Songs In Many Keys | Page 9

in earnest and were heard no more;

Beauties, whose cheeks such roseate bloom o'er-spread
They faced
the footlights in unborrowed red,
Had faded slowly through
successive shades
To gray duennas, foils of younger maids;
Sweet
voices lost the melting tones that start
With Southern throbs the
sturdy Saxon heart,
While fresh sopranos shook the painted sky

With their long, breathless, quivering locust-cry.
Yet there he
stood,--the man of other days,
In the clear present's full, unsparing
blaze,
As on the oak a faded leaf that clings
While a new April
spreads its burnished wings.
How bright yon rows that soared in triple tier,
Their central sun the
flashing chandelier!
How dim the eye that sought with doubtful aim

Some friendly smile it still might dare to claim
How fresh these
hearts! his own how worn and cold!
Such the sad thoughts that
long-drawn sigh had told.
No word yet faltered on his trembling
tongue;
Again, again, the crashing galleries rung.
As the old
guardsman at the bugle's blast
Hears in its strain the echoes of the
past,
So, as the plaudits rolled and thundered round,
A life of
memories startled at the sound.
He lived again,--the page of earliest

days,--
Days of small fee and parsimonious praise;
Then lithe
young Romeo--hark that silvered tone,
From those smooth lips--alas!
they were his own.
Then the bronzed Moor, with all his love and woe,

Told his strange tale of midnight melting snow;
And dark--plumed
Hamlet, with his cloak and blade,
Looked on the royal ghost, himself
a shade.
All in one flash, his youthful memories came,
Traced in
bright hues of evanescent flame,
As the spent swimmer's in the
lifelong dream,
While the last bubble rises through the stream.
Call him not old, whose visionary brain
Holds o'er the past its
undivided reign.
For him in vain the envious seasons roll
Who
bears eternal summer in his soul.
If yet the minstrel's song, the poet's
lay,
Spring with her birds, or children at their play,
Or maiden's
smile, or heavenly dream of art,
Stir the few life-drops creeping
round his heart,
Turn to the record where his years are told,--
Count
his gray hairs,--they cannot make him old!
What magic power has
changed the faded mime?
One breath of memory on the dust of time.

As the last window in the buttressed wall
Of some gray minster
tottering to its fall,
Though to the passing crowd its hues are spread,

A dull mosaic, yellow, green, and red,
Viewed from within, a
radiant glory shows
When through its pictured screen the sunlight
flows,
And kneeling pilgrims on its storied pane
See angels glow in
every shapeless stain;
So streamed the vision through his sunken eye,

Clad in the splendors of his morning sky.
All the wild hopes his
eager boyhood knew,
All the young fancies riper years proved true,

The sweet, low-whispered words, the winning glance
From queens of
song, from Houris of the dance,
Wealth's lavish gift, and Flattery's
soothing phrase,
And Beauty's silence when her blush was praise,

And melting Pride, her lashes wet with tears,

Triumphs and banquets,
wreaths and crowns and cheers,
Pangs of wild joy that perish on the
tongue,
And all that poets dream, but leave unsung!
In every heart some viewless founts are fed
From far-off hillsides

where the dews were shed;
On the worn features of the weariest face

Some youthful memory leaves its hidden trace,
As in old gardens
left by exiled kings
The marble basins tell of hidden springs,
But,
gray with dust, and overgrown with weeds,
Their choking jets the
passer little heeds,
Till time's revenges break their seals away,
And,
clad in rainbow light, the waters play.
Good night, fond dreamer! let the curtain fall
The world's a stage, and
we are players all.
A strange rehearsal! Kings without their crowns,

And threadbare lords, and jewel-wearing clowns,
Speak the vain
words that mock their throbbing hearts,
As Want, stern prompter!
spells them out their parts.
The tinselled hero whom we praise and
pay
Is twice an actor in a twofold play.
We smile at children when a
painted screen
Seems to their simple eyes a real scene;
Ask the poor
hireling, who has left his throne
To seek the cheerless home he calls
his own,
Which of his double lives most real seems,
The world of
solid fact or scenic dreams?
Canvas, or clouds,--the footlights, or the
spheres,--
The play of two short hours, or seventy years?
Dream on!
Though Heaven may woo our open eyes,
Through their closed lids
we look on fairer skies;
Truth is for other worlds, and hope for this;

The cheating future lends the present's bliss;
Life is a running shade,
with fettered hands,
That chases phantoms over shifting sands;

Death a still spectre on a marble seat,
With ever clutching palms and
shackled feet;
The airy shapes that mock life's slender chain,
The
flying joys he strives to clasp in vain,
Death only grasps; to live is to
pursue,--
Dream on! there 's nothing but illusion true!
A POEM
DEDICATION OF THE PITTSFIELD CEMETERY,

SEPTEMBER 9,1850
ANGEL of Death! extend thy silent reign!
Stretch thy dark sceptre
o'er this new domain
No sable car along the winding road
Has

borne to earth its unresisting load;
No sudden mound has risen yet to
show
Where the pale slumberer folds his arms below;
No marble
gleams to bid his memory live
In the brief lines that hurrying Time
can give;
Yet,