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, That morn on which the dungeon Earth There stood serenest images The ever young Uranides On blackened walls and rugged floors The stars -like beacons from the shores Of the still Infinite. From Ida to the Poet's cell The Pain-beguilers stole ; 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. The visions Poets only know As bright within those walls of woe, He saw the nameless, glorious things 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, To count the gems, as yet unwrought, The bright discoveries claimed by thought, "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, He sees the new Immortal rise The last descendant of the skies He sees himself within your shrine, And hears the praise that makes divine 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, Gleams wan the dawn that scares from Heaven And Thought alike — its stars. Hark to the busy tramp below! The murmur of the crowd that round "Alas, so soon! - and must I die," "And yet my Genius speaks to me; “O realm more wide, from clime to clime, Than ever Cæsar swayed; O conquests in that world of time Blood-red upon his loathing eyes Pass on! to thee the Parcæ give The fairest lot of all; In golden poet-dreams to live, 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 Yet at their sight and scent entranced and thralled, Dear Land to which Desire for ever flees; Dream not of days to come- of that Unknown maze without a clew; |