"ALL IS VANITY, SAITH THE PREACHER." 1. FAME, wisdom, love, and power were mine, My goblets blush'd from every vine, I sunn'd my heart in beauty's eyes, 2. I strive to number o'er what days Remembrance can discover, Which all that life or earth displays Would lure me to live over. There rose no day, there roll'd no hour Of pleasure unembitter'd; And not a trapping deck'd my power That gall'd not while it glitter'd. 3. The serpent of the field, by art And spells, is won from harming; But that which coils around the heart, Oh! who hath power of charming? It will not list to wisdom's lore, The soul that must endure it. WHEN COLDNESS WRAPS THIS SUFFERING CLAY. 1. WHEN coldness wraps this suffering clay, Ah, whither strays the immortal mind? It cannot die, it cannot stay, But leaves its darken'd dust behind. Then, unembodied, doth it trace By steps each planet's heavenly way? Or fill at once the realms of space, 2. Eternal, boundless, undecay'd, A thought unseen, but seeing all, All, all in earth, or skies display'd, Shall it survey, shall it recall: Each fainter trace that memory holds So darkly of departed years,› And all, that was, at once appears. 3. Before Creation peopled earth, Its eye shall roll through chaos back; And where the furthest heaven had birth, Its glance dilate o'er all to be, Fix'd in its own eternity. 4. Ábove or Love, Hope, Hate, or Fear, An age Its shall fleet like earthly year; years as moments shall endure. Away, away, without a wing, O'er all, through all, its thought shall fly; A nameless and eternal thing, Forgetting what it was to die. VISION OF BELSHAZZAR. 1. THE King was on his throne, The Satraps throng'd the hall; In Judah deem'd divine Jehovah's vessels hold The godless Heathen's wine! VOL. IV. 2. In that same hour and hall, The fingers of a hand Came forth against the wall, And wrote as if on sand: The fingers of a man; A solitary hand Along the letters ran, And traced them like a wand. |