Farewell to Nature

Vain love for Nature! How these heartaches rustInto the soul as we return to dust!Hope’s shadow only masks our eventide,Feigning to lead us to its brighter side,While yet the mellowing skies that wondrous grow,Seem left in waiting for the dead below.But those tranced sunsets,—little they avail,None travel hence in their alluring trail;All is a dream, an ancient dream, the sameFrom the first mortal to the last that came.Yet could we but for once our eyes uncloseWhen through the distant days the pageant goes!Familiar vision, and so soon to beEntombed within the dead eternity.

Doth Nature know our dream, or is the mindA passing breath her beauty leaves behind?Ah! not for this our grateful souls have wroughtAround her sphere a universe of thought.’Tis she inspires our dreams, but no replyVouchsafes the loving hearts that for her die,Who only pray, when life’s surprise is o’er,They may partake a glimpse of her once more.Is it too late? She sees not to the end;What she hath done she never can amend:Yet once by us beloved, once only known,She seems from all the past to be our own.

Last wish of age! How sweet one glance would beEven from the sod the olden haunts to see;To watch the long-drawn wavelets as they reachThe silent plains of the deserted beach;To look where light once was, if but to knowOf its faint struggle through the winnowed snow.Ah! whence this dream that like the cuckoo-guestPleads in such winning accents for a nest,And with its cloud-note ever on us calls,And though it passes the fond heart enthralls?

Little it seems, this wish, when oft our sightTires of the world, yet what a fresh delightWere it sometimes in death those scenes to view,The olden scenes that to our youth were new,To linger o’er a sound whose murmurs swellUpon the heart,—the tinkling village bell,—To find that all was safe, all gliding onIn beauty’s leisure ways though we were gone;To see brave Nature in her perilous schemeAdvance without our help, without our dream.At least ’twould hold ajar death’s open doorTo think our love was honoured evermore,—In dying, on the forward thought to dwellThat it was not our very last farewell.

Could hope unveil and not its mystic fireBe lost among the embers of desire!Ill though desponding hearts their burden bear,Is not the soul the master of despair?Is this great life, hard won, achieved in vain,Is good once found to never be again?Ask of the worlds if they their path forget,Ask hope that never ends, its time to set.One deep desire throughout all being cries,And this is hope, our future in disguise.O living lamp, O Hope, the only Seer;Of Nature’s after-time the pioneer,Keep in advance across our starless way,Be the new morrow of our orphan day!