But spreading purple twilight still
High over memory's shadowed hill.
They lie upon my pathway bleak,
Those flowers that once ran wild,
As on a father's careworn cheek
The ringlets of his child;
The golden mingling with the gray,
And stealing half its snows away.
What care I though the dust is spread
Around these yellow leaves,
Or o'er them his sarcastic thread
Oblivion's insect weaves?
Though weeds are tangled on the stream,
It still reflects my morning's beam.
And therefore love I such as smile
On these neglected songs,
Nor deem that flattery's needless wile
My opening bosom wrongs;
For who would trample, at my side,
A few pale buds, my garden's pride?
It may be that my scanty ore
Long years have washed away,
And where were golden sands before
Is naught but common clay;
Still something sparkles in the sun
For memory to look back upon.
And when my name no more is heard,
My lyre no more is known,
Still let me, like a winter's bird,
In silence and alone,
Fold over them the weary wing
Once flashing through the dews of spring.
Yes, let my fancy fondly wrap
My youth in its decline,
And riot in the rosy lap
Of thoughts that once were mine,
And give the worm my little store
When the last reader reads no more!
POETRY
A METRICAL ESSAY, READ BEFORE THE PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY, HARVARD UNIVERSITY, AUGUST, 1836
TO CHARLES WENTWORTIL UPHAM, THE FOU LOWING METRICAL RSSA¥ IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.
This Academie Poem presents the simple and partial views of a young person trained
after the schoola of classical English verse as represented by Popa, Goldsmith, and Camp- bell, with whose lines his memory was early stocked. It will be obeerved that it deals chistly with the construetive side of the poet’a function, That which makes lim « poet is not the power of writing melofions rhymes, it is not the possession of ordinary human sensi- bilities nor even of beth these qualities in con- nection with each other. £ shonld rather say, if were now called upon to define it, it is the power of transfiguring the experiences and shows of life mta an aspect which comes from his imagination and kindles that of others. Emution is its stimulns and language furnishes its expression; but these are not all, as some might infer was the doetrina of the poem before the reader.
A common mistake mada by young persons who suppose themselves to have the poetieal gift is that their own spiriimal exaltation finds a true expression in the conventional phrases which are berrawed from the voices of the siugers whose inspiration they think they share.
Looking at this poem a3 an expression of some aspects of the ars poetica, with some passages which [ can read aven at this mature period of lite without blushing for them, it may atand ss the most seriunus representation of my early efferts. Intended aa it was for public dolivery, many of its paruyraphs may betray the fact by their somewhat rhetorical and sonorous character,
Scenes of my youth! awuke its slumber.
ing fire !
Ye winds of Memory, sweep the silent lyre !
Ray of the past, if yet thou canst appear,
Break through the clonds of Faney’s wan-
ing year 3
Chase from her breast the thin autumnal
snow,
Tf leaf or blossom still is fresh below !
Long have I wandered ; the returning
tide
Brought back an exile to his cradle’s side ;
And as my bark her time-worn flag un-
relled, .
Ta greet the land-breeze with its faded
fold,
So, in remembrance of my boyhood’s time,
I lift these ensigns of neglected rhyme ;
Oh, more than Ded, that, all my wander-
ings through,
My anchor falls where first my pennons
flew |
