All Is Vanity, Saith The Preacher

I.

Fame, Wisdom, Love, and Power were mine, And Health and Youth possessed me; My goblets blushed from every vine, And lovely forms caressed me; I sunned my heart in Beauty's eyes, And felt my soul grow tender; All Earth can give, or mortal prize, Was mine of regal splendour.

II.

I strive to number o'er what days[ls] Remembrance can discover, Which all that Life or Earth displays Would lure me to live over. There rose no day, there rolled no hour Of pleasure unembittered; And not a trapping decked my Power That galled not while it glittered.

III.[lt]

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, Nor Music's voice can lure it; But there it stings for evermore The soul that must endure it.

Seaham, 1815.

WHEN COLDNESS WRAPS THIS SUFFERING CLAY.

I.

When coldness wraps this suffering clay,[lu] Ah! whither strays the immortal mind? It cannot die, it cannot stay, But leaves its darkened dust behind. Then, unembodied, doth it trace By steps each planet's heavenly way?[lv] Or fill at once the realms of space, A thing of eyes, that all survey?

II.

Eternal--boundless,--undecayed, A thought unseen, but seeing all, All, all in earth, or skies displayed,[lw] Shall it survey, shall it recall: Each fainter trace that Memory holds So darkly of departed years, In one broad glance the Soul beholds, And all, that was, at once appears.

III.

Before Creation peopled earth, Its eye shall roll through chaos back; And where the farthest heaven had birth, The Spirit trace its rising track. And where the future mars or makes, Its glance dilate o'er all to be, While Sun is quenched--or System breaks, Fixed in its own Eternity.

IV.

Above or Love--Hope--Hate--or Fear, It lives all passionless and pure: An age shall fleet like earthly year; Its 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.

Seaham, 1815.