HIS brow is pale with high and passionate thoughts That came from heaven like lightning, and consume, E'en while they brighten; youth has lost its hopes: Those sweet and wandering birds, that make its spring So happy with their music, -- these are gone: All scared by one, a vulture, that doth feed Upon the life-blood of the throbbing heart -- The hope of immortality! -- that hope, Whose altar is the grave, whose sacrifice Is life -- bright, beautiful, and breathing life. He stands amid the revellers with a joy, A scarcely conscious joy, in their delight; In it he has no part, -- he stands alone; But the deep music haunts his dreaming ear, -- But the fair forms flit o'er his dreaming eye, -- And exquisite illusions fill his soul With loveliness to pour in future song. He leant beside a casement, and the moon Shed her own stillness o'er the hectic cheek Whereon the fever of the mind had fed; His eyes have turn'd towards th' eternal stars, Drinking the light into their shadowy depths, Almost as glorious and as spiritual. The night-wind touch'd his forehead, with it ran A faint slight shudder through his wasted frame, -- Alas! how little can bring down our thoughts From their most lofty communings with heaven, To poor mortality! -- that passing chill Recall'd those bitter feelings that attend Career half follow'd, and the goal unwon: He thought upon his few and unknown years, How much his power, how little it had done; And then again the pale lip was compress'd With high resolve, the dark eye flash'd with hope To snatch a laurel from the grasp of death, For the green memory of an early grave. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...HARRISON STREET COURT by CARL SANDBURG HYBRIDS OF WAR: A MORALITY POEM: 4. THE MORAL by KAREN SWENSON THE WHITE SHIPS AND THE RED by ALFRED JOYCE KILMER ARCHEANASSA by ASCLEPIADES OF SAMOS WIND WEAVING by FRANCES HALLEY BROCKETT AFTER A TEMPEST by WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT AN EXPOSTULATION WITH A SECTARIST, WHO INVEIGHED AGAINST THE CLERGY by JOHN BYROM |