THOU desolate and dying year!
Emblem of transitory man,
Whose wearisome and wild career,
Like thine, is bounded to a span;
It seems but as a little day
Since nature smiled upon thy birth,
And spring came forth in fair array,
To dance upon the joyous earth.
Sad alteration!-Now how lone,
How verdureless is nature's breast;
Where ruin makes his empire known,
In autumn's yellow vesture drest :
The sprightly bird, whose carol sweet
Broke on the breath of early day-
The summer flowers she loved to greet―
The bird the flowers oh where are they?
Thou desolate and dying year!
Yet lovely in thy lifelessness, As beauty stretched upon the bier
In death's clay-cold and dark caress;
There's loveliness in thy decay,
Which breathes, which lingers round thee still,
Like memory's mild and cheering ray
Beaming upon the night of ill.
Yet yet the radiance is not gone
Which shed a richness o'er the scene, Which smiled upon the golden dawn When skies were brilliant and serene
Oh! still a melancholy smile
Gleams upon nature's aspect fair, To charm the eye a little while,
Ere ruin spreads his mantle there!
Thou desolate and dying year!
Since Time entwined thy vernal wreath, How often love hath shed the tear,
And knelt beside the bed of death: How many hearts, that lightly sprung When joy was blooming but to die, Their finest chords by death unstrung, Have yielded life's expiring sigh.
And pillowed low beneath the clay,
Have ceased to melt-to breathe to burn, The proud, the gentle, and the gay, Gathered unto the mouldering urn! Whilst freshly flowed the frequent tear For love bereft-affection fledFor all that were our blessings here,
The loved the lost-the sainted dead!
Thou desolate and dying year!
The musing spirit finds in thee
Lessons impressive and severe
Of deep and stern morality!—
Thou teachest how the germ of youth,
Which blooms in being's dawning day,-
Planted by Nature-reared by Truth-
Withers like thee in dark decay.
Promise of youth! Fair as the form
Of heaven's benign and golden bow,
Thy smiling arch begirds the storm,
And sheds a light on every woe:
Hope wakes for thee, and to her tongue,
A tone of melody is given,
As if her magic voice were strung
With the empyreal fire from heaven;
And love, which never can expire,
Whose origin is from on high,
Throws o'er thy morn a ray of fire
From the pure fountains of the sky-
That ray which glows and brightens still
Unchanged-eternal, and divine-
Where seraphs own its holy thrill,
And bow before its gleaming shrine.
Thou desolate and dying year,
Prophetic of our final fall!
Thy buds are gone,—thy leaves are sere,—
Thy beauties shrouded in the pall;
And all the garniture that shed
A brilliancy upon thy prime,
Hath, like a morning vision, fled
To the expanded grave of Time.
Time! Time! In thy triumphal flight
How all life's phantoms fleet away
The smile of Hope-and young Delight-
Fame's meteor beam-and Fancy's ray;
They fade and on thy heaving tide,
Rolling its stormy waves afar,
Are borne the wrecks of human pride,
The broken wrecks of Fortune's war.
There, in disorder dark and wild,
Are seen the fabrics once so high,
Which mortal vanity had piled
As emblems of Eternity!
And deemed the stately domes, whose forms Frowned in their majesty sublime,
Would stand unshaken by the storms
That gathered round the brow of Time.
Thou desolate and dying year!
Earth's brightest pleasures fade like thine;
Like evening shadows disappear,
And leave the spirit to repine.
The stream of life, that used to pour
Its fresh and sparkling waters on—
While Fate stood watching on the shore
And numbered all the moments gone-
Where hath the morning splendour flown
Which danced upon that crystal stream?
Where are the joys to childhood known,
When life is an enchanted dream?
Enveloped in the starless night
Which destiny hath overspread_
Enrolled upon that trackless flight,
Where the dark wing of Time had sped.
Oh! thus hath life its even tide
Of sorrow, loneliness, and grief;
And thus, divested of its pride,
It withers like the yellow leaf!
Oh! such is life's autumnal bower,
When plundered of its summer bloom!
And such is life's autumnal hour,
Which heralds man unto the tomb.
BY WILLIAM BECKFORD, ESQ.
HARK! Heard ye not that deep, appalling sound?
Tremble! for lo! the vexed affrighted ground
Heaves strong in dread convulsion,-streams of fire
Burst from the 'vengeful sky-a voice of ire
Proclaims, 'Ye guilty wait your final doom:
No more the silent refuge of the tomb
Shall screen your crimes, your frailties.' Conscience reigns,-
Earth needs no other sceptre ;-what remains
Beyond her fated limits, dare not tell ;-
Eternal Justice! Judgment! Heaven! Hell!
Britton's Fonthill Abbey.
THEY took their way (Vathek and his young bride,
The sweet Nouronihar) through summer fields
Of flowers by sparkling rivers-fountains that
Splashed o'er the turf-by palm and tamarisk trees
And where the dark pines talked to solitudes;
And oft beguiled the way with amorous songs,
Kisses and looks voluptuous; and they quaffed
At mid-day iced waters which had grown
Cool in the valley of Roenabad :-One thing
Did intervene to mar those quiet hours ;-
Which was ambition.
But these days passed by:
And then they journeyed among perilous sands,
Which the hot blast of the desert swept at times
To figures columnar; these subsiding, left
Open to view the wide horizon, where
Lifting their heads, like mountains, to the skies,
'Rose the dark towers of Istakar.-The moon
Hid her pale face eclipsed, and sore afraid
Lest that the baleful atmosphere might shroud
Her light for ever; and interlunar stars
Shrank and grew dim, as when the morning shews
His grey eye in the East.-Forward they passed
'Midst crumbling walls, and shaking minarets,
Where even the ivy grew not, and at last
Stood 'neath the mighty palace of those kings
Who ruled before the flood. It seemed as built
For all eternity; and its pillars threw
On the black platform, long, large lines of shadow,
That lay upon the marble, like to things
Substantial-Countless and sky-touching towers
(Whose architecture was unknown amidst
The records of the earth') stood there, like that
* Vide Beckford's History of the Caliph Vathek.
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