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 But, when immature death From the half-tried banquet of life, 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 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 players, sculptors, wrought, The famous painters fill'd their wall, The combatants are parted now, The puissant crown'd, the weak laid low! Now strife is hush'd, our ears doth meet, Of this or that down-trodden name, In the hot press of the noon-day. O'er that wide plain, now wrapt in gloom, The one or two immortal lights Rise slowly up into the sky To shine there everlastingly, Like stars over the bounding hill. Thundering and bursting In torrents, in waves |