Where the branches of coral beneath me are growing,
Pellucid as crystal, but rubies in hue,
I remember thy lips, how deliciously glowing,
When fondly they promised they’d ever be true.
While the breezes of eve in soft murmurs are dying,
As over the smooth rosy waters they sweep,
I believe that I hear my fond Isabel sighing,
Ere blushing she sinks, overpower’d in sleep.
In the depth of the night, as the maid of the ocean
Attunes her lone voice to the wild swelling wind,
Oh! I think of the strain that with tender emotion
Oft melted my soul, on the shore left behind.
When the beam of the moon on the billows, which, darkling,
Lie blue as the air, sheds her holiest light,
Can I fail to reflect on that azure eye sparkling,
My beacon of hope, that made noon-day of night?
No.—Thus, though the sun of thy presence hath faded,
The twilight of memory beams on me yet,
And Hope gently whispers, “though now overshaded,
“That sun shall arise brighter e’en than it set.”
With some omissions, and allowing for some objectionable lines, the following is simply and feelingly written:—
THE YOUNG POET DYING AT A DISTANCE FROM HOME.
O bury me not in yon strange spot of earth—
My rest never sweet, never tranquil can be!
But bear me away to the land of my birth,
To a scene, O how dear, and how pleasant to me!
If you saw how the sunbeams illumine the mountains—
How brightly they lie in the glen that I choose—
Could the song of its birds, and the gush of its fountains
Through your souls the rapture and freshness diffuse,
Which erst, in life’s morning, they shed over mine—
O, your hearts would confess, it is all but divine.
******
I know it—the grave which to me you assign,
Is black in the shade of your dreary church-wall,
Where nettle and hemlock their rankness combine,
And the worm and the sullen toad loathsomely crawl.
O! where is the primrose, so meet for adorning
The grave of a minstrel cut off in his bloom?
O! where is the daisy, to shed in the morning
The tear it has gather’d by night, for my doom?
And lastly—but dearer than anguish can tell—
Where, where are the friends that have loved me so well?
*******
See! one aged mourner comes, trembling, to place
A weak, wither’d hand on the grave of her son—
See! Friendship, to tell how I strove in the race,
But died ere the chaplet of glory was won—
And Beauty—I plaited a wreath for that maiden.
When warm was my heart and my fancy was high—
See! Beauty approaches, with summer-flowers laden,
And strews them when nought but the blackbird is nigh!
Thus, thus shall I rest, with a charm on my name,
In the shower-mingled sunshine of love and of fame!
We have occupied all our room, and there are before us at least two dozen more letters and papers requiring answers; but one word will suffice for the whole.
