"Could I remount the river of my years To the first fountain of our smiles and tears, I would not trace again the stream of hours Between their outworn banks of wither'd flowers, But bid it flow as now--until it glides Into the number of the nameless tides. * * * What is this Death?--a quiet of the heart? The whole of that of which we are a part? For Life is but a vision--what I see Of all which lives alone is life to me, And being so--the absent are the dead, Who haunt us from tranquillity, and spread A dreary shroud around us, and invest With sad remembrances our hours of rest. "The absent are the dead--for they are cold, And ne'er can be what once we did behold; And they are changed, and cheerless,--or if yet The unforgotten do not all forget, Since thus divided--equal must it be If the deep barrier be of earth, or sea; It may be both--but one day end it must In the dark union of insensate dust. "The under-earth inhabitants--are they But mingled millions decomposed to clay? The ashes of a thousand ages spread Wherever man has trodden or shall tread? Or do they in their silent cities dwell Each in his incommunicative cell? Or have they their own language? and a sense Of breathless being?--darken'd and intense As midnight in her solitude?--Oh Earth! Where are the past?--and wherefore had they birth? The dead are thy inheritors--and we But bubbles on thy surface; and the key Of thy profundity is in the grave, The ebon portal of thy peopled cave, Where I would walk in spirit, and behold Our elements resolved to things untold, And fathom hidden wonders, and explore The essence of great bosoms now no more." * * * * * * * "TO AUGUSTA. "My sister! my sweet sister! if a name Dearer and purer were, it should be thine. Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim No tears, but tenderness to answer mine: Go where I will, to me thou art the same-- A loved regret which I would not resign. There yet are two things in my destiny,-- A world to roam through, and a home with thee. "The first were nothing--had I still the last, It were the haven of my happiness; But other claims and other ties thou hast, And mine is not the wish to make them less. A strange doom is thy father's son's, and past Recalling, as it lies beyond redress; Reversed for him our grandsire's[125] fate of yore,-- He had no rest at sea, nor I on shore. "If my inheritance of storms hath been In other elements, and on the rocks Of perils, overlook'd or unforeseen, I have sustain'd my share of worldly shocks, The fault was mine; nor do I seek to screen My errors with defensive paradox; I have been cunning in mine overthrow, The careful pilot of my proper woe,