  Life, like the sea, hath yet a few green isles Amid the waste of waters. If the gale Has tossed your bark, and many weary miles Stretch yet before you, furl the battered sail, Fling out the anchor, and with rapture hail The pleasant prospect—storms will come too soon. They are but suicides, at best, who fail To seize when'er they can Joy's fleeting boon— Fools, who exclaim "'tis night," yet always shun the noon. Live not as though you had been born for naught. Save like the brutes to perish. What do they But crop the grass and die? Ye have been taught A nobler lesson—that within the clay, Upon the minds high altar, burns a ray Flashed from Divinity—and shall it shine Fitful and feebly? Shall it die away, Because, forsooth, no priest is at the shrine? Go ye with learning's lamp and tend the fire divine. Pore o'er the classic page, and turn again The leaf of History—ye will not heed The noisy revel and the shouts of men, The jester and the mime, for ye can feed, Deep, deep, on these; and if your bosoms bleed, At tales of treachery and death they tell, The land that gave you birth will never need Tarpeian rock, that rock from which there fell He who loved Rome and Rome's, yet loved himself too well. And she, the traitress, who beneath the weight Of Sabine shields and bracelets basely sank, Stifled and dying, at the city-gate, Lies buried there—and now the long weeds, dank With baneful dews, bend o'er her, and the rank Entangled grass, the timid lizard's home, Covers the sepulchre—the wild flower shrank To plant its roots in that polluted loam— Pity that such a tomb should look o'er ruined Rome. Rome! lovely in her ruins! Can they claim Common humanity who never feel The pulse beat higher at the very name, The brain grow wild, and the rapt senses reel, Drunken with happiness? O'er us should steal Feelings too big for utt'rance—I should prize Such joy above all earthly wealth and weal, Nor barter it for love—when Beauty dies Love spreads his silken wings. The happy are the wise. HENRY S. HAGERT.
|
|
