MEDITATION

Upon the obscure and lonely tomb,
Beneath the yellow evening’s gloom,
To offer up to Heaven I come,
              For her I loved, my prayer!
Upon the marble bow’d my head,
Around my knees the moist herbs spread,
The wild flowers bend beneath my tread,
              That deck the thicket there.

Far from the world, and pleasures vain,
From earth my frenzied thoughts to gain,
And read in characters yet plain
              Names of the long since past;
There by the gilded lamp alone,
That waves above the altar stone,
As by the wandering breezes moan,
              A light’s upon me cast.

Perchance some bird will pause its flight
Upon the funeral cypress height,
Warbling the absence of the light,
              As sorrowing for its loss;
Or takes leave of the day’s bright power,
From the high window of the tower,
Or skims, where dark the cupolas lower,
              On the gigantic cross.

With eyes immersed in tears, around
I watch it silent from the ground,
Until it startled flies the sound
              The harsh bolts creaking gave;
A funeral smile salutes me dread,
The only dweller with the dead,
Lends me a hard and rough hand, led
              To ope another grave.

                    * * *

Pardon, O God! the worldly thought,
              Nor mark it midst my prayer;
Grant it to pass, with evil fraught,
As die the river’s murmurings brought
              Upon the breezy air.

Why does a worldly image rise
              As if my prayer to stain?
Perchance in evil shadow’s guise,
Which may when by the morrow flies
              Sign of a curse remain.

Why has my mind been doom’d to dream
              A phantom loveliness?
To see those charms transparent gleam,
That brow in tranquil light supreme,
              And neck’s peculiar grace?

Not heighten’d its enchantments shine
              By pomp or worldly glow;
I only see that form recline
In tears, before some sacred shrine,
              Or castle walls below.

Like a forgotten offering lone,
              In ruin’d temple laid;
Upon the carved and time-worn stone,
Where fell it by the rough wind thrown,
              So bent beneath the shade.

With such a picture in my mind,
              Such name upon my ear,
Before my God the place to find,
Where the forgotten are consign’d,
              I come, and bow down here.

With eyes all vaguely motionless,
              Perhaps my wanderings view
The dead, with horror and distress,
As, roused up in their resting-place,
              They look their dark walls through.

’Twas not to muse I hither came
              Of nothingness my part;
Nor of my God, but of a name,
That deep in characters of flame
              Is written on my heart.

Pardon, O God! the worldly thought,
              Nor mark it midst my prayer;
Grant it to pass, with evil fraught,
As die the river’s murmurings brought
              Upon the breezy air.