Whose lustre dimm’d the light of day;
And ’mid that heavenly blaze unfold
Her glittering pinions tipp’d with gold. 
While strains of sweet unearthly sound
Awoke their dulcet chime around,
She soared away on wings of light,
Like sparkling meteor of the night;
Still lessening, as she further drew
Amid the ether of heavenly blue,
  Till lost within a blazing star
That above the horizon shown—­
  As if from Paradise a car
’Twere sent to bear the cherub home.

No more that happy throng is rending,
  With gladsome shouts the summer air,
Nor songs of love to heaven ascending,
  From hearts that know no guile nor care;
But on each peerless infant brow
The gloom of care is settling now;
While passion madly fires each eye,
And swells each bosom beating high;
And tongues that lisped an infant name,
Now speak in haughty tones of Fame! 
While some, in senatorial pride,
With scorn their fellow-man deride;
  And others, more sanguinary still,
From words of ire appeal to brands,
  Nor scruple a brother’s blood to spill—­
Cain-like!—­with ensanguined hands
Polluting the flowers which smile—­in vain
Wooing the heart to love again.

Long o’er this painful scene I sighed,
  Where licentious passion, unrestrained,
Was left to riot in her pride—­
  Spreading destruction where’er she reigned. 
“And was this bright—­this fair domain—­
With all its beauty, formed in vain? 
Where Nature, a paradise to grace,
Hath loved her every charm to trace,
That man, enamored of distress
Should mar it into wilderness?”
  I raised my arm while thus I spoke,
And o’er Beauty’s broken bowers sighed;
  But with the effort I awoke,
And found myself by Hela’s side.

DEATH AND BEAUTY.

On a lone sequestered mead,
  Where silver-streamlets flow,
I saw a rose and lily twine,
  And in love and beauty grow;
Again to that lone, peaceful spot,
  From worldly cares I hied—­
But the flowers that lately bloom’d so fair,
  Had wither’d, drooped, and died!

Like love’s young dream, they passed away,
  With all their vernal bloom,
And they, who lately shone so fair,
  Now moulder in the tomb! 
But ere the minstrels left the bowers,
  And to summer climes had fled,
They sang the dirge o’er fading flowers,
  That by their stems lay dead.

Slumbering on its mother’s breast
  A beauteous infant lay,
The blush upon its dimpled cheek,
  Was like a rose in May: 
But the glow that tinged that cheek so fair,
  Was but the transient bloom,
That brightens with the flitting breath—­
  A flow’ret of the tomb.

The infant oped its azure eyes,
  And sweetly smiling, said,
“Mamma,” its gentle spirit ebbing,
  Was numbered with the dead;
It laid its throbbing temples on
  The mother’s heaving breast,
And its gentle spirit pass’d to Heaven,
  With angels bright to rest!