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THE AURORA ON THE CLYDE.
September, 1850.
- AH me, how heavily the night comes down,
- Heavily, heavily:
- Fade the curved shores, the blue hills’ serried throng,
- The darkening waves we oared in light and song:
- Joy melts from us as sunshine from the sky;
- And Patience with sad eye
- Takes up her staff and drops her withered crown.
- Our small boat heaves upon the heaving river,
- Wearily, wearily;
- The flickering shore‐lights come and go by fits;
- Towering ’twixt earth and heaven dusk silence sits,
- Death at her feet; above, infinity;
- Between, slow drifting by,
- Our tiny boat, like life, floats onward ever.
- Pale, mournful hour,—too early night that falls
- Drearily, drearily,
- Come not too soon! Return, return, bright day,
- Kind voices, smiles, blue mountains, sunny bay!
- In vain! Life’s dial cannot backward fly:
- The dark time comes. Low lie,
- And listen, soul. Oft in the night, God calls.
- * * * * * *
- Light, light on the black river! How it gleams,
- Solemnly, solemnly!
- Like troops of pale ghosts on their pensive march,
- Treading the far heavens in a luminous arch,
- Each after each: phantasms serene and high
- From that eternity
- Where all earth’s sharpest woes grow dim as dreams.
- Let us drink in the glory, full and whole,
- Silently, silently:
- Gaze, till it lulls all pain, all vain desires:—
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- See now, that radiant bow of pillared fires
- Spanning the hills like dawn, until they lie
- In soft tranquillity,
- And all night’s ghastly glooms asunder roll.
- Look, look again! the vision changes fast,
- Gloriously, gloriously:
- That was heaven’s gate with its illumined road,
- But this is heaven; the very throne of God
- Hung with flame curtains of celestial dye
- Waving perpetually,
- While to and fro innumerous angels haste.
- I see no more the stream, the boat that moves
- Mournfully, mournfully:
- And we who sit, poor prisoners of clay:
- It is not night, it is immortal day,
- Where the One Presence fills eternity,
- And each, His servant high,
- Forever praises and forever loves.
- O soul, forget the weight that drags thee down
- Deathfully, deathfully:
- Know thyself. As this glory wraps thee round,
- Let it melt off the chains that long have bound
- Thy strength. Stand free before thy God and cry—
- “My Father, here am I:
- Give to me as thou wilt—first cross, then crown.”
