Lays from the West | Page 2

the light of your eyes.
My own! though the years in the gloom of their sadness?Stand, frowning, 'tween me and the light of my star,?And memory can feel the wild might of loves madness,?Or scoff as rude Time its first sweetness would mar.
Again, by the banks where Moyola is flowing?We stray as the moonbeams smile sweet through the dell
Unheeded the moments, unmarked in their going,?Nor dreamed we of woe in the sound of "farewell."
Is it lost--all the light of the fair morning vision??Is spirit to spirit unanswering, cold??No, it never shall die, while in memory's Elysian?It lingers in beauty and brightness untold.
Love is love, and though Fate blasts our hope vines may sever From the stay which their tendrils in fondness entwine?Yet the past of our joy we must cherish forever?And spirit meet spirit at memory's shrine.
A MEMORY.
"Indulgent Memory wakes, and, lo! they live!"?--RODGERS
Deathless, while the years are flying,?And all lesser hopes are dying.?To my widowed heart near lying
By a life-time's love embalmed,?Is a memory, dear and tender,?And in dreams its bygone splendour?Sweetest, holiest, balm can render
To my grief, by Time uncalmed.
In life's morning, young and early?Glistening fair through dew-drops pearly,?Burst a bud that promised fairly
Through the length of future days.?Ah! it charmed my passion'd dreaming,?Bathed in beauty's brightness, beaming?Fadeless still, and deathless seeming
In fond Hope's delusive haze.
And, as when in wild December,?June's calm twilights we remember,?So this dream in shadowy splendour
Ever haunts my lonely way;?And I see in fond delusion,?Glowing as in light Elysian,?The entrancing, old-time vision
Doom'd so early to decay.
Days when Hope, how false! still flaunted?Through my dreamings, love enchanted,?Framed by busy Fancy, haunted
By glad visions of delight,--?Morns of light, and sunsets golden,?Dreams of legends, grand and olden,?Hopes for future years, withholden
From our youthful, yearning sight.
Past and gone! Ah! vain my sighing,--?Hope's dead leaves are round me lying,?But their fragrances, undying,
Like a hallowed incense rise;?And I feel, with joy unspoken,?That the spirit love unbroken?Leaves this Memory for a token
Of its truth, that never dies.
In that land whose beauty vernal?Through tried ages blooms eternal?Thou, in bliss undreamed, supernal
Baskest in the glory-light?Where celestial joys inspire?All heaven's vast, unnumbered choir?With sweet songs that never tire,
Through the fadeless summer bright.
Here, how sad this dreary roaming,?Through the shadows of earth's gloaming,?Waiting for the longed-for coming
Of the lingering Morning Star;?But swift time is onward fleeting--?Backward is the past retreating,?Nearer, nearer draws our meeting
In the future, dim and far.
AFTER LIFE'S FEVER.
Obiit, June, 1882.
--"And then, a flood of light, a seraph's hymn,?And God's own smile, forever, and forever."
Oh! pale, calm face; eyes by the Death-kiss sealed,?Cold hands, upon the silent bosom folden;?Oh! soul, set free--of all sin's sickness healed,?Basking in light, from mortal eyes withholden,
_In c?lo quies_.
Still heart, that ached and throbb'd with human passion,?Locks, white with snow of many a winter past,?Tired body, weary after earth's poor fashion,?Sleep calmly till the waking trumpet blast--
_In c?lo quies_.
All over now--the heart-ache and the burning?Of thoughts, so trammelled by this "mortal coil;"?The soul has cast behind its moans and yearning,?The hands are resting from the long life's toil,--
_In c?lo quies_.
I, mournful gazer, watching by the portal?Whence thou, from death to life, hast entered in,?Would fain catch one stray gleam of light immortal,?To tell me, ever drowning earth's wild din,
_In c?lo quies_.
I might not hear the angel welcome ringing,?Nor see the pearly portals open wide,?Wherein the ransomed band, the new song singing,?In white robes wander by life's river side,
_In c?lo quies_.
"_In c?lo quies_," while the storms are beating?Along earth's desert moorlands, wild and wide;?While skies shall lower, and angry waves are meeting?Thy bark is moored--thou art beyond the tide,
_In c?lo quies_.
"_In c?lo quies_"--Rest, pure, deep, eternal,?Peace, in a perfect, blissful, endless calm;?Charmed by the beatific joys supernal,?Lull'd by the melody of seraph's psalm,
_In c?lo quies_.
Here, we but dream it all--the rest--the glory,?Here we but yearn for it in sob and pain;?Till knees wax weary and till locks grow hoary,?Still "westward journeying," at length to gain,
_In c?lo quies_.
But thou mayest sleep; thy toilsome warfare ended,?The long, rough life-path has been nobly trod,?And with our lost ones, thou sweet songs hast blended,?To hail them found, beside the throne of God?
_In c?lo quies_.
LIGHT AT EVENTIDE.
Round us in the stillness spreading,?Comes the night.?Mortal ears can't hear the treading?Of her footsteps, soft and light.
Dusky veil that shades the valleys,?Bringing rest;?Shadowy glooms in greenwood alleys.?Twilight dreamings, sweet and blest.
All the day-time cares are ended,?And instead,?Now by unseen bands attended,?Far, in fancy, we are led.
Misty forms of mystic seeming?Hover near;?Memory's myriad tapers gleaming?Light old scenes and make them clear--
Morn's vain hopes, and noon's stern sorrows,?Tears and cares;?Days of toiling, and to-morrow's?Bringing less of wheat than tares.
And the chequered, varied pages?Of life's book?Seem a sea whose calms and rages?Now the tired heart cannot brook.
Evening calm! ah, best and purest?Time of peace;?Soothing balm, when hope is surest,?To bid all vain doubting cease.
Pointing on, when near the pleasant,?Rest awaits;?When we