Flinty pathways, lone and dreary, Quite unmeet for foot of Peri, Soft and fair;-- Heavy air with vapors laden, Shrinking, fragile wings from Aidenn May not dare;--
Such the gifts our planet proffers, Such the thorny home she offers Spirits fine: Artists, poets, earthward sent us, Heavenly natures, briefly lent us, Droop like thine!
Happy if, amid their dreaming, They can feel the glories streaming From above;-- See the light, and hear the flowing, Gushing anthems--melting, glowing Strains of love!
Happy Peri! faintly smiling; Quivering lip, the sense beguiling, Dimpled cheek, Form ethereal, heavenly moulded, Shadowing eyelids, soft wings folded Rest to seek,--
All betray thee, young immortal, Eden's child, without its portal Doomed to roam! Yet thy spirit sees the glory, Hears entranced the rapturous story Of thy home.
Who, O Fay, would dare to wake thee, From ecstatic visions take thee But to weep? Softly dreaming, waking never Till thy dreams are truths forever, Sweetly sleep!
The boom of cannon in the distance, flags floating gaily in the bright morning air, strains of martial music filling it, a waving of caps and handkerchiefs, shouts in the streets below, and the tramp of many feet. A regiment is passing! To a stern fate, that beckons darkly in the distance, these patriots are moving, with firm, determined tread--to long, exhausting marches, and fireless bivouac; to hunger and cold; to sufferings in varied forms; to wounds and imprisonment; _to death_! God knows when and how they are going;--and, amid the doomed throng slowly passing, the bright face of my darling smilingly upturned to mine. I wave my hand and kiss it; my handkerchief is wet through and through.
He came to me but an hour since, decked in his uniform (a lamb decked for the slaughter). 'I'm a lieutenant now,' he said, tapping his shoulder gaily; 'I shall rival Sam Patch at a leap, and jump to the head at once. Three months is enough to make a colonel of me.' And so, with his young heart beating high and warm, upborne by wild hopes like these, he held me to his heart at parting, and went away quite joyously, my poor darling! shedding only a few tears in sympathy with mine. I watch his form until I lose it in the mass before me; then I watch the mass moving slowly, slowly on, bearing him away from me; till the heavy tramp dies out upon the air, and the dark mass, growing less and less, becomes a dim speck in the distance; and the music wanes, and wanes, and dies out also, and in the still air about me only the voice of the wind is heard: coming and going at long, lazy intervals, it speaks to my inner sense with a warning note, a low requiem sound. Why is it that it takes that weird tone always when sorrow is darkly waiting for me in the future? What prophet's voice speaks to me in it? What invisible thing without addresses its wild warning to the invisible within? As I listened, my soul grew chill and dark with the shadow of a coming gloom; my heart grew cold. God help me! How wildly, how almost despairingly I prayed for my darling's life!
