Classic Poem

CLEVELAND'S SONGS

Love wakes and weeps
While Beauty sleeps:
O, for Music's softest numbers,
To prompt a theme
For Beauty's dream,
Soft as the pillow of her slumbers!

Through groves of palm
Sigh gales of balm,
Fire-flies on the air are wheeling;
While through the gloom
Comes soft perfume,
The distant beds of flowers revealing.

O wake and live!
No dream can give
A shadowed bliss, the real excelling;
No longer sleep,
From lattice peep,
And list the tale that Love is telling.

Farewell! farewell! the voice you hear
Has left its last soft tone with you, —
Its next must join the seaward cheer,
And shout among the shouting crew.

The accents which I scarce could form
Beneath your frown's controlling check
Must give the word, above the storm,
To cut the mast and clear the wreck.

The timid eye I dared not raise, —
The hand, that shook when pressed to thine,
Must point the guns upon the chase —
Must bid the deadly cutlass shine.

To all I love, or hope, or fear, —
Honor or own, a long adieu!
To all that life has soft and dear,
Farewell! save memory of you!