The Venetian Bracelet, The Lost Pleiad, A History of the Lyre, and Other Poems/Poetical Portrait No. IV
No. IV.
His brow is pale with high and passionate thoughts,
That come from heaven like lightning, and consume,
E'en while they brighten; youth has lost its hopes:
Those sweet and wandering birds, that make its spring
So happy with their music,—these are gone:
All scared by one, a vulture, that doth feed
Upon the life-blood of the throbbing heart—
The hope of immortality!—that hope,
Whose altar is the grave, whose sacrifice
Is life—bright, beautiful, and breathing life.
He stands amid the revellers with a joy,
A scarcely conscious joy, in their delight;
In it he has no part,—he stands alone;
But the deep music haunts his dreaming ear,—
But the fair forms flit o'er his dreaming eye,—
And exquisite illusions fill his soul
With loveliness to pour in future song.
He leant beside a casement, and the moon
Shed her own stillness o'er the hectic cheek
Whereon the fever of the mind had fed;
His eyes have turn'd towards th' eternal stars,
Drinking the light into their shadowy depths,
Almost as glorious and as spiritual.
The night-wind touch'd his forehead, with it ran
A faint slight shudder through his wasted frame,—
Alas! how little can bring down our thoughts
From their most lofty communings with heaven,
To poor mortality!—that passing chill
Recall'd those bitter feelings that attend
Career half follow'd, and the goal unwon:
He thought upon his few and unknown years,
How much his power, how little it had done;
And then again the pale lip was compress'd
With high resolve, the dark eye flash'd with hope
To snatch a laurel from the grasp of death,
For the green memory of an early grave.