Personal Poems I, vol 4, part 1 | Page 4

the brilliant train?Thronging the banks of Seine?Now midst the splendor?Of the wild Alpine range,?Waking with change on change?Thoughts in thy young heart strange,?Lovely, and tender.
Vales, soft Elysian,?Like those in the vision?Of Mirza, when, dreaming,?He saw the long hollow dell,?Touched by the prophet's spell,?Into an ocean swell?With its isles teeming.
Cliffs wrapped in snows of years,?Splintering with icy spears?Autumn's blue heaven?Loose rock and frozen slide,?Hung on the mountain-side,?Waiting their hour to glide?Downward, storm-driven!
Rhine-stream, by castle old,?Baron's and robber's hold,?Peacefully flowing;?Sweeping through vineyards green,?Or where the cliffs are seen?O'er the broad wave between?Grim shadows throwing.
Or, where St. Peter's dome?Swells o'er eternal Rome,?Vast, dim, and solemn;?Hymns ever chanting low,?Censers swung to and fro,?Sable stoles sweeping slow?Cornice and column!
Oh, as from each and all?Will there not voices call?Evermore back again??In the mind's gallery?Wilt thou not always see?Dim phantoms beckon thee?O'er that old track again?
New forms thy presence haunt,?New voices softly chant,?New faces greet thee!?Pilgrims from many a shrine?Hallowed by poet's line,?At memory's magic sign,?Rising to meet thee.
And when such visions come?Unto thy olden home,?Will they not waken?Deep thoughts of Him whose hand?Led thee o'er sea and land?Back to the household band?Whence thou wast taken?
While, at the sunset time,?Swells the cathedral's chime,?Yet, in thy dreaming,?While to thy spirit's eye?Yet the vast mountains lie?Piled in the Switzer's sky,?Icy and gleaming:
Prompter of silent prayer,?Be the wild picture there?In the mind's chamber,?And, through each coming day?Him who, as staff and stay,?Watched o'er thy wandering way,?Freshly remember.
So, when the call shall be?Soon or late unto thee,?As to all given,?Still may that picture live,?All its fair forms survive,?And to thy spirit give?Gladness in Heaven!?1841
LUCY HOOPER.
Lucy Hooper died at Brooklyn, L. I., on the 1st of 8th mo., 1841, aged twenty-four years.
They tell me, Lucy, thou art dead,?That all of thee we loved and cherished?Has with thy summer roses perished;?And left, as its young beauty fled,?An ashen memory in its stead,?The twilight of a parted day?Whose fading light is cold and vain,?The heart's faint echo of a strain?Of low, sweet music passed away.?That true and loving heart, that gift?Of a mind, earnest, clear, profound,?Bestowing, with a glad unthrift,?Its sunny light on all around,?Affinities which only could?Cleave to the pure, the true, and good;?And sympathies which found no rest,?Save with the loveliest and best.?Of them--of thee--remains there naught?But sorrow in the mourner's breast??A shadow in the land of thought??No! Even my weak and trembling faith?Can lift for thee the veil which doubt?And human fear have drawn about?The all-awaiting scene of death.
Even as thou wast I see thee still;?And, save the absence of all ill?And pain and weariness, which here?Summoned the sigh or wrung the tear,?The same as when, two summers back,?Beside our childhood's Merrimac,?I saw thy dark eye wander o'er?Stream, sunny upland, rocky shore,?And heard thy low, soft voice alone?Midst lapse of waters, and the tone?Of pine-leaves by the west-wind blown,?There's not a charm of soul or brow,?Of all we knew and loved in thee,?But lives in holier beauty now,?Baptized in immortality!?Not mine the sad and freezing dream?Of souls that, with their earthly mould,?Cast off the loves and joys of old,?Unbodied, like a pale moonbeam,?As pure, as passionless, and cold;?Nor mine the hope of Indra's son,?Of slumbering in oblivion's rest,?Life's myriads blending into one,?In blank annihilation blest;?Dust-atoms of the infinite,?Sparks scattered from the central light,?And winning back through mortal pain?Their old unconsciousness again.?No! I have friends in Spirit Land,?Not shadows in a shadowy band,?Not others, but themselves are they.?And still I think of them the same?As when the Master's summons came;?Their change,--the holy morn-light breaking?Upon the dream-worn sleeper, waking,--?A change from twilight into day.
They 've laid thee midst the household graves,?Where father, brother, sister lie;?Below thee sweep the dark blue waves,?Above thee bends the summer sky.?Thy own loved church in sadness read?Her solemn ritual o'er thy head,?And blessed and hallowed with her prayer?The turf laid lightly o'er thee there.?That church, whose rites and liturgy,?Sublime and old, were truth to thee,?Undoubted to thy bosom taken,?As symbols of a faith unshaken.?Even I, of simpler views, could feel?The beauty of thy trust and zeal;?And, owning not thy creed, could see?How deep a truth it seemed to thee,?And how thy fervent heart had thrown?O'er all, a coloring of its own,?And kindled up, intense and warm,?A life in every rite and form,?As. when on Chebar's banks of old,?The Hebrew's gorgeous vision rolled,?A spirit filled the vast machine,?A life, "within the wheels" was seen.
Farewell! A little time, and we?Who knew thee well, and loved thee here,?One after one shall follow thee?As pilgrims through the gate of fear,?Which opens on eternity.?Yet shall we cherish not the less?All that is left our hearts meanwhile;?The memory of thy loveliness?Shall round our weary pathway smile,?Like moonlight when the sun has set,?A sweet and tender radiance yet.?Thoughts of thy clear-eyed sense of duty,?Thy generous scorn of all things wrong,?The truth, the strength, the graceful