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.

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.

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.

When mantled with the melancholy glow

Of eve, she wander'd oft: and when the wind,

Like a stray infant down autumnal dales

Roam'd wailingly, she loved to mourn and muse:

To commune with the lonely orphan flowers,

And through sweet Nature's ruin trace her own.

An empyrean infinitely vast

And irridescent, roof'd with rainbows, whose

Transparent gleams like water-shadows shone,

Before me lay: Beneath this dazzling vault—

I felt, but cannot paint the splendour there!

Glory, beyond the wonder of the heart

To dream, around interminably blazed.

A spread of fields more beautiful than skies

Flush'd with the flowery radiance of the west;

Valleys in greenest glory, deck'd with trees

That trembled music to the ambrosial airs

That chanted round them,—vein'd with glossy streams,

That gush'd, like feelings from a raptured soul:

Such was the scenery;—with garden walks,

Delight of angels and the blest, where flowers

Perennial bloom, and leaping fountains breathe,

Like melted gems, a gleaming mist around!

Here fruits for ever ripe, on radiant boughs,

Droop temptingly; here all that eye and heart

Enrapts, in pure perfection is enjoy'd;

And here o'er flowing paths with agate paved,

Immortal Shapes meander and commune.

While with permissive gaze I glanced the scene,

A whelming tide of rich-toned music roll'd,

Waking delicious echoes, as it wound

From Melody's divinest fount! All heaven

Glow'd bright, as, like a viewless river, swell'd

The deepening music!—Silence came again!

And where I gazed, a shrine of cloudy fire

Flamed redly awful; round it Thunder walk'd,

And from it Lightning look'd out most sublime!

Here throned in unimaginable bliss

And glory, sits The One Eternal Power,

Creator, Lord, and Life of All: Again,

Stillness ethereal reign'd, and forth appear'd

Elysian creatures robed in fleecy light,

Together flocking from celestial haunts,

And mansions of purpureal mould; the Host

Of heaven assembled to adore with harp

And hymn, the First and Last, the Living God;

They knelt,—a universal choir, and glow'd

More beauteous while they breathed the chant divine,

And Hallelujah! Hallelujah! peal'd,

And thrill'd the concave with harmonious joy.