Poetical Portraits IV

His brow is pale with high and passionate thoughts
That came 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 I — 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.