For I am not of those who live estranged
Of choice, till at the last they join their race
In the family-vault. If so, if I should lose,
Like my old friend the Pilgrim, this huge pack
So heavy on my shoulders, I and mine
Right pleasantly will end our pilgrimage.
If not, if I should never get beyond
This Vanity-town, there is another world
Where friends will meet. And often, Margaret,
I gaze at night into the boundless sky,
And think that I shall there be born again,
The exalted native of some better star;
And, like the untaught American, I look
To find in Heaven the things I loved on earth.
NAY, William, nay, not so! the changeful year
In all its due successions to my sight
Presents but varied beauties, transient all,
All in their season good. These fading leaves,
That with their rich variety of hues
Make yonder forest in the slanting sun
So beautiful, in you awake the thought
Of winter,.. cold, drear winter, when the trees
Each like a fleshless skeleton shall stretch
Its bare brown boughs; when not a flower shall spread
Its colours to the day, and not a bird
Carol its joyaunce, but all nature wear
One sullen aspect, bleak and desolate,
To eye, ear, feeling, comfortless alike.
To me their many-colour'd beauties speak
Of times of merriment and festival,
The year's best holyday: I call to mind
The school-boy days, when in the falling leaves
I saw with eager hope the pleasant sign
Of coming Christmas; when at morn I took
My wooden kalendar, and counting up
Once more its often-told account, smoothed off
Each day with more delight the daily notch.
the beauties of the autumnal year
Make mournful emblems, and you think of man
Doom'd to the grave's long winter, spirit-broken,
Bending beneath the burthen of his
years,
Sense-dull'd and fretful, "full of aches and pains,"
Yet clinging still to life. To me they shew
The calm decay of nature when the mind
Retains its strength, and in the languid eye
Religion's holy hopes kindle a joy
That makes old age look lovely. All to you
Is dark and cheerless; you in this fair world
See some destroying principle abroad,
Air, earth, and water full of living things,
Each on the other preying; and the ways
Of man, a strange perplexing labyrinth,
Where crimes and miseries, each producing each,
Render life loathsome, and destroy the hope
That should in death bring comfort. Oh, my friend,
That thy faith were as mine! that thou couldst see
Death still producing life, and evil still
Working its own destruction; couldst behold
The strifes and troubles of this troubled world
With the strong eye that sees the promised day
Dawn through this night of tempest! All things then
Would minister to joy; then should thine heart
Be heal'd and harmonized, and thou wouldst feel
GOD, always, every where, and all in all.
HARK,.. how the church-bells with redoubling peals
Stun the glad ear! Tidings of joy have come,
Good tidings of great joy! two gallant ships
Met on the element,.. they met, they fought
A desperate fight!.. good tidings of great joy!
Old England triumph'd! yet another day
Of glory for the ruler of the waves!
For those who fell, 't was in their country's cause,
They have their passing paragraphs of praise,
There was one who died
In that day's glory, whose obscurer name
No proud historian's page will chronicle.
Peace to his honest soul! I read his name,
'T was in the list of slaughter, and thank'd God
The sound was not familiar to mine ear.
But it was told me after, that this man
Was one whom lawful violence had forced
From his own home and wife and little ones,
Who by his labour lived; that he was one
Whose uncorrupted heart could keenly feel
A husband's love, a father's anxiousness;
That from the wages of his toil he fed
The distant dear ones, and would talk of them
At midnight when he trod the silent deck
With him he valued,.. talk of them, of joys
Which he had known,.. oh God! and of the hour
When they should meet again, till his full heart,
His manly heart, at times would overflow,
Even like a child's, with very tenderness.
Peace to his honest spirit! suddenly
It came, and merciful the ball of death,
That it came suddenly and shatter'd him,
Nor left a moment's agonizing thought
On those he loved so well.
He ocean-deep
Be Thou her comforter
Who art the widow's friend! Man does not know
What a cold sickness made her blood run back
When first she heard the tidings of the fight!
Man does not know with what a dreadful hope
She listened to the names of those who died;
Man does not know, or knowing will not heed,
With what an agony of tenderness
She gazed upon her children, and beheld
His image who was gone. O God! be Thou,
Who art the widow's friend, her comforter!
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