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ANDRÉ CHÉNIER.

FAREWELL TO THE BEAUTIFUL, WITHIN.

"André Chénier, the original of whatever is truest to nature and genuine passion in the modern poetry of France, died at the guillotine, July 27, 1794. In ascending the scaffold, he cried, To die so young!' 'And there was something here!' he added, striking his forehead, not in the fear of death, but the despair of genius!"-See THIERS, vol. iv. p. 83.

WITHIN the prison's dreary girth,
The dismal night, before

That morn on which the dungeon Earth
Shall wall the soul no more,

There stood serenest images
Where doomed Genius lay,

The ever young Uranides
Around the Child of Clay.

On blackened walls and rugged floors
Shone cheerful, through the night,

The stars

-like beacons from the shores

Of the still Infinite.

From Ida to the Poet's cell

The Pain-beguilers stole ;
Apollo tuned his silver shell

And Hebe brimmed the bowl.

Το

grace those walls he needed naught That tint or stone bestows;

Creation kindled from his thought:

He called and gods arose.

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The visions Poets only know
Upon the captive smiled

As bright within those walls of woe,
As on the sunlit child;

He saw the nameless, glorious things
Which youthful dreamers see,
When Fancy first with murmurous wings
O'ershadows bards to be;

Those forms to life spiritual given

By high creative hymn;

From music born- as from their heaven Are born the Seraphim.*

Forgetful of the coming day,

Upon the dungeon floor

He sat to count, poor child of clay,
The wealth of genius o'er;

To count the gems, as yet unwrought,
But found beneath the soil;

The bright discoveries claimed by thought,
As future crowns for toil.

"Aus den Saiten, wie aus ihren Himmeln, Neugebor 'ne Seraphim."- Schiller.

He sees The Work his breath should warm

To life, from out the air;

The Shape of Love his soul should form,
Then leave its birthright there!

He sees the new Immortal rise
From her melodious sea;

The last descendant of the skies
For man to bend the knee

He sees himself within your shrine,
O hero gods of Fame!

And hears the praise that makes divine
The human holy name.

True to the hearts of men shall chime

The song

their lips repeat;

When heroes chant the strain, sublime;

When lovers breathe it, sweet.

Lo, from the brief delusion given,
He starts, as through the bars

Gleams wan the dawn that scares from Heaven And Thought alike — its stars.

Hark to the busy tramp below!
The jar of iron doors!
The gaoler's heavy footfall slow
Along the funeral floors!

The murmur of the crowd that round
The human shambles throng;
That muffled, sullen thunder-sound
The Death-cart grates along!

"Alas, so soon! - and must I die,"
He groaned forth unresigned;
"Flit like a cloud athwart the sky,
And leave no wrack behind!

"And yet my Genius speaks to me;
The Pythian fires my brain;
And tells me what my life should be;
A Prophet — and in vain!

“O realm more wide, from clime to clime, Than ever Cæsar swayed;

O conquests in that world of time
My grand desire surveyed!"—

Blood-red upon his loathing eyes
Now glares the gaoler's torch:
"Come forth, the day is in the skies,
The Death-cart at the porch!"

Pass on!

to thee the Parcæ give

The fairest lot of all;

In golden poet-dreams to live,

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The shrine that longest guards a Name

Is oft an early tomb;

The Poem most secure of fame

Is-some wronged poet's doom!

THE FIRST VIOLETS.

WHO that has loved knows not the tender tale

Which flowers reveal, when lips are coy to tell? Whose youth has paused not, dreaming, in the vale Where the rathe violets dwell?

Lo, where they shrink along the lonely brake
Under the leafless, melancholy tree;
Not yet the cuckoo sings, nor glides the snake,
Nor wild thyme lures the bee;

Yet at their sight and scent entranced and thralled,
All June seems golden in the April skies;
How sweet the days we yearn for,- till fulfilled:
O distant Paradise,

Dear Land to which Desire for ever flees;
Time doth no present to our grasp allow,
Say in the fixed Eternal shall we seize
At last the fleeting Now?

Dream not of days to come-
Whither Hope wanders

of that Unknown

maze without a clew;

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