Look on This Picture

O, it is life! departed days
Fling back their brightness while I gaze:
'Tis Emma's self — this brow so fair,
Half-curtain'd in this glossy hair,
These eyes, the very home of love,
The dark twin arches traced above,
These red-ripe lips that almost speak,
The fainter blush of this pure cheek,
The rose and lily's beauteous strife —
It is — ah no! — 'tis all but life.

'Tis all but life — art could not save
Thy graces, Emma, from the grave;
Thy cheek is pale, thy smile is past,
Thy love-lit eyes have look'd their last;
Mouldering beneath the coffin's lid,
All we adored of thee is hid;
Thy heart, where goodness loved to dwell,
Is throbless in the narrow cell;
Thy gentle voice shall charm no more;
Its last, last, joyful note is o'er.

Oft, oft, indeed, it hath been sung,
The requiem of the fair and young;
The theme is old, alas! how old,
Of grief that will not be controll'd,
Of sighs that speak a father's wo,
Of pangs that none but mothers know,
Of friendship, with its bursting heart,
Doom'd from the idol-one to part —
Still its sad debt must feeling pay,
Till feeling, too, shall pass away.

O say, why age, and grief, and pain
Shall long to go, but long in vain;
Why vice is left to mock at time,
And, gray in years, grow gray in crime;
While youth, that every eye makes glad,
And beauty, all in radiance clad,
And goodness, cheering every heart,
Come, but come only to depart;
Sunbeams, to cheer life's wintry day,
Sunbeams, to flash, then fade away.

'Tis darkness all! black banners wave
Round the cold borders of the grave;
There, when in agony we bend
O'er the fresh sod that hides a friend,
One only comfort then we know —
We, too, shall quit this world of wo;
We, too, shall find a quiet place
With the dear lost ones of our race;
Our crumbling bones with theirs shall blend,
And life's sad story find an end.

And is this all — this mournful doom?
Beams no glad light beyond the tomb?
Mark how yon clouds in darkness ride;
They do not quench the orb they hide;
Still there it wheels — the tempest o'er,
In a bright sky to burn once more;
So, far above the clouds of time,
Faith can behold a world sublime —
There, when the storms of life are past,
The light beyond shall break at last.