Calm, on its leaf-strewn bier,
Unlike a gift of nature to decay,
Too rose-like still, too beautiful, too dear,
The child at rest before its mother lay;
E'en so to pass away,
With its bright smile!—Elysium! what wert thou,
To her, who wept o'er that young slumberer's brow?
Thou hadst no home, green land!
For the fair creature from her bosom gone,
With life's first flowers just opening in her hand,
And all the lovely thoughts and dreams unknown,
Which in its clear eye shone
Like the spring's wakening!—But that light was past—
—Where went the dew-drop, swept before the blast?
Not where thy soft winds play'd,
Not where thy waters lay in glassy sleep!
Fade, with thy bowers, thou land of visions, fade!
From thee no voice came o'er the gloomy deep,
And bade man cease to weep!
Fade, with the amaranth-plain, the myrtle-grove,
Which could not yield one hope to sorrowing love!
For the most lov'd are they,
Of whom Fame speaks not with her clarion-voice
In regal halls!—the shades o'erhang their way,
The vale, with its deep fountains, is their choice,
And gentle hearts rejoice
Around their steps!—till silently they die,
As a stream shrinks from summer's burning eye.
And the world knows not then,
Not then, nor ever, what pure thoughts are fled!
Yet these are they, that on the souls of men
Come back, when night her folding veil hath spread,
The long-remember'd dead!
But not with thee might aught save Glory dwell—
—Fade, fade away, thou shore of Asphodel!
