This EARLY DEATH--within its pale Sad air each angry feeling fades-- An evening haze, whose tender veil The landscape's harsher features shades. Ah, Scornful One--thy bier's white hue Stole every earth-stain from thy cheek, And left thee all to MEMORY'S view That HOPE once dared in thee to seek.
How graceful was that Grecian creed Which taught that tongues, of old, Dwelt in the mountain and the mead, And where the torrent roll'd, And that in times of sacred fear, With sweet mysterious moans, They spoke aloud, while some pale Seer Interpreted their tones.[21]
And, LADY, why should we not deem That in each echoing hill, And sounding wood, and dancing stream, A language lingers still? No lovelier scenes round DELPHI spread Than round thee stretch divine; Nor Grecian maid bent brighter head By haunted stream than thine.
Then fancy thus that to thine ear, While dies the autumn day, The VOICES of THE WOODLANDS bear This tributary lay. Soft winds that steal from where the moon Brightens the mountain spring, Shall blend with Mulla's[22] distant tune, And these the words they sing:--
"Thou'st shared our thousand harmonies; _At morn_ thy sleep we stirr'd With sounds from many a balmy breeze, And many a jocund bird; And far from Us, when pleasure's lure Around thy steps shall be, Ah, keep thy soul as freshly pure As We came pure to thee!
"_At noon_, beneath September's heat, Was it not sweet to feel, Through shadowy grasses at thy feet, Our silver waters steal? Sparklingly clear, as now the truth Seems in thy glance to glow; So may, through worldly crowds, thy youth A stainless current flow.
"_At eve_, our hills for thee detain'd The sun's departure bright. He sank--how long our woods were stain'd For thee with rosy light! The worth, the warmth, the peace serene, Thou'st known our vales among, Say, shall they be reflected seen Upon thy heart as long?
"Morn, noon, and eve--bird, beam, and breeze, Here blent to bless thy day; May portion of their memories Be ever round thy way! Sweet waters for the weary Bark, Through parching seas that sails; Friends may grow false and fortune dark, But NATURE never fails."
What is the deadest of things earthly? It is, says the world, ever forward and rash--"a door-nail!" But the world is wrong. There is a thing deader than a door-nail, viz., Gillman's Coleridge, Vol. I. Dead, more dead, most dead, is Gillman's Coleridge, Vol. I.; and this upon more arguments than one. The book has clearly not completed its elementary act of respiration; the _systole_ of Vol. I. is absolutely useless and lost without the _diastole_ of that Vol. II., which is never to exist. That is one argument, and perhaps this second argument is stronger. Gillman's Coleridge, Vol. I., deals rashly, unjustly, and almost maliciously, with some of our own particular friends; and yet, until late in this summer, _Anno Domini_ 1844, we--that is, neither ourselves nor our friends--ever heard of its existence. Now a sloth, even without the benefit of Mr Waterton's evidence to his character, will travel faster than that. But malice, which travels fastest of all things, must be dead and cold at starting, when it can thus have lingered in the rear for six years; and therefore, though the world was so far right, that people _do_ say, "Dead as a door-nail," yet, henceforwards, the weakest of these people will see the propriety of saying--"Dead as Gillman's Coleridge."