Poems, third period | Page 4

faithful to the
end?
Who now will seek to cheer my sadness,
And to the grave my
steps attend?
Thou, Friendship, of all guides the fairest,
Who gently
healest every wound;
Who all life's heavy burdens sharest,
Thou,
whom I early sought and found!
Employment too, thy loving neighbor,
Who quells the bosom's rising
storms;
Who ne'er grows weary of her labor,
And ne'er destroys,
though slow she forms;
Who, though but grains of sand she places

To swell eternity sublime,
Yet minutes, days, ay! years effaces

From the dread reckoning kept by Time!
THE YOUTH BY THE BROOK. [16]
Beside the brook the boy reclined
And wove his flowery wreath,

And to the waves the wreath consigned--
The waves that danced
beneath.
"So fleet mine hours," he sighed, "away
Like waves that
restless flow:
And so my flowers of youth decay
Like those that
float below."
"Ask not why I, alone on earth,
Am sad in life's young time;
To all
the rest are hope and mirth
When spring renews its prime.
Alas! the
music Nature makes,
In thousand songs of gladness--
While
charming all around me, wakes
My heavy heart to sadness."
"Ah! vain to me the joys that break
From spring, voluptuous are;

For only one 't is mine to seek--
The near, yet ever far!
I stretch my
arms, that shadow-shape
In fond embrace to hold;
Still doth the
shade the clasp escape--
The heart is unconsoled!"
"Come forth, fair friend, come forth below,
And leave thy lofty hall,

The fairest flowers the spring can know
In thy dear lap shall fall!

Clear glides the brook in silver rolled,

Sweet carols fill the air;
The

meanest hut hath space to hold
A happy loving pair!"
TO EMMA.
Far away, where darkness reigneth,
All my dreams of bliss are flown;

Yet with love my gaze remaineth
Fixed on one fair star alone.

But, alas! that star so bright
Sheds no lustre save by night.
If in slumbers ending never,
Gloomy death had sealed thine eyes,

Thou hadst lived in memory ever--
Thou hadst lived still in my sighs;

But, alas! in light thou livest--
To my love no answer givest!
Can the sweet hopes love once cherished
Emma, can they transient
prove?
What has passed away and perished--
Emma, say, can that
be love?
That bright flame of heavenly birth--
Can it die like things
of earth?
THE FAVOR OF THE MOMENT.
Once more, then, we meet
In the circles of yore;
Let our song be as
sweet
In its wreaths as before,
Who claims the first place
In the
tribute of song?
The God to whose grace
All our pleasures belong.

Though Ceres may spread
All her gifts on the shrine,
Though the
glass may be red
With the blush of the vine,
What boots--if the
while
Fall no spark on the hearth;
If the heart do not smile
With
the instinct of mirth?--
From the clouds, from God's breast
Must our
happiness fall,
'Mid the blessed, most blest
Is the moment of all!

Since creation began
All that mortals have wrought,
All that's
godlike in man
Comes--the flash of a thought!
For ages the stone

In the quarry may lurk,

An instant alone
Can suffice to the work;

An impulse give birth
To the child of the soul,
A glance stamp the
worth
And the fame of the whole. [17]
On the arch that she buildeth

From sunbeams on high,
As Iris just gildeth,
And fleets from the
sky,
So shineth, so gloometh
Each gift that is ours;
The lightning

illumeth--
The darkness devours! [18]
THE LAY OF THE MOUNTAIN.
[The scenery of Gotthardt is here personified.]
To the solemn abyss leads the terrible path,
The life and death
winding dizzy between;
In thy desolate way, grim with menace and
wrath,
To daunt thee the spectres of giants are seen;
That thou wake
not the wild one [20], all silently tread-- Let thy lip breathe no breath in
the pathway of dread!
High over the marge of the horrible deep
Hangs and hovers a bridge
with its phantom-like span, [21] Not by man was it built, o'er the
vastness to sweep;
Such thought never came to the daring of man!

The stream roars beneath--late and early it raves--
But the bridge,
which it threatens, is safe from the waves.
Black-yawning a portal, thy soul to affright,
Like the gate to the
kingdom, the fiend for the king-- Yet beyond it there smiles but a land
of delight,
Where the autumn in marriage is met with the spring.
From a lot which the care and the trouble assail,
Could I fly to the
bliss of that balm-breathing vale!
Through that field, from a fount ever hidden their birth, Four rivers in
tumult rush roaringly forth;
They fly to the fourfold divisions of
earth--
The sunrise, the sunset, the south, and the north.
And, true to
the mystical mother that bore,
Forth they rush to their goal, and are
lost evermore.
High over the races of men in the blue
Of the ether, the mount in twin
summits is riven;
There, veiled in the gold-woven webs of the dew,

Moves the dance of the clouds--the pale daughters of heaven! There, in
solitude, circles their mystical maze,
Where no witness can hearken,
no earthborn surveys.

August on a throne which no ages can move,
Sits a queen, in her
beauty serene and sublime, [22] The diadem blazing with diamonds
above
The glory of brows, never darkened by