Zinzendorff and Other Poems/Felicia Hemans
FELICIA HEMANS.
May, 1835.
Nature doth mourn for thee.
There is no need
For Man to strike his plaintive lyre and fail,
As fail he must, if he attempt thy praise.
The little plant that never sang before,
Save one sad requiem, when its blossoms fell,
Sighs deeply through its drooping leaves for thee,
As for a florist fallen. The ivy wreath'd
Round the grey turrets of a buried race,
And the tall palm that like a prince doth rear
Its diadem neath Asia's burning sky,
With their dim legends blend thy hallow'd name.
Thy music, like baptismal dew, did make
Whate'er it touch'd most holy. The pure shell,
Laying its pearly lip on Ocean's floor,
The cloister'd chambers, where the sea-gods sleep,
And the unfathom'd melancholy main,
Lament for thee, through all the sounding deeps.
Hark! from snow-breasted Himmaleh, to where
Snowdon doth weave his coronet of cloud,
From the scath'd pine tree, near the red man's hut,
To where the everlasting banian builds
Its vast columnac temple, comes a moan
For thee, whose ritual made each rocky height
An altar, and each cottage-home, the haunt
Of Poesy.
Yea, thou didst find the link
That joins mute Nature to ethereal mind,
And make that link a melody.
The couch
Of thy last sleep, was in the native clime
Of song and eloquence and ardent soul,
Spot fitly chosen for thee. Perchance, that isle
So lov'd of favoring skies, yet bann'd by fate,
Might shadow forth thine own unspoken lot.
For at thy heart, the ever-pointed thorn
Did gird itself, until the life-stream ooz'd
In gushes of such deep and thrilling song,
That angels poising on some silver cloud
Might linger 'mid the errands of the skies,
And listen, all unblam'd.
How tenderly
Doth Nature draw her curtain round thy rest,
And like a nurse, with finger on her lip,
Watch lest some step disturb thee, striving still
From other touch, thy sacred harp to guard.
Waits she thy waking, as the Mother waits
For some pale babe, whose spirit sleep hath stolen
And laid it dreaming on the lap of Heaven?
We say not thou art dead. We dare not. No.
For every mountain stream and shadowy dell
Where thy rich harpings linger, would hurl back
The falsehood on our souls. Thou spak'st alike
The simple language of the freckled flower,
And of the glorious stars. God taught it thee.
And from thy living intercourse with man
Thou shalt not pass away, until this earth
Drops her last gem into the doom's-day flame.
Thou hast but taken thy seat with that blest choir,
Whose hymns thy tuneful spirit learn'd so well
From this sublunar terrace, and so long
Interpreted.
Therefore, we will not say
Farewell to thee; for every unborn age
Shall mix thee with its household charities.
The sage shall greet thee with his benison,
And Woman shrine thee as a vestal-flame
In all the temples of her sanctity,
And the young child shall take thee by the hand
And travel with a surer step to Heaven.