The Dying Enthusiast

SPEAK no more of life,
What can life bestow,
In this amphitheatre of strife,

All times dark with tragedy and woe?
Knowest thou not how care and pain
Build their lampless dwelling in the brain,
Ever, as the stern intrusion

Of our teachers, time and truth,
Turn to gloom the bright illusion,

Rainbowed on the soul of youth?
Could I live to find that this is so?
Oh! no! no!

As the stream of time

Sluggishly doth flow,
Look how all of beaming and sublime,
Sinks into the black abysm below.

Yea, the loftiest intellect,

Earliest on the strand of life is wrecked.

Nought of lovely, nothing glorious,

Lives to triumph o'er decay;
Desolation reigns victorious —

Mind is dungeon walled by clay:
Could I bear to feel mine own laid low?
Oh! no! no!

Restless o'er the earth,

Thronging millions go:
But behold how genius, love, and worth,
Move like lonely phantoms to and fro.
Suns are quenched, and kingdoms fall,
But the doom of these outdarkens all!
Die they then? Yes, love's devotion,

Stricken, withers in its bloom;
Fond affections, deep as ocean,

In their cradle find their tomb:
Shall I linger, then, to count each throe?
Oh! no! no!

Prison-bursting death!

"Welcome be thy blow!
Thine is but the forfeit of my breath,

Not the spirit! nor the spirit's glow.
Spheres of beauty — hallowed spheres,

Undefaced by time, undimmed by tears,
Henceforth hail! oh, who would grovel,

In a world, impure as this?
Who would weep, in cell or hovel,

When a palace might be his?
Wouldst thou have me the bright lot forego?
Oh! no! no!