What is this world at best,
Though deck'd in vernal bloom,
By hope and youthful fancy dress'd,
What, but a ceaseless toil for rest,
A passage to the tomb?
If flowrets strew
The avenue,
Though fair, alas! how fading, and how few!
And every hour comes arm'd
By sorrow, or by woe:
Conceal'd beneath its little wings,
A scythe the soft-shod pilferer brings,
To lay some comfort low:
Some tie to unbind,
By love entwined,
Some silken bond that holds the captive mind.
And every month displays
The ravages of time:
Faded the flowers!—The spring is past!
The scattered leaves, the wintry blast,
Warn to a milder clime:
The songsters flee
The leafless tree,
And bear to happier realms their melody.
Henry! the world no more
Can claim thee for her own!
In purer skies thy radiance beams!
Thy lyre employ'd on nobler themes
Before the eternal throne:
Yet, spirit dear,
Forgive the tear
Which those must shed who're doom'd to linger here.
Although a stranger, I
In friendship's train would weep:
Lost to the world, alas! so young,
And must thy lyre, in silence hung,
On the dark cypress sleep?
The poet, all
Their friend may call;
And Nature's self attends his funeral.
Although with feeble wing
Thy flight I would pursue,
With quicken'd zeal, with humbled pride,
Alike our object, hopes, and guide,
One heaven alike in view;
True, it was thine
To tower, to shine;
But I may make thy milder virtues mine.
If Jesus own my name
(Though, fame pronounced it never),
Sweet spirit, not with thee alone,
But all whose absence here I moan,
Circling with harps the golden throne,
I shall unite for ever.
At death then why
Tremble or sigh?
Oh! who would wish to live, but he who fears to die?
Dec. 5, 1807.