Classic Poem

BY THOMAS H. SHREVE .

Lone midnight comes apace. The wakeful winds,
Like whispering spirits, momently flit by
With tones so soft that Peace unstartled sits
On the deep bosom of the solemn Night.
The burning stars are looking from their heights,
And seem so clear to sense, to thought so pure,
That mind needs not the talismanic wand
Of poetry divine to crowd their courts
With hosts of seraphim, and harps of love.

Deep as the distant thunder's awful tone,
And solemn as a funeral note, the dirge
Of a departing year swells on the wind.
Among its blending scenes of light and shade,
Some things there were which may not be forgot,
But which, graved on the inmost sense, shall live
Until the busy heart has ceased to heave
A sigh o'er pleasures lost, and the torn soul,
Escaping from its ligaments of clay,
Shall, on immortal pinions, rise aloft
And soar beyond the faintly glimmering stars
That gein the blue immensity of space.
'T is true that Time with slow remission steals
The pang from common grief, yet there is woe
Beyond the great Magician's skill to heal,
Which stamps itself deep in the central heart,
And, like the fissure in the ocean rock,
Resists the waves of the Lethean sea.

There is a beauty on Night's queen-like brow,
With her rich jewelry of blazing stars,
That to the heart which yearns for purer scenes
And holier love than greets it here, appeals
With a resistless force. Great Nature then
Asserts her empire o'er the souls of those,
Her favored children, on whose eager ears
There falls no wind which hath not melody,
And to whose eyes each star unfolds a world
Of glory and of bliss. The poet feels
The inspiration of an hour like this,
When silence like a garment wraps the earth,
And when the soundless air seems populous
With gentle spirits hovering o'er the haunts
Which most they loved while prisoned in their clay.
The mysteries of the universe then woo
His mind, and lead it up from height to height
Of lofty speculation, to the Throne
Round which all suns and worlds and systems roll.
The Past for him unlocks her affluent stores,
And human crowds long gathered home by death
To his dark kingdom, people earth again.
Palmyra rears her towers above the dust
And proudly points her glittering spires to heaven —
Rome Rises up and seems as once she was,
Her haughty eagles floating o'er her hills
And flashing back the gaudy light of day
Into the blue above — and Babylon
Lifts up her head, and o'er her gardens wide
The south wind wantons, while her massive gates
Swing on their hinges as the human tide
Beats up against them. Thus rapt fancy oft
Doth build again what, with his iron heel,
Wild Ruin ground into the very dust,
Which cloud-like rises on the tempest's wings
As it all-conquering sweeps the desert's waste.
Such is the talismanic power divine
Of Genius over death and time and space.
It reads the dim memorials on the tombs
Of buried empires — peoples solitudes —
And sways its sceptre o'er the realms of night.
In its blest missions to the homes of men
It turns aside from palaces and pomp,
And gently stoops to kiss the pearly brow
Of the boy peasant 'neath the humblest roof.
With eye anointed, it hath read the stars,
And traced out on the boundless blue of heaven
The wanderings of worlds. Its voice goes forth,
And o'er the billows of time's wasteful sea
It rolleth on forever. It hath sung
Old Ocean's praise, and with his surges' roar
Its song will ever mingle. It hath poured
A flood of radiance over hill and stream,
And reared a fiery pillar in the sky,
To light the nations on their pilgrimage
From darkness into everlasting day.