The Southern Literary Messenger, Volume I., 1834-35Various
General
The Southern Literary Messenger, Volume I., 1834-35
Various
American literature -- 19th century -- Periodicals
stood and gazed upon the features of the corpse, those features that I
had so often seen lit up with intelligence, now rigid in death. Those
eyes, whose piercing beams once reached the very hearts of men, and
gazed upon their secret motives, had lost their "speculation," and
those lips whose surpassing eloquence once filled his hearers with
deep delight, ruling them with a master spell; now rousing apathy into
action, now stilling passion in its wildest mood; were hushed in
eternal silence. Before us was the motionless form of clay, the
immortal spirit had ascended to its God. Both the bodies were removed
to the house. The remainder of that night, I sat by the corpse of
Heywood. The next day, I procured a plain coffin, and taking with me a
couple of assistants, proceeded to the place where I had reposed after
my walk on the preceding afternoon. At the foot of the birch tree we
dug his grave, and heaped the earth upon the coffin to the level of
the plain, and over it we spread the verdant turf: and there, in his
"narrow and obscure bed," sleeps the misguided son of genius; while a
splendid mausoleum marks the spot where the bones of Willis lie, and a
marble slab records his thousand virtues.
For the Southern Literary Messenger.
The study of poetry has been to me its own exceeding great reward: it
has soothed my afflictions; it has refined and multiplied my
enjoyments; it has given me (or at least strengthened in me) the habit
of wishing to discover the good and the beautiful in all that meets
and surrounds me--_Coleridge_.
STANZAS.
It is the Fall! the season now,
Of rustling airs--of fading flowers;
And Nature with a saddened brow,
Sits brooding o'er her leafless bowers.
Yet Autumn's reign was aye to me
A season of felicity!
I'm standing in a dark recess
Of a vast, dim, primeval wood,
And on me is the consciousness
That springs from such a solitude.
No sounds are nigh save those I love--
No scene my heart's content to move.
A streamlet, gushing from above
Goes dancing past me wild and free,
As the fond boy is said to rove,
Commission'd by Love's Deity.
But _he_ in cities gaily flaunts,
While _this_ seeks only nature's haunts.
And as it tracks the forest's maze,
Through greensward alleys wand'ring wide,
Affects not Folly's treach'rous ways,
Nor looks to Fashion for its guide.
How lulling to my sense its song,--
As thus it sweeps its course along!
The winds are also stirring now,
In murm'ring tones, yon stately pine,
Whose giant branches tend to throw
A deeper shadow o'er this shrine--
This nobler shrine than priest or king
Is wont to use for worshipping.
But lo! 'tis sunset--and the dew
Is settling fast on herb and tree;
Darkness will soon be shrouding too
Each object in obscurity.
My steps again I therefore turn,
_To mix with man, and inly mourn!_
* * *
For the Southern Literary Messenger.
SONNET.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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