PS 
 
 IS 13 
 
^ 
 
 c 
 
PS 1739 
 .G18 118 
 1823 
 Copy 1 
 
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 THE 
 
 ^^2^tlir JUiominiti^ 
 
 AND 
 
 wm^WM^. 
 
 Yet not unconscious what a doubtful task 
 To paint the finest features of the mind, 
 And to most subtle and mysterious things 
 Give colour, strength, and motion. 
 
 AKENSIDE. 
 
 BY ARTHUR GENIO, ESQ, 
 
 ^..•*»..<"«M«"S.»^- 
 
 NEW-yORK 
 
 PRINTED BY S. MARKS, FOR THE AUTHOI 
 
 1823. 
 
^\ . . ^ » s 
 
 ^'0\>tvUutmtnu 
 
 I HAVE written somewhat heretofore with a sincere 
 desire to please fastidious critics, and a busy public ; 
 but not finding it marvellously easy to discompose the 
 rigid and inflexible gravity of their risible muscles any 
 farther than a bitter, intolerable sneer would have a 
 tendency to effect it — I have WTitten the following ex- 
 clusively for my own gratification and pleasure — ne phis 
 ultra. 
 
 New- York, Augtist 25, 1828. 
 
 i 
 
75 '/72 J 
 
 ^f iillt .^^mDit 
 
 'TwAs Midnight — that unbroken hour of deep 
 Unearthly meditation, in which thought 
 Soars on wide-wandering wing, and laps the soul 
 In visionary spells of potent energy, 
 Enrobing dim ideas with magic charms. 
 And bodying wild conception's formless shades 
 In widely-varied beauty and fiend-like 
 Deformity ; and aloft I stood alone 
 On the dark verge of a wild beetling clifT, 
 Hanging in sombre grandeur o'er the dells 
 Unlighted since the viewless hand of heaven 
 Piled those impending precipices o'er 
 The emerald vale below\ How reels the sense 
 When upward gazing on the giddy heights! 
 How swims the eye in dizziness ! — The rock 
 Flung its dark shadow on the bubbling foam 
 Of an immeasurable w^orld of waters, 
 That lash'd the frowning battlement of nature 
 In unintermitting, and vain-wreak'd ire, 
 Till, pealing in terrific echoes, far 
 Rung the wild shock of warring waves in notes 
 Deep-toned, but sinking as o'er lawn, and lea. 
 
4 ' A VISION. 
 
 Mountain, and wilderness, they sped awaj, 
 
 Waking the slumbering monarch of the wood 
 
 From his cloud-canopied lair in forest dense, 
 
 And on the sable shadows of Ihe night 
 
 Turning his enkindling balls of vivid flame, 
 
 That seem to human eye like vice and crime 
 
 Pouring their lava flood upon a world, 
 
 That once was Eden — and upon a soul, 
 
 That once was innocent — not now, alas! 
 
 Phosphoric streams of liquid light had tipt 
 
 The billowy ocean's foamy cresis, and drawn 
 
 Haloes of living fire around the dim 
 
 And dusky horizon — bejond the ken 
 
 Of all, save star-like vision looking down 
 
 On earth from heaven's blue-arch'd battlements sublime. 
 
 Amid the wild concussion of the waves 
 
 Swelling and warring, like the vassal mass 
 
 Led by Ambition — that fierce god of dupes 
 
 And despots shaking pestilence around 
 
 From his gore-clotted locks — an islet lay 
 
 In still and smiling loveliness, array'd 
 
 In the bright summer's garb of velvet green 
 
 Festoon'd by branching woodbines, that were gay 
 
 With the exuberance of being — crown'd 
 
 AVith emerald set in violet amelhjst. 
 
 It lay so peacefully — and was so sweet 
 
 And lone asylum for a broken heart, 
 
 Methought it seemed like virtue, on the earth 
 
 A wanderer, doomed to bear her starry brow, 
 
 Stamp'd with the impress of unerring love, 
 
 Amid the battling rage of sin and folly; 
 
 Or Innocence seated on the sepulchre 
 
 Of hope departed — smiling yet — but like 
 
 The smiles upon the cold, damp, bro'fV of Death. 
 
A VISION. 
 
 In strange varieties of fantastic forms 
 
 Hung the last vestiges of sable clouds, 
 
 That curtain'd, when the unseen sun had sunk 
 
 Behind the skirting hills of Ripton, far 
 
 Swelling on the mariner's eagle eje, as o'er 
 
 The light blue wave, that laves Long-Island's shore, 
 
 His bark careering flies, the sombre skj 
 
 Sleeping so deadly on the mountain height. 
 
 Darkness yet lingered in their mazy folds 
 
 Of fleecy vapours, as foul sin infests 
 
 The last sad hour of low mortality, 
 
 E'en till the soul hath left her dungeon clay; 
 
 But the bright moon, that rose serenely o'er 
 
 The rain-dropp'd canopy of umbrag'd woods. 
 
 Sleeping in momentary beauty on 
 
 The mimic lake within the woodbine's bell, 
 
 Then blending with the sapphire floods on high, 
 
 And radiating the starry robe of night 
 
 With mellow lustre, stealing on the sonl 
 
 Of wandering melancholy minstrel, call'd 
 
 By nature to nocturnal orisons — 
 
 The bright moon's beams lay on the topmost height 
 
 Of those erratic clouds, and as they fell 
 
 Commingling with the inky-tinctured spots. 
 
 That soiled the jewelled vestments of high heaven, 
 
 Like staining crime on godlike imaged man, 
 
 Lone musing melancholy sung — so hope. 
 
 Faith, breathing aspirations unto heaven, 
 
 Love — purest essence of ethereal thought — 
 
 Pleasure, bliss, rapture in this lowly world 
 
 Are all corrupted, mildewed, blighted, dead 
 
 Beneath the nightshade's withering gloom, that lies 
 
 In massive folds upon the catacomb 
 
 Of a creation once so purely bright. — • 
 
A VISION. 
 
 The holiest impulse of created mind 
 Is so commingled with the base and low 
 Texture of earth engendered feelings that, 
 Amid the wildering labyrinth of mind, 
 The semblance of a Cynosure may flash, 
 Flinging its fiery atoms round his path. 
 Portend the issue terrible, and burst — 
 The blasting, ruining meteor of death; 
 Luring the soul by fairy seeming, like 
 Destruction's harbinger — the false mirage — 
 To the dark haunts of tearless agony. 
 
 Above me waved a giant oak, whose boughs, 
 Loaded with hoary festoons, like the locks 
 Of fiery spirited veteran, undecayed. 
 Spread from the gnarled trunk, that stood aloft 
 Unbending to the wild autumnal blast. 
 Unshorn, unblenching, and unsheltered — proud 
 Towering in venerable majesty on high — 
 O how unlike the fabrics of vain man ! 
 His gorgeous domes, and palaces o'er-canopied 
 With fretted gold, as bubbles on the rill, 
 As fairy frost-work in the sun, decay 
 With the proud arm that rear'd them — ruin'd fall 
 Prostrate — in homage to their slumbering tenant? 
 Nof in mockery of fancied immortality; 
 And sapient eye of virtuoso may 
 Roam o'er the mouldering mansions of the dead, 
 And treasure up his relics — peasant's tools! 
 Philosophy may scan the pyramid 
 And obelisk — and think on times gone by — 
 Pomp, power, factions, revolutions, blood, 
 Massacre, and desolation — but the voice 
 Of research seeking long-forgotten names 
 
A VISION. 
 
 Of warriors, sages, bards, and sybils, comes 
 Back o'er their buried memories indistinct, 
 Like hollow murmurings of discontent, 
 Seeming to say — nothing — but Oblivion. 
 Here everlasting silence broods, nor opes 
 Her closed lip to tell the passer-by 
 That crested heroes o'er the crimson tide 
 Of wasted blood — Oh ! demon-circled carnage ! 
 Wafted by groans and cries of widowhood, 
 Sailed madly down the Lethean gulf — and left 
 The croaking bittern sounding their requiem ! 
 
 The oak's long branches on the fanning gale 
 Tost their green platted foliage ; and faint 
 The fuU-orb'd moon gleam'd through the density 
 Of leafy umbrage, like the trembling light 
 Of days dimly remembered, and only seen 
 Duskily, amid the twilight of the soul. 
 Through the entangled vista of the yew 
 And cypress, leading to the sepulchre 
 Of buried love, and slumbering passion — gone I 
 
 Through the unhallowed mazes of the wood, 
 That gloomed behind me, vision keen and bright 
 Could never pierce — a haunted solitude — 
 It lay in darkness palpable^ yet formless — 
 And night-born furies yelling o'er it flapt 
 Their raven wings the while their snaky hair, 
 Coiling and curling to the breath of night. 
 Streamed like an infernal standard, all unfurl'd 
 And planted by the ebon throne of hell. 
 And from the midst came hollow mutterings, 
 Like earthquake voices deep, foreboding doom, 
 And agonizing Horror, writh'd and tortur'd, strained 
 
8 A VISION. 
 
 His bursting, blood-shot eye-balls through the gloom 
 Cimmerian to gaze ; — but strained in vain, 
 For earthly fiends incarnate, mangling, rent 
 His heart with venom fangs, and harrowed up 
 His soul with flickering beams of distant light, 
 That glittered to delude the vision ; — then 
 In wild distortions of grimace, and leers 
 Of hate luxuriated on him turned 
 In pity's life subduing mockeries. 
 
 The lovely, deep blue vault of circling heaven 
 In beauty placid o'er me hung, like the eye 
 Of deep impassioned lover o'er the form 
 Of innocent loveliness — his soul's delight 
 And mirror — the ideal shade, that haunts 
 His airy and aerial dreams, when soft 
 And dew-robed sleep with downy trembling step, 
 Leaving her foot-prints only on the train 
 Of her majestic sweeping goddess — Night, 
 Flings her embalming vestments o'er his lids, 
 That close like dying infant's laid upon 
 The cradling bosom of its mother. — Tranced,, 
 And wrapt in lofty meditation, o'er 
 The undisturbed and smiling sky I gazed 
 Seeking some quiet, peaceful isle amid 
 That boundless ocean of pure emerald, 
 And musing that among the myrtle groves. 
 And bedded flowers, and by the blushing banks 
 Of Life's eternal stream of deathless love, 
 I might view her in whom my earth-bound soul 
 Delighted — her I did idolatrize ; 
 Wishing most fondly, most devotedly, 
 That I was but a winged spirit, borne 
 On star-gemm'd pinions through those azure fields 
 
A VISION. 9 
 
 So fitting spliere-born souls — all bodiless — 
 All passionless, unpolluted, and exempt 
 From the dark scepticism, and blots of earth — 
 That I might drink the music floating pure 
 Down from the seraph-cinctured throne of God 
 To jon bright spheres, forever lighted by 
 The beams of thought electric, and might live 
 Uncloyed by deathless rapture — all unstained 
 By contact with the living clay below, 
 Untouched by thing of mortal mould— 'unknown 
 Save to the Omniscient, his angelic train, 
 And sainted spirits purified. Oh ! and there, 
 Perchance, amid the Eden bowers of light, 
 O'er-canopied with amaranthine flowers 
 Living and blossoming in angel-smiles, 
 And dewed with tears of pearl, that trembling steal 
 Unbidden, and involuntary o'er 
 The alabaster cheek of cherubim, as they 
 Dash screaming felons down the black abyss 
 Of hopeless, starless^ bottomless perdition; — 
 Perchance that there, where sin comes not in pride 
 Ushering her scorpion-vestured daughter — Woe — 
 And she leading Despair — in joy again 
 My long-departed parent's form might burst 
 On Rapture's eye — Oh ! he in bliss was wont 
 To kiss my cloudless brow in infancy, 
 Press my young lips to his, and fondly tell 
 Of future days, when my fair brow would glow 
 With vivifying thought, and those young lips 
 Impart the words of truth, and eloquence, 
 Stirring the dormant souls of human-kind 
 To deeds of mercy, gentleness, and truth. 
 His soul w as like the Halcyon, when she sit« 
 Smiling upon the mimic throne of glass 
 
 B 
 
10 A VISION, 
 
 Amid the boundlessness of her fair world 
 
 Sleeping in sliilj quietude around her; 
 
 Her peacock pinions spread upon the wave, 
 
 That swells so gentlj, that she feels her soft 
 
 And rainbow plumage ruffled not — her eye 
 
 Watching the sportive inmates of the deep 
 
 As thej in joyous evolutions skim 
 
 Along the crystal plain of waters — full 
 
 Of innocent, and exuberant glee ; 
 
 While, past all melody of land and grove, 
 
 Her song swells o'er the wave in tones so sweet. 
 
 So musical, and heaven-taught, (hat the wide plain 
 
 Seems spread with fretted canopies of gold, 
 
 For sun-beams flash from amber scales, and Silence 
 
 Lifts up her head in wonder to imbibe 
 
 Those heart-embalming sounds; even the fierce 
 
 Leviathan seems to slumber oh the wave; — 
 
 This may not be — the dolphin whirls away — the sky 
 
 Is curtained with dark clouds — the sun retires — 
 
 Flashes the lightning — heaves the ocean — far 
 
 Beyond the ken of mortal flies the Bird. 
 
 So grief hath darkened o'er my soul . . . yet he 
 
 Did never — holy thought ! behold the lines 
 
 Of furrowing woe, that mark the glowing brow 
 
 Once hallowed by his kisses . . . never saw 
 
 The writhing of my tortured soul^ — nor heard 
 
 The demon voice of imprecation pour 
 
 Its fearful curses on my head ; — Oh bliss ! 
 
 And I could meet his soul-lit glance again, 
 
 Nor ruin heaven by telling him a tale, 
 
 At which Arch-Lucifer would shrink and shudder. 
 
 And there's another ; she, who smiled so sweet 
 That heaven seemed dwelling in her soft blue eye, 
 
A VISION. 11 
 
 And tuning every fibre of her heart 
 
 To the unheard, but not unfelt, and pure 
 
 Music of the sinless soul ; she, who rose 
 
 On high, by glittering seraph pinions borne, 
 
 From the remorseless bosom of her own 
 
 Unspotted purity. Hail, thou charm ! thou dear 
 
 Returning vision of departed years ! 
 
 Thou peerless image of celestial joys ! 
 
 How calm and beautiful in death thou wert ! 
 
 In life enchanting — in heaven — v/hat ? Delight 
 
 Dwells in the deepest core of my fond heart. 
 
 Exults in every feverish pulse — bedims 
 
 The vision — wraps each sense in lethargy 
 
 And mocks all utterance. — Fond Friendship, such 
 
 As lives in bosoms unallled to earth, 
 
 Intensely gazes on yon pictured fields. 
 
 Too lovely and too pure to canopy 
 
 That strange commixture of base clay, and half 
 
 The attributes of Deity — that bright 
 
 Mirror, reflecting equally the forms 
 
 Of seraphim and fiends-r-that vassal dupe 
 
 Of glittering shapes, and high criterion 
 
 Of energy and dignity — the slave 
 
 Of passion, and the conqueror of the world — 
 
 Man ! most complex mystery of created kind — 
 
 Devoted Friendship gazes to behold. 
 
 And revel in its view of Cranston — fled 
 
 From the idolatry of an earthly church 
 
 To worship heaven's bright Hierarch — and lead 
 
 His soaring saints to glory. Oh ! he was 
 
 The shielding JEgis of my youth ; he sunk 
 
 E'en in his lovely prime into the tomb. 
 
 Departing in his native light of love. 
 
 And leaving darkness on my lonely mind. 
 
12 ^ A VISION. 
 
 But could I soar to jon fair fields, his eye 
 
 Would mark his unforgotten youthful friend, and fix 
 
 On me again the glances of his soul. 
 
 Wrapt in this reverie of visioned bliss. 
 This rare communion with ethereal shades 
 Stealing unconsciously upon the mind, 
 That loves no earthly musings, such as cheer 
 The maudlin brains of plodding brutes, who delve 
 For fancied heaps of tinsel dust unseen 
 By avarice upon the ground he treads — 
 I saw, melhought, a vestment purely while 
 Floating athwart the starry galaxy, 
 Like spirits ministrant in holy days. 
 When Heaven seemed clasping Earth unto her breast, 
 Flinging their stainless robes before the eyes. 
 That saw the cherub-thron'd Shechinah blaze 
 Above the seat of Mercy, on whose ear 
 Came the sad voice of Penitence so soft 
 And melting, that she raised her touching glance 
 Upon dark-brow'd inexorable Justice, 
 Whose mandate terrible had shrunk the soul 
 To endless death but for the trembling hand, 
 That showered absolution — Oh! long-lost days! 
 'Twas passing spirit-like — and then 'twas gone — 
 Like shadowy visions of delight — or like 
 The beautifullest hues of dancing Eve 
 Upon the sun-bright wave — as fair, more fleeting — 
 It passed no more — and then I thought that so 
 Fancy doth deck ephemeras, and all 
 The wild chimeras of gay fluttering Hope, 
 To cheer the dull, dead scenes of human life, 
 Being's asperities, and satiety; 
 And they do cheer — and so doth that bright Lake, 
 
A VISION. 1.3 
 
 Shining, like Ormus' pearly waters, on 
 The toil-worn wanderer's rapture-kindling eye, 
 As it hangs its crystal beauties on the far 
 And fleeting horizon — O mockery! 
 
 "While Melancholy mused there came above me, 
 Arching ihe lonely, solitary cliff, 
 A rainbow, dyed in heaven's own fountains, girt 
 With bright diamond wings, and crown'd aloft 
 With my own lovely Marietta — she. 
 Whose every thought, and wish, and hope sublime 
 From Paradise did flow — and she did love me ! 
 Absorbing transport thrill'd my frame — and then 
 O'er-wrought raplure sunk to lethargy ; I felt 
 The incommunicable bliss of being — 
 Into those minutes came the joys, that will, 
 That must exist through ages numberless 
 In that celestial Land of Souls, where all, 
 Oh Bliss ! is thought, and mind ! Full well I knew 
 The being of untainted purity. 
 And she did smile upon me as in days, 
 When she was wont to turn her azure eye, 
 In which delighted Love and Beauty shone, 
 On the dear object of her inmost soul. 
 And now she came in airy lightness — sweet, 
 And purer than the dew-drop in the violet ; 
 Ay — like that eastern flower, that cannot bloom 
 Upon this lowly sphere : — a coronet 
 Of jewels flung its countless-varied rays 
 O'er all her tresses murmuring in the breeze, 
 And sending forth the only sound, that came 
 From ought around her — she was voiceless — Oh ! 
 Music would have lapt my very soul, if once 
 My fond ear could have drank her foot- step's sound. 
 
14 A VISION. 
 
 Her eye was bright, but it had lost the power 
 
 Of the unbosoming glance, that lovers know — 
 
 Th?Li filial lovers know — and yet a smile 
 
 Imbued its dwelling vision, and impress'd 
 
 The love-fraught bosom with a strange, a deep, 
 
 And undefinable delight — 't was more 
 
 Than can be felt by tenderest hearts, when lips 
 
 Meeting in speechless transport drink the soul, 
 
 And bear away the existence of each other ; 
 
 'Twas more than earth can give, or take — and none 
 
 Of those aerial essences impart 
 
 The secrets of Eternity. — There was 
 
 A soul-absorbing, dove-like tenderness 
 
 Around her : — and she did look upon my form 
 
 With such a breathing melancholy eye. 
 
 As the Sultana, that bright-plumaged Bird 
 
 Perch'd on the monuments of departed greatness, 
 
 Throws o'er the ruins desolate around her. 
 
 Along the spheres, and redolent of heaven, 
 
 Came angel breathings — music exquisite — 
 
 Felt, but inexpressible, loud, but such 
 
 As sounds within the palace of the soul 
 
 When it is tuned to faint responses ; she 
 
 At that soul-stirring sound her pinions waved, 
 
 As if for flight to yon empyreal heights — 
 
 But still delayed — I knew not why — yet thought > 
 
 There was a strange concussion in my breast — 
 
 A breathless, unknown, feeling — such as ne'er 
 
 Came over me before — a wilderment 
 
 Of ideas tangled; Earth did seem to me 
 
 Not as it wont — there was a veil o'er things, 
 
 That shadowed them before my swimming" eye, 
 
 And nature lay around me in a cloud 
 
 Of dim and waning lustre, like the last 
 
A VISION. 15 
 
 Faint beauties of expiring Day upon 
 
 The sapphire clouds of even ; — all was chang'd, 
 
 Or changing I knew not how — and I lay 
 
 Unconscious of all things that charmed me once, 
 
 Save that bright spirit's holy smile — for now 
 
 She bent o'er me, seeming robed in a garb 
 
 Spangled with glories — and she seem'd to take 
 
 My hand in hers and say — mortal may not 
 
 Descant upon a fair immortal's words, 
 
 Nor tell them ; — Eden's language never came 
 
 Glowing from fallen, sinful, erring man. 
 
 But one among them was the spell-word, known 
 
 To forms and beings bodiless on high 
 
 Alone; it pass'd her colourless lips, and flew 
 
 Along the smiling concave — and it seem'd 
 
 She rose, and I was striving to arouse 
 
 From that lethargic torpor, which had steeped 
 
 External sense in Lethe, and infused 
 
 A deadly chill into my curdling blood. 
 
 When, like the Volcan's voice along the red 
 
 Torrent of lava bursting down his height, 
 
 Came hollow mutterings, and the yelling shades 
 
 Of Evil whirled from that unlit Profound 
 
 Beyond the cliiF in massive phalanxes. 
 
 Wielding above infernal weapons, and aloft. 
 
 Below, around encircling me with snakes 
 
 Of venom' d fangs, and forked tongues, that fill'd 
 
 The welkin with their hissings, and fierce fires, 
 
 Like wild Sahara's, all around me roll'd 
 
 In volum'd masses broad, enkindling all 
 
 The scenery, and withering every shrub, 
 
 And living thing, save enfranchised spirits pure, 
 
 Unto a hue of haggard ghastliness ; 
 
 Then came terrific shouts of laughter, like 
 
16 A VISION. 
 
 The gladness of the Demon of the Waste, 
 
 O'er the triumphal minstrelsy of hell 
 
 Played by those lost, abandoned Ariels, who wont 
 
 By their rich tones to lead on seraphim 
 
 Through heaven's gem-barr'd portals, and now were cursed 
 
 With notes, that once were pure and holy, fraught 
 
 With trebly damning recollections dire. 
 
 Now wheeling on their wings of darkness, fired 
 
 With torch-like and sulphureous blaze, they came, 
 
 Like that high pillar'd banner raised above 
 
 The watery battlement of eastern climes. 
 
 Coloured on one side with the dies of heaven. 
 
 While blackness rob'd the other ; — but — I looked, 
 
 And saw the sky in peaceful loveliness 
 
 Encircling me like angel-smiles around 
 
 The beauteous new-born babe ; I looked again ; 
 
 And saw a shadow of celestial air 
 
 Treading the fields of amber — and I felt 
 
 A gentle rising — nectared breezes fann'd 
 
 My fevered cheek, unearthly beauties glowed 
 
 O'er all the embosoming heaven on high — 
 
 A smile ethereal tinged with rosy hues 
 
 My lovely spirit's brow, and cheek, and eye, 
 
 And turning on me, as a golden blaze 
 
 Of light falls on a summer cloud, she said — 
 
 Oh ! that enchanting voice so musical ! 
 
 "My Brother, look!" I raised my downcast eye 
 
 And gazed, till all my soul became a fount 
 
 Of light — and perfume, bliss and gilead — 
 
 Delighted Hope her starry pinions furl'd, 
 
 And gently sunk upon Fruition's breast. 
 
There was a Voice — 'tis silent now, and ne'er 
 Will blend its music with my soul again, 
 For on the living loneliness of mind 
 It comes not — ah ! its lengthening echo comes, 
 When love-lorn fantasies of viewless things 
 Hold runic empire in my whirling brain, 
 And deep communion with the gliding shades 
 Of long-lost, dim-remembered hours imbues 
 The soul with pageantry aerial, 
 And wraps external sense in witchery — 
 Like the low wailings of a wild-voiced dirge 
 By airy phantoms chanted in the hour 
 Of dark-brow'd Midnight, when aloft she lifts 
 Her hooded head, and shakes her sable locks, 
 Wild waving o'er the shaggy mountain top, 
 Upon the dim-starr'd firmament — to hear 
 The intonated requiem^ — and smile 
 In soul-subduing, bitter Mockery. 
 That echo — not responsive to the strain 
 Of spirit-stirring joy — but the deep wail 
 Of hope departed, not deferr'd — the sad. 
 Heart-breaking chorus of a last farewell, 
 
 C 
 
IS THE VOICE. 
 
 That plain'd along the craggy, toppling heights 
 O'erhanging Housalonic's rivulet, 
 AVhen Dian — love's true oracle — on high 
 Shone dimly; darkness on that hour of woe, 
 Like death's funereal pall of blackness, hangs, 
 While Memory recoils — yet loves to trace 
 The inildew'd beauties of a blighted flower, 
 And catch from hues faded long since a ray 
 Of unforgotten, but decayed delight; — 
 Thus man — the deepest mystery of earth — 
 Wantons in retrospective parted bliss 
 To swell the tide of present agony. 
 
 But to the Voice. — It was the Voice of Love — 
 But is not now — nor ever more can be. 
 Ellen — (hat name sounds like the mermaid's song 
 "Most musical, most melancholy!" — and wakes 
 Emotions unintelligible and dread — 
 Our meeting, Ellen, in that hamlet lone, 
 Was like the mingling of symphonious sounds 
 O'er distant moonlight-waters rising sweet, 
 Embalmijig every soul, that drinks the music; — 
 Like the rich evening sunbeam on the arch 
 Of countless hues, that spans the skies, and flings 
 Its native charms — how beautiful ! around. 
 Drawn forth, and heightened by the solar rays; 
 'Twas like the fond concurrence of two spirits 
 In their own Eden musing on the joys. 
 That dwell within, when every holy thought. 
 Tuning the music of their souls, comes not 
 Into the mind of either, until form'd, 
 And moulded to the purest taste of each. 
 'Twas pure and lovely — Oh! the scene appears, 
 Tiike an Oasis in the bloomless waste. 
 
THE VOICE. 19 
 
 A glowing star upon (he darkling bruw 
 Of dewy-vestured Night — an Eden laid 
 On the fiend-haunted banks of Phlegethon! 
 
 Dost thou remember — no thou wilt not now — 
 
 For 'twas a pageant only — Ihou wilt say — 
 
 The fluttering maiden's evanescent hour 
 
 Of sportive triumph o'er a bleeding heart, 
 
 The licensed mockery of beauty — well 
 
 It might have been (he Fancy's waking dream, 
 
 (And in that wild, sequestered, lonely wood 
 
 The poet well might shadow forth a form 
 
 Of lovely air, and wake (he voice of Love 
 
 From the imaginings of his own brain, 
 
 And paint a fondly dwelling, speaking eye 
 
 From the intensity of wildering thought) 
 
 It might have been a shade — or nothing — yet 
 
 Such as it was — the memory scans each line. 
 
 Each feature, blush, and smile of (hat sweet face — 
 
 Dull is the minstrel if he cannot sketch 
 
 A scene, that thrall'd each raptur'd sense, and woke 
 
 Passions undying, thrilling, and intense. 
 
 Crescented Cynthia, methought, along 
 
 The deep-blue sapphire element of pure 
 
 And liquid ether held her cloudless course, 
 
 And flung her soft liquescent beams o'er mead, 
 
 Lawn, grove, and glassy stream, and wood-crown'd hill; 
 
 And I pass'd o'er the high-arch'd bridge — that might 
 
 A designation from its scenes receive. 
 
 And then be call'd — *' The Bridge of Sighs" — for there 
 
 Full many a sigh arose, and many a tear 
 
 Of bitter grief descended ; so 1 trod 
 
 With pensive, lingering, melancholy step. 
 
 Gazing at intervals upon the mooo- 
 
20 THE VOICE. 
 
 The nightly-vvamlering poet's Deity — 
 
 And musing that her chastened light was cold 
 
 As human hearts and human friendships — all 
 
 Moving by one grand chord — base interest — 
 
 I strove to lift ray hand that I might vow 
 
 Never to mingle with the venal herd 
 
 Of sordid sensualists — ne'er to wear 
 
 A smile upon mj brow while rancour fired 
 
 My heart — but then I felt a pressure soft 
 
 Upon ray bent right arm, and turn'd my eye 
 
 On — the sweet smiling face of Ellen ; — she, 
 
 In love's fond glances past all eloquence, 
 
 Threw on me such a look ineffable. 
 
 So full of holiest, and intensest love, 
 
 Mingled with sadness inexpressible, 
 
 And every throb of her convulsed heart 
 
 Confirm'd the language of her eyes so true, 
 
 That manhood's feelings, uncontroul'd when night 
 
 Had laid her leaden fingers on the lids 
 
 Of vampire curiosity, burst forth 
 
 In a wild chaos of untextured words. 
 
 That had no meaning to the soulless hind ; 
 
 Then came the voice — I heard it now — as o'er 
 
 The wave of gulfing Time it comes, no more 
 
 Soft and mellifluent as wont, but harsh 
 
 As felon's death-knell o'er his dungeon-vault ; 
 
 But then it fell upon me as the dew 
 
 Falls on the sun-scorch'd violet, and stole 
 
 Into my very being, telling Love 
 
 That truth ejected from the world beside 
 
 Will find a hermitage in woman's breast, 
 
 That Ida's summit can attest the bliss, 
 
 And wild Leucadia the agony 
 
 Of fix'd, immovable, unearthly souls. 
 
THE VOIGE. SI 
 
 In fond communion, thus, of hearts we pass'd 
 
 Through the dim vista of the maple grove, 
 
 And 'neath the canopy of rustling leaves, 
 
 (Where zephyr still wooed echo to respond 
 
 His music indistinct with her soft voice. 
 
 Though she long since had sought the pole, and cheer'd 
 
 The icy soul of Boreas with song,) 
 
 Upon a mossy stone we seated us, 
 
 While, chiming on its pebbly bed, the stream, 
 
 A mirror in the midst of frowning woods. 
 
 Like youth and virtue in a world of vice, 
 
 Purled gently, imperceptibly along. 
 
 As sainted spirits o'er empyreal bowers ; 
 
 Peaceful and stainless, happ_y and serene. 
 
 Around my neck she threw her lily arm, 
 
 And, in a speechless ecstacy of Love, 
 
 Reclined her head upon a throbbing breast 
 
 Doom'd ne'er to be her pillow ; every kiss, 
 
 The very essence of enchanted souls. 
 
 Given and answered, while her snowy cheek 
 
 Was all carnation'd with deep blushes, came 
 
 From the recesses of an heavenly heart. 
 
 And with it carried heaven ! 
 
 Intense and high 
 Swell pain and pleasure in the loftier mind ; 
 The stoic hardihood of iron nerves 
 May pass in dull monotony, unknown 
 To mortal woe, — to joys alike unknown. 
 I pity and commiserate the man, 
 With whom life's sorrows are poetic tales, 
 And Love — the glowing Cynosure of heaven, 
 The brightest gem in Deity's bright crown — 
 A mocking by-word — rustic jest — or taunt 
 
22 THE VOICE. ' 
 
 Of base fa(uity — such lowlj thoughts 
 Are fitting earth — and demons. 
 
 The silver moon 
 Now glimmered faintly through the rolling racky 
 That circled her, and forked fierj bolts 
 Flew rapidlj along the welkin dark, 
 And distant thunder burst, (he wild wind then, 
 Threw, as the fierce furies their scorpion hair 
 O'er the Avernian gulf, the sable clouds 
 O'er the fair face of heaven ; the dusky grove 
 In omened voices spake, and echoes loud 
 
 Answered the whirlwind's herald : a faint shriek. 
 
 That seemed to say — farewell — I heard — and gazed 
 
 Around on lone vacuity — my thoughts 
 
 Wild as the tempest raged — Oh ! she had gone ! 
 
 Death to my hopes, and joys, and love, and fame 
 
 Came on that blast of Desolation ! — Now 
 
 Be it the Fancy's vision — one can tell — 
 
 Or be it grief delineating truth, 
 
 That Voice upon the ear of Memory 
 
 Rings like the boding death-watch of Despair. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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