Classic Poem

I TRAVEL all the irksome night,
By ways to me unknown;
I travel, like a bird in flight,
Onward, and all alone,

In vain I close my weary eyes,
They will not, cannot sleep,
But, like the watchers of the skies,
Their twinkling vigils keep.

My thoughts are wandering wild and far;
From earth to heaven they dart;
Now wing their flight from star to star,
Now dive into my heart.

Backward they roll the tide of time,
And live through vanish'd years,
Or hold their “colloquy sublime”
With future hopes and fears;

Then passing joys and present woes
Chase through my troubled mind,
Repose still seeking,—but repose
Not for a moment find.

So yonder lone and lovely moon
Gleams on the clouds gone by,
Illumines those around her noon,
Yet westward points her eye.

Nor wind nor flood her course delay,
Through heaven I see her glide;
She never pauses on her way,
She never turns aside.

With anxious heart and throbbing brain,
Strength, patience, spirits gone,
Pulses of fire in every vein,
Thus, thus I journey on.

But soft!—in Nature's failing hour,
Up springs a breeze,—I feel
Its balmy breath, its cordial power,
—A power to soothe and heal.

Lo! grey, and gold, and crimson streaks
The gorgeous east adorn,
While o'er the' empurpled mountain breaks
The glory of the morn.

Insensibly the stars retire,
Exhaled like drops of dew;
Now through an arch of living fire,
The sun comes forth to view.

The hills, the vales, the waters burn
With his enkindling rays,
No sooner touch'd than they return
A tributary blaze.

His quickening light on me descends,
His cheering warmth I own;
Upward to him my spirit tends,
But worships God alone.

Oh! that on me, with beams benign,
His countenance would turn:
I too should then arise and shine,
—Arise, and shine, and burn.

Slowly I raise my languid head,
Pain and soul-sickness cease;
The phantoms of dismay are fled,
And health returns, and peace.

Where is the beauty of the scene,
Which silent night display'd?
The clouds, the stars, the blue serene,
The moving light and shade?

All gone!—the moon, erewhile so bright,
Veil'd with a dusky shroud,
Seems, in the sun's o'erpowering light,
The fragment of a cloud.

At length, I reach my journey's end:
—Welcome that well-known face!
I meet a brother and a friend;
I find a resting-place.

Just such a pilgrimage is life;
Hurried from stage to stage,
Our wishes with our lot at strife,
Through childhood to old age.

The world is seldom what it seems:—
To man, who dimly sees,
Realities appear as dreams,
And dreams realities.

The Christian's years, though slow their flight,
When he is call'd away,
Are but the watches of a night,
And Death the dawn of day.