On An Ancient Sepulchral Basso Rilievo

REPRESENTING A MAIDEN TAKING LEAVE OF HER FRIENDS.

Where goest thou, and what imperious voice Calls thee away from love, Thou maiden fair of face? Why, lonely wanderer, from thy native place Dost thou depart before thy days are old? Say, wilt thou ne'er return? No more rejoice Whom round thee now thou dost in tears behold?

Thou weepest not, and dauntless is thy brow, Though sadness on thy features leaves a trace. If life hath pleasing or unjoyous been, If dark with gloom or bright with joy the place To which thou hurriest now, Is by no sign upon thy features seen. Alas! I cannot find Solution of the problem in my mind: Nor can our race below With full assurance know If Heaven to thee doth gentle favour show, Or unrelenting ire, Or if thy doom be fortunate or dire.

Death summons thee. The dawning of thy days Beholds their early close. The home thy footsteps leave Shall ne'er again thy beauteous form receive. On thy fond parents thou no more shalt gaze; Beneath the earth thy future home is laid, Where for all time thy dwelling shall be made. It may be, thou art blest: but on thy doom Who meditates, must sigh in bitter gloom.

The light ne'er to have seen, Methinks would be the best. But, being born, When beauty first begins to reign, a queen, And the fair form to adorn, And meets eternal praise, And many a fervent and adoring gaze; When Hope her fragrant buds begins to show, And ere the beauteous land and sky around Unpitying Truth in darkness doth confound: To find, like vaporous and ethereal clouds That in frail shapes on the horizon play, The future fly, as though unheralded, The joys of times desired Beneath the silent tombstone lying dead: If in this doom the mind Some happiness can find, Even sternest heart with pity must be fired.

Thou mother feared and wept By mortal races from their earliest days, Nature, thou marvel that I cannot praise, Who givest life in order to destroy! If agony be kept Alive by early and untimely death, Why on the innocent thy wrath employ? And if it give relief, Why of all woes the chief, Why make the parting so disconsolate To him who still draws breath, To him whom Death's eternal realms await?

Unhappy where we gaze, Unhappy where we turn or where we rest, Are man's disastrous days! It pleaseth thee that void And utterly destroyed Should be our youthful hope; that seas of woe Should part our years; to evil only shield Be Death; and that which we can never shun, The law stern and supreme, By thee is given us when our course is run. Ah me! But after our laborious way Why is, at least, the goal not fair and gay? Why her, who doth control Our future, looming darkly in our soul, Why her, who is the balm To these our days ne'er calm, In sable robes array, Involve in shadows grey? Why in our fancy form The harbour more terrific than the storm?

If this, indeed, be woe, This death which thou dost keep Impending o'er us all, whom, without guilt, Unconscious and unwilling, thou hast doomed To live; he who is wrapped in death's long sleep, Should more our envy rouse, Than he who liveth his beloved to weep. If, as I firmly think, Life is but misery And death a mercy, yet whoever could Desire, even as he should, The fatal day of those to him most dear, To find himself bereaved, Disconsolate and grieved, To see away from his deserted home The cherished figure borne That did for many years his life adorn? To utter an eternal fare-thee-well, Without hope finding birth To meet again on earth; Then lonely and abandoned in this world, Gazing around in wonted time and scene, To bear in mind the union that hath been? Ah I tell me, Nature, how hast thou the heart From the embrace to rend Of friend, the loving friend, From brother, brother dear, The offspring from the sire, And love from love; and bidding one expire, Doom the survivor to existence dire? How could thy ruthless deed Cause so much sorrow that the living bleed In heart for love entombed? But Nature's end, On her mysterious way, Is not to foster joy, or sorrow to allay.

THE SETTING OF THE MOON.

As in the lonely night O'er lakes and mountains bathed in silver light, When zephyr gaily plays, And visions meet our gaze, Strange forms that weave a power In the nocturnal hour, By distant shadows wrought O'er hill and dale and gently flowing streams: The Moon descends unto the sky's last verge Behind the ridge of Alp or Appenine, Or in the Tyrrhene sea her rays doth merge; And as she falls, no radiance more doth shine, The shadows fade, and all The world lies wrapped in one funereal pall; Bereaved the night remains; And singing in impassioned, mournful strains, The wanderer salutes the last, faint ray Of her who lit his way With argent crescent in the spheres divine:

Even thus youth wanes and flies, And every joyaunce dies, And Hope expires, the reed whereon we leant In happier days, ere every bliss was spent, And ere our life obscure And desolate became. The weary wanderer gazes on the scene Of sable hue that now doth intervene, And vainly asketh why So dire a path before him yet should lie; And as unto his eye The world appeareth changed, He finds himself no more what he hath been, But to the world and all its ways estranged.

Too happy and too gay Our span of mortal life Would seem unto the powers that rule above, If youthfulness were to endure for aye, Wherein a thousand sorrows yield one joy; Too gentle the decree Whence all that liveth doomed to death we see, Unless a gift were made, When men have finished half of their long way, Than death itself with greater terrors fraught; The worst of ills and the extreme of woe, Old age was found by an unswerving doom, Wherein desire doth glow, Hope wanes and pales and dwindles down to nought, The fountains of delight are frozen and quelled, The sorrow's greater, and all bliss withheld.

Ye mountains and ye plains, When fall the rays that in the West adorn I With silvery trace the sable veil of night, Ye shall not be forlorn For many hours: the Eastern skies ere long Ye shall perceive aglow With break of day and early rise of morn, Whom following, the Sun his fires doth show, And blazing all around In full effulgence strong, With seas of light invades The space above and the terrestrial glades. But life of man, when lovely youth is spent, No other light hath found, Nor to existence other dawn is lent: 'Tis lonely and bereaved even to its close: And to the night that weighs on later years, By the decree of doom, As goal is given the silence of the tomb.