To Pneuma

Tempests their furious course may sweep
Swiftly o'er the troubled deep,
Darkness may lend her gloomy aid,
And wrap the groaning world in shade;
But man can show a darker hour,
And bend beneath a stronger power:
There is a tempest of the soul,
A glc m where wilder billows roll!

The howling wilderness may spread
Its pathless deserts, parched and dread,
Where not a blade of herbage blooms,
, Nor yields the breeze its soft perfumes;
Where silence, death, and horror reign,
Uncheck'd, across the wide domain:
There is a desert of the mind
More hopeless, dreary, undefined.

There sorrow, moody discontent,
And gnawing care are wildly blent;
There horror hangs her darkest clouds,
And the whole scene in gloom enshrouds;
A sickly ray is cast around,
Where naught but dreariness is found;
A feeling that may not be told,
Dark, rending, lonely, drear, and cold.

The wildest ills that darken life
Are rapture, to the bosom's strife;
The tempest, in its blackest form,
Is beauty, to the bosom's storm;
The ocean, lashed to fury loud,
Its high wave mingling with the cloud,
Is peaceful, sweet serenity,
To passion's dark and boundless sea.

There sleeps no calm, there smiles no rest,
When storms are warring in the breast;
There is no moment of repose
In bosoms lashed by hidden woes;
The scorpion stings, the fury rears
And every trembling fibre tears,
The vulture preys, with bloody beak,
Upon— the heart that can but break!