merit, though godless in every line."
AUTUMN
JAMES A. GARFIELD '56[1]
Old Autumn thou art here! upon the Earth?And in the heavens, the signs of death are hung;?For o'er the Earth's brown breast stalks pale decay,?And 'mong the lowering clouds the wild winds wail,?And, sighing sadly, chant the solemn dirge?O'er summer's fairest flowers, all faded now.?The Winter god, descending from the skies,?Has reached the mountain tops, and decked their brows?With glittering frosty crowns, and breathed his breath?Among the trumpet pines, that herald forth?His coming.
Before the driving blast?The mountain oak bows down his hoary head,?And flings his withered locks to the rough gales?That fiercely roar among the branches bare,?Uplifted to the dark unpitying heavens.?The skies have put their mourning garments on?And hung their funeral drapery on the clouds.?Dead Nature soon will wear her shroud of snow?And lie entombed in Winter's icy grave.
Thus passes life. As hoary age comes on?The joys of youth--bright beauties of the spring,?Grow dim and faded, and the long dark night?Of Death's chill Winter comes. But as the spring?Rebuilds the ruined wrecks of Winter's waste,?And cheers the gloomy earth with joyous light,?So o'er the tomb, the Star