Fanny
Baltimore Saturday Visiter • May 18, 1833
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The dying swan by northern lakes
Sing's [[Sings]] its wild death song, sweet and clear,
And as the solemn music breaks
O’er hill and glen dissolves in air;
Thus musical thy soft voice came,
Thus trembled on thy tongue my name.
Like sunburst through the ebon cloud,
Which veils the solemn midnight sky,
Piercing cold evening's sable shroud,
Thus came the first glance of that eye;
But like the adamantine rock,
My spirit met and braved the shock.
Let memory the boy recall
Who laid his heart upon thy shrine,
When far away his footsteps fall,
Think that he deem'd thy charms divine;
A victim on love's alter [[altar]] slain,
By witching eyes which looked disdain.
TAMERLANE.
The Coliseum
Baltimore Saturday Visiter • October 26, 1833
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Lone ampitheatre! Grey Coliseum!
Type of the antique Rome! Rich reliquary
Of lofty contemplation left to Time
By buried centuries of pomp and power!
At length, at length — after so many days
Of weary pilgrimage, and burning thirst,
(Thirst for the springs of love [[lore]] that in thee lie,)
I kneel, an altered, and an humble man,
Amid thy shadows, and so drink within
My very soul thy grandeur, gloom, and glory.
Vastness! and Age! and Memories of Eld!
Silence and Desolation! and dim Night!
Gaunt vestibules! and phantom-peopled aisles!
I feel ye now: I feel ye in your strength!
O spells more sure then [[than]] e’er Judæan king
Taught in the gardens of Gethsemane!
O charms more potent than the rapt Chaldee
Ever drew down from out the quiet stars!
Here, where a hero fell, a column falls:
Here, where the mimic eagle glared in gold,
A midnight vigil holds the swarthy bat:
Here, where the dames of Rome their yellow hair
Wav'd to the wind, now wave the reed and thistle:
Here, where on ivory couch the Cæsar sate,
On bed of moss lies gloating the foul adder:
Here, where on golden throne the monarch loll'd,
Glides spectre-like unto his marble home,
Lit by the wan light of the horned moon,
The swift and silent lizard of the stones.
These crumbling walls; these tottering arcades;
These mouldering plinths; these sad, and blacken'd shafts;
These vague entablatures; this broken frieze;
These shattered cornices; this wreck; this ruin;
These stones, alas! — these grey stones — are they all;
All of the great and the colossal left
By the corrosive hours to Fate and me?
“Not all,” — the echoes answer me; “not all:
Prophetic sounds, and loud, arise forever
From us, and from all ruin, unto the wise,
As in old days from Memnon to the sun.
We rule the hearts of mightiest men: — we rule
With a despotic sway all giant minds.
We are not desolate — we pallid stones;
Not all our power is gone; not all our Fame;
Not all the magic of our high renown;
Not all the wonder that encircles us;
Not all the mysteries that in us lie;
Not all the memories that hang upon,
And cling around about us now and ever,
And clothe us in a robe of more than glory.”
To Elizabeth
from an album of Elizabeth Rebecca Herring • 1833
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Would'st thou be loved? then let thy heart
From its present pathway part not —
Be every thing which now thou art
And nothing which thou art not:
So with the world thy gentle ways,
And unassuming beauty
Shall be a constant theme of praise,
And love — a duty.
E A P.
To Mary [Winfree]
Southern Literary Messenger • July 1835
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Mary, amid the cares — the woes
Crowding around my earthly path,
(Sad path, alas! where grows
Not ev’n one lonely rose,)
My soul at least a solace hath
In dreams of thee, and therein knows
An Eden of sweet repose.
And thus thy memory is to me
Like some enchanted far-off isle,
In some tumultuous sea —
Some lake beset as lake can be
With storms — but where, meanwhile,
Serenest skies continually
Just o'er that one bright island smile.
E. A. P.
Latin Hymn
Manuscript • May 4, 1833
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A thousand, a thousand, a thousand!
A thousand, a thousand, a thousand!
We with one warrior have slain.
A thousand, a thousand, a thousand, a thousand!
Sing a thousand over again.
Soho! let us sing
Long life to our king
Who knocked over a thousand so fine.
Soho! let us roar
He has given us more
Red gallons of gore
Than all Syria can furnish of wine!
Enigma (on Shakespeare)
Baltimore Saturday Visiter • February 2, 1833
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The noblest name in Allegory's page,
The hand that traced inexorable rage;
A pleasing moralist whose page refined,
Displays the deepest knowledge of the mind;
A tender poet of a foreign tongue,
(Indited in the language that he sung.)
A bard of brilliant but unlicensed page
At once the shame and glory of our age,
The prince of harmony and stirling sense,
The ancient dramatist of eminence,
The bard that paints imagination's powers,
And him whose song revives departed hours,
Once more an ancient tragic bard recall,
In boldness of design surpassing all.
These names when rightly read, a name [[make]] known
Which gathers all their glories in its own.
P.
Serenade
Baltimore Saturday Visiter • April 20, 1833
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So sweet the hour — so calm the time,
I feel it more than half a crime
When Nature sleeps and stars are mute,
To mar the silence ev'n with lute.
At rest on ocean's brilliant dies
An image of Elysium lies:
Seven Pleiades entranced in Heaven,
Form in the deep another seven:
Endymion nodding from above
Sees in the sea a second love:
Within the valleys dim and brown,
And on the spectral mountains [[mountain's]] crown
The wearied light is lying down:
The earth, and stars, and sea, and sky
Are redolent of sleep, as I
Am redolent of thee and thine
Enthralling love, my Adeline.
But list, O list! — so soft and low
Thy lover's voice to night shall flow
That, scarce awake, thy soul shall deem
My words the music of a dream.
Thus, while no single sound too rude,
Upon thy slumber shall intrude,
Our thoughts, our souls — O God above!
In every deed shall mingle, love.
To — [Sleep on]
Baltimore Saturday Visiter • May 11, 1833
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Sleep on, sleep on, another hour —
I would not break so calm a sleep,
To wake to sunshine and to show’r,
To smile and weep.
Sleep on, sleep on, like sculptured thing,
Majestic, beautiful art thou;
Sure seraph shields thee with his wing
And fans thy brow —
We would not deem thee child of earth,
For, O, angelic, is thy form!
But, that in heav’n thou had'st thy birth,
Where comes no storm
To mar the bright, the perfect flow’r,
But all is beautiful and still —
And golden sands proclaim the hour
Which brings no ill.
Sleep on, sleep on, some fairy dream
Perchance is woven in thy sleep —
But, O, thy spirit, calm, serene,
Must wake to weep.
TAMERLANE.
Baltimore:The Poems
