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EARLY DEATH AND FAME.

OR him who must see many years,

FOR

I praise the life which slips away

Out of the light and mutely; which avoids
Fame, and her less fair followers, envy, strife,
Stupid detraction, jealousy, cabal,
Insincere praises; which descends
The quiet mossy track to age.

But, when immature death
Beckons too early the guest

From the half-tried banquet of life,
Young, in the bloom of his days;
Leaves no leisure to press,

Slow and surely, the sweets

Of a tranquil life in the shade

Fuller for him be the hours!

Give him emotion, though pain!

Let him live, let him feel: I have lived!

Heap up his moments with life,

Triple his pulses with fame!

BACCHANALIA;

OR,

THE NEW AGE.

I.

THE evening comes, the field is still.

The tinkle of the thirsty rill, Unheard all day, ascends again; Deserted is the half-mown plain, Silent the swaths! the ringing wain, The mower's cry, the dog's alarms, All housed within the sleeping farms! The business of the day is done, The last-left haymaker is gone.

And from the thyme upon the height,

And from the elder-blossom white

And pale dog-roses in the hedge,
And from the mint-plant in the sedge,
In puffs of balm the night-air blows
The perfume which the day forgoes.

And on the pure horizon far,

See, pulsing with the first-born star, The liquid sky above the hill!

The evening comes, the field is still.

Loitering and leaping,

With saunter, with bounds

Flickering and circling

In files and in rounds

Gaily their pine-staff green

Tossing in air,

Loose o'er their shoulders white

Showering their hair

See the wild Manads

Break from the wood,

Youth and Iacchus

Maddening their blood!

See! through the quiet land

Rioting they pass

Fling the fresh heaps about,

Trample the grass!

Tear from the rifled hedge

Garlands, their prize;

Fill with their sports the field,

Fill with their cries!

Shepherd, what ails thee, then?

Shepherd, why mute?

Forth with thy joyous song!

Forth with thy flute!

Tempts not the revel blithe?

Lure not their cries?

Glow not their shoulders smooth?

Melt not their eyes?

Is not, on cheeks like those,

Lovely the flush?

-Ah, so the quiet was!

So was the hush!

II.

The epoch ends, the world is still.

The age has talk'd and work'd its fill

The famous orators have shone,

The famous poets sung and gone,

The famous men of war have fought,
The famous speculators thought,

The famous players, sculptors, wrought,

The famous painters fill'd their wall,
The famous critics judged it all.

The combatants are parted now,
Uphung the spear, unbent the bow,

The puissant crown'd, the weak laid low!
And in the after-silence sweet,

Now strife is hush'd, our ears doth meet,
Ascending pure, the bell-like fame

Of this or that down-trodden name,
Delicate spirits, push'd away

In the hot press of the noon-day.
And o'er the plain, where the dead age
Did its now silent warfare wage--

O'er that wide plain, now wrapt in gloom,
Where many a splendour finds its tomb,
Many spent fames and fallen nights-

The one or two immortal lights

Rise slowly up into the sky

To shine there everlastingly,

Like stars over the bounding hill.
The epoch ends, the world is still.

Thundering and bursting

In torrents, in waves

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