Again to earth descending from the skies,
Bringing sweet airs to weary mortals, Spring,
Ethereal goddess, bade the force that lies,
Waiting her coming, in each living thing,
To wake refreshed from torpid slumbering.
And every fibre stir with subtle power;
That to each cell the elements might bring
Its tribute each, at the auspicious hour
Unseen to mould, combining, leaf and fruit and flower.
And swiftly wrought her busy ministers
Earth to adorn for her brief holiday;
But chief her fairest daughter, Hope, transfers
A grace divine to our inert, dull clay;
For where of her clear eyes the enkindling ray
Resplendent falls a more than mortal bloom
Each opening bud and tender leaf display;
And flowers still sleeping in the seed perfume
Mild days that coming suns with warmer light illume.
In this sweet season of awakening life,
A tired wanderer, Julian stood again
Upon his natal soil. The inward strife
Whose wasting fires at healing springs in vain
He had sought to quench, still held relentless reign
Within his bosom, odorless and sere
Making life's bloom; still wan and hollow-eyed Pain
Walked by his side, the silent minister
Of each returning day for many a weary year.
Again he looked upon the tranquil scene
Where first his soul beneath the glowing rays
Of love had blossomed. Now as then serene
And softly bright to his life-weary gaze
Nature her fresh unsullied charms displays,
And perfumed airs breathe round his languid brow;
Alas! no sun can brighten heavy days
Darkened by grief; and Heaven shall endow
With her best gifts in vain the lightning-scathëd bough.
Not his the grief that seeks in outward things
Some brief forgetfulness of pain, or finds
In transient joys some respite. Time that brings
Balm to the bruisëd heart, and gently binds
Its bleeding wounds, while round the soul he winds
The mantle of oblivion, to him
Such solace brings alone as still reminds
His spirit of her loss, and from the dim
Long vista of the Past casts a reflected gleam.
In vain through many a land to which his soul
In Youth's fond dreams with ardent longing turned,
Restless he wandered. Vainly to the goal
Where Fame's bright star with living lustre burned
His course he kept; his heart alas! had learned
The lore that turns life's magic-tinted sky
To hueless space; and in his heart inurned
The ashes of Love's blighted flower lie,
His sole remaining wealth of Youth's rich argosy.
And as the bright, joy-giving sunlight falls
In darkened splendor through the antique panes
That light some dim cathedral, whose gray walls
With grave and sombre imagery it stains,
So to his soul the light life still retains,
Passing through darkened windows, takes a cold
And solemn hue that over all things reigns,
And coloring life's aspects manifold,
Hope's sun-loved flower forbids its petals to unfold.
Yet from life's bitter conflict he had come,
Though faint and wounded, victor at the last;
Nor unrewarded, though of earthly bloom
Fate on his languid brow no wreath has placed.
As one who sees before him lie a waste
Of desert sands, beyond whose arid bound
Green trees uprise with branches interlaced
That make refreshing shade upon the ground,
So did his soul discern afar heights verdure-crowned,
Celestial heights, 'mid whose unfading bloom,
Life's narrow desert crossed, at last his soul,
Approved, her glorious birthright shall assume,
The crown and guerdon of life's well-won goal;
And through his being distant echoes roll
Of harmonies divine, that upward draw
His spirit from the withering control
Of earth's corroding cares, that restless gnaw
The heart that shrinks in vain from Heaven's unchanging law.
No weak indulgence of a selfish grief
Had loosed his soul from Nature's deathless bond;
Still as in Youth's fresh season, bright and brief,
A chord vibrated there that could respond
To hopes that lay his narrowed sphere beyond;
Though lopped the fairest branch from life's green tree,
And with it blighted in the bud each fond
And joyous hope, through boughs the sap flowed free
That drew their bloom from roots cast in Humanity.
And still, a living Presence, though unseen,
Real as when animated clay
She lent the lustre of a light serene,
Beside him Violet walked on his lone way—
A fadeless beam from Heaven's eternal day
That pierced the darkness of Earth's starless night,
The black abyss illumining where lay
In wait Despair, with clear and constant light—
Pledge and assurance dear of being infinite.
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Below the horizon sunk the sun now sent
His parting beams that, fairer, he unseen,
And softer than his noonday radiance, lent
A glow of transient glory to the scene.
So, when Love's sun has set, his beams serene
Ofttimes, before they fade, illume life's sky
With radiance fairer than the light had been
That poured at noon its splendors from on high,
Till night and darkness close round hues that mock the eye.
And one by one in Heaven's spacious court
Each its appointed place the silent stars
Taking, assembled, glittering cohort
That with the Regent Moon her glory shares.
All nature now a tranquil aspect wears,
That wooes the weary heart awhile to rest;
And over Violet's grave blow tepid airs,
Sweet with the breath of blossoms that invest
With bloom this spot where Peace now dwells, a friendly guest.
Here Julian watched the gathering shadows close
Round Earth, for him to be dispelled no more;
At last his troubled soul shall find repose,
And Death, that took, his treasure shall restore.
Soon shall his bark from Life's receding shore
To realms of endless day her swift course bend;
So on the ear of Night his heart shall pour
Her last lament, whose echoes shall transcend
Our mortal sphere and to the steadfast stars ascend:
"O sacred fire of Youth! whose light divine
O'er life's horizon cast a living glow,
Wherein, transfigured, common things did shine,
And tears in falling changed to Hope's bright bow;
While clouds with presage black of coming woe,
Touched by the splendor of thy magic beams,
Seemed but the gorgeous drapery spread below
The Future, pictured in our ardent dreams,
Quenched in the night of years one star thy loss redeems.
"For in my barren life all else is dark
Save one bright memory of vanished years;
This sole possession Youth's rich-freighted bark
Has saved amid the wreck of hopes, and fears
Dearer than hopes, as Night's cool silent tears
To drooping buds are dearer than the heat
Of noon; and now this memory my spirit cheers
With such companionship as well might cheat
The heart of grief; so, still, may vanished joys be sweet.
"And in the silence of the solemn night
The echoes of a voice forever stilled
Thrill my worn bosom with a wild delight—
The vague expectance of hopes unfulfilled;
And once again my empty life is filled
With smiling images of promised joys,
Till by the dawn's pale light untimely chilled
In space they vanish, and the world's rude noise
My brief, illusive happiness again destroys.
"Yet would I fain evoke from out the Past
Once more the shadows of Youth's vanished hours.
Retrace, O Time! thy steps and let me cast
A nearer glance on Love's forsaken bowers;
Restore me, oh! restore life's springtime flowers;
Through their young bloom be withered yet warm rain,
From quenchless sources fed, in quickening showers
Shall fall on them till they revive again,
And with their living fragrance soothe life's cureless pain.
"Mysterious stars! that from heaven's azure dome
Seem to watch over us, like angel eyes—
The beacon-lights of our eternal home—
If ye the secrets of the silent skies
Do hold that mock our vain philosophies,
Reveal, reveal unto my listening soul
The living word wherein all wisdom lies;
Oh! free my spirit from the base control
Of earth-born mists that hide from it its aim and goal.
"Do I not know that she I mourn as dead
Lives in immortal youth, forever blest?
Forever healed the wounds that here had bled,
The strife and fever of her soul at rest?
Oh! wherefore then this unavailing quest
After some nearer knowledge of her state;
Though now my heart, like a forsaken nest,
Sees Spring's return, yet still is desolate,
A Spring unfading blooms beyond the Eternal Gate.
"My Violet! 't was in the springtime first,
The time of budding hopes and balmy airs,
That thy effulgent beauty on me burst,
Dimmed by no shadow of approaching cares;
Alas! the smiling aspect Fortune wears
Too oft is like the calm of tropic seas
That lulls the bark their storm-fraught bosom bears
To false security, till darkening skies
Announce its doom; so Fate wrecked our young destinies.
"But 'mid the wreck and ruin of our lives,
Still fresh and fragrant as when life was young,
The sacred treasure of our love survives,
Immortal as the soul from which it sprung;
Here Fortune powerless her shafts hath flung;
As when the Sun majestic moves on high,
Tempests arise, the sky with clouds are hung
That veil his light, serene he journeys by,
His home remote from storms that trouble mortal eye.
"So thus serene the image of our love
Now beckons me from earthly griefs away;
My soul exultant feels her pinions move,
Eager to break from her frail shell of clay.
Now, now at length dawns the Eternal Day;
Smiling around me hover phantoms bright.—
I come! I come! Ye point to me the way
Where waits my Violet; on waves of light
Upborne I float dissolved in exquisite delight."
Thus on the night expired in accents faint
His voice, to fall no more on mortal ear;
No more of love the unavailing plaint,
Of Joy or Grief the speech to utter here;
And o'er the grave shall many a pitying tear
Of lovers fall where take their peaceful rest
Julian and Violet; while each new year
With fragrant honors shall the spot invest
Sacred henceforth to Love, Life's deathless bond confest.