Life and Immortality
‘O ye wild groves, oh, where is now your bloom!’
(The muse interprets thus his tender thought)
Your flowers, your verdure, and your balmy gloom,
Of late so grateful in the hour of drought?
Why do the birds, that song and rapture brought
To all your bowers, their mansions now forsake?
Ah! why has fickle chance this ruin wrought?
For now the storm howls mournful through the brake,
And the dead foliage flies in many a shapeless flake.
Where now the rill, melodious, pure, and cool,
And meads, with life, and mirth, and beauty crown’d?
Ah! see, the unsightly slime, and sluggish pool,
Have all the solitary vale embrown’d;
Fled each fair form, and mute each melting sound,
The raven croaks forlorn on naked spray:
And, hark: the river, bursting every mound,
Down the vale thunders, and with wasteful sway,
Uproots the grove, and rolls the shatter’d rocks away.
Yet such the destiny of all on earth:
So flourishes and fades majestic man.
Fair is the bud his vernal morn brings forth,
And fostering gales a while the nursling fan,
Oh, smile, ye heavens, serene; ye mildews wan,
Ye blighting whirlwinds, spare his balmy prime,
Nor lessen of his life the little span.
Borne on the swift, though silent wings of time,
Old age comes on apace to ravage all the clime.
And be it so. Let those deplore their doom
Whose hope still grovels in this dark sojourn;
But lofty souls, who look beyond the tomb,
Can smile at fate, and wonder how they mourn.
Shall spring to these sad scenes no more return?
Is yonder wave the sun’s eternal bed?
Soon shall the orient with new lustre burn,
And spring shall soon her vital influence shed,
Again attune the grove, again adorn the mead.
‘Shall I be left forgotten in the dust,
When fate, relenting, lets the flower revive?
Shall nature’s voice, to man alone unjust,
Bid him, though doom’d to perish, hope to live?
Is it for this fair virtue oft must strive
With disappointment, penury, and pain?’
Nor heaven’s immortal spring shall yet arrive,
And man’s majestic beauty bloom again,
Bright through the eternal year of love’s triumphant reign.
