With step as noiseless as the summer air, Who comes in beautiful decay?--her eyes Dissolving with a feverish glow of light, Her nostrils delicately closed, and on Her cheek a rosy tint, as if the tip Of Beauty's finger faintly press'd it there,-- Alas! Consumption is her name. Thou loved and loving one! From the dark languish of thy liquid eye, So exquisitely rounded, darts a ray Of truth, prophetic of thine early doom; And on thy placid cheek there is a print Of death,--the beauty of consumption there. Few note that fatal bloom; for bless'd by all, Thou movest through thy noiseless sphere, the life, Of one,--the darling of a thousand hearts. Yet in the chamber, o'er some graceful task When delicately bending, oft unseen, Thy mother marks then with that musing glance That looks through cunning time, and sees thee stretch'd A shade of being, shrouded for the tomb. The Day is come, led gently on by Death; With pillow'd head all gracefully reclined, And grape-like curls in languid clusters wreath'd, Within a cottage room she sits to die; Where from the window, in a western view, Majestic ocean rolls.--A summer eve Shines o'er the earth, and all the glowing air Stirs faintly, like a pulse; against the shore The waves unrol them with luxurious joy, While o'er the midway deep she looks, where like A sea god glares the everlasting Sun O'er troops of billows marching in his beam!-- From earth to heaven, from heaven to earth, her eyes Are lifted, bright with wonder and with awe, Till through each vein reanimation rolls! 'Tis past; and now her filmy glance is fix'd Upon the heavens, as though her spirit gazed On that immortal world, to which 'tis bound: The sun hath sunk.--her soul hath fled without A pang, and left her lovely in her death, And beautiful as an embodied dream. MORTALITY. All that we love and feel on Nature's face, Bear dim relations to our common doom. The clouds that blush, and die a beamy death, Or weep themselves away in rain,--the streams That flow along in dying music,--leaves That fade, and drop into the frosty arms Of Winter, there to mingle with dead flowers,-- Are all prophetic of our own decay. BEAUTY How oft, as unregarded on a throng Of lovely creatures, in whose liquid eyes The heart-warm feelings bathe, I've look'd With all a Poet's passion, and have wish'd That years might never pluck their graceful smiles-- How often Death, as with a viewless wand, Has touch'd the scene, and witch'd it to a tomb! Where Beauty dwindled to a ghastly wreck, And spirits of the Future seem'd to cry,-- Thus will it be when Time has wreak'd revenge. MELANCHOLY.