To the dim regions of the Future's life!

Farewell ye hills! ye mountains! woods and vales!
Where sire and son have found their hunting grounds,
Your swift-heeled stags no more may fear my bow,
But browse your verdure in disturbless peace;
To yonder fields where spirit-forms abide,
I hasten now, for ever there to dwell!

My death-song ends-farewell to all of earth!”

He nears the verge! the rolling torrent lifts
His little bark as 'twere a thing of air,

To which with death-like grasp he strongly clings!
Poised on the edge of that high precipice,

He seems an instant to be hung, then falls!
Falls from that dizzy height and is no more,

Closed in the embracings of the white foam's tomb,
Lost to the loves and hates of earth for aye!

So died the stag and so the hunter died,
So fall the conquered and the conqueror !

O dread Destroyer! potent avalanche

Of waters! who can rise from underneath

Thy whelming mass uncrushed? Say, who can brave
The awful terror of thy conquering arm?
As from an Alpine summit thou dost launch
Thy snow-white torrents on the abyss below;
If found within thy swift unerring course,
"Twere vain to flee, to stay is death indeed!

How much like Life's usurper thou dost come,
With unresisted might and tearless eye,

To hurl the blest inheritor of earth

Down from the pedestal where erst enthroned,
He sat a sovereign in love's happy realm;
Aye! how imperative Death's voice, like thine,
Resounds to fill all hearts with fear and wo!
How vainly to our loved ones do we cling,
Who, powerless, ne'er escape his grasp that tears
Their hearts from ours, which—like the restless threads
Of some lone spider's web torn from its place,

That swingeth in the breeze, and drips with dew,-
Seem parted shreds that drop with Love's own blood.
Ah! we may hope to gain th' unbroken form
Of him who hurries down thy shivering steep,
As to recover from Death's crushing touch,
The loved who were of our own life a part,
When his resolve is fixed to make them his !
Alas! that earth has not the power to keep
All things as hers that from her bosom come!

Oft with thy voice dost thou, Historian rare!
Declare the fate of nations that were throned
In might and splendor like the stars of night,
O'er earth's vast acres holding their control,
But now 'whelmed 'neath the cataract of Time,
And mouldered into human nothingness,

Their rest the memory, and their tomb the Past!
When shook by fierce convulsions low they fell,

And sent their death-wail like an earthquake voice,

Over the posting waves that foamed in haste,

To bear the sad intelligence afar,

How sadly rolled thy hymn funereal on,

To meet the sighings of the sorrowing sea.
Say, has not oft the artisan of clouds,
Who in thy busy waters layeth deep

The beams of his bright chambers, and enrobes
Thy form in the gay garments of his light,
Has he not oft caught up the heartful tears

Of far-off multitudes that mourned the death
Of all their country's hopes, and with them swelled
Thy streams, filled with the sighs and groans that tell
A nation's change from splendor to decay?

Methinks that often thou hast lifted up

Thy solemn voice and wept a people's loss,
And sounded an alarum-note for all

Whom coming Time should bring to tenant earth.
Prophet of Truth! thus is thy warning voice
Heard o'er the ruins of departed years:

"Wo to the nations that in pride have towered
Above the majesty of Heaven, and scorned
Obedience to its just decrees, or throned
Amid their temples and within their hearts,
The earth-born deities of idol form!
Changing, as fools, the glory of their God,
The Incorruptible, to images

Made like to man corruptible, to birds,

To beasts four-footed, and to reptile things;
Discerning not from earth's created forms,
His attributes invisible that tell

His power eternal and his Godhead bright!4

Wo to the lands that in the tide of sin

Have bathed their bosoms with its poison-drops,

Whose arms have stretched from shore to shore afar,
Reddening the waters that repose between,

With the fresh heart-streams of the earthly life.
Where are the throngs that trod the weary soil
Ere swept the deluge-torrents o'er their home?
Where are the thousands whom the fire-bolts hurled
Down 'neath the soundings of the Dead Sea's wave?
Where now is Persia's pride, her Orient thrones,
Assyria's glories, like resplendent suns,
Egyptia's wisdom, Rome's great battle-arm,
The halls of Greece, Philosophy's loved shades,
The walls of Carthage, or the hundred gates
Of ancient Thebes, the chivalry of Spain,
Italia's beauty, Palestina's joy?

Where are they now? The deluge-waves of wo
Have rolled their ruin o'er them all for aye!
Their shivered columns lie the prey of Time,
Like lifeless skeletons, whose scattered bones
His ravenous tooth has gnawed and left to rot!
Where are the cities gemming earth's wide brow,
That formed her diadem of clustering light,

And stood along her desert intervals,

Like inland islands full of wealth and power?

Some, doomed to silence in their lava-tombs,
Sleep all unconscious of the tread of Time,
Or helpless yield to antiquarian hands,
That ope their graves and rifle all their stores.
Others, like forms upon the sea-shore sands,
Shipwrecked and shattered crumble to decay;
Their streets resound with desolation's cry,

The bittern's piercing shriek, the owl's hoarse croak,
Or swarm with drones that mock the silent shades
Of their paternal heroes, dead to all

That elevates and blesses man below!
Wail! for the desolated homes, of old
Resounding with the melody of the heart,
Now echo songless, or are harps for winds,
That make sad music with their minor chords!
Wail for deserted shrines, where Genius knelt,
And in its worship won the awe of souls!
Wail for the lost, and bid the living list,
'Cursed the nation that forgets its God!'"

O Oracle of Truth! no Delphos gave
Such true responses as thy waters sound!
From thee we learn that man's creations die,
While Nature still survives his hopeless wrecks,
To teach the world her Architect's great will!

Thou reverend Chronicler! on thy full page,
What memories of by-gone years we read,
That throng our hearts as rush thy waters down!