Watch well its course—explore with anxious eye
Each little cloud that floats along the sky—
Is the blue canopy serenely fair?
Yet may the thunderbolt unseen be there,
And the bark sink when peace and sunshine sleep
On the smooth bosom of the waveless deep!
Yes! ere a sound, a sign, announce thy fate,
May the blow fall which makes thee desolate!
Not always heaven's destroying angel shrouds
His awful form in tempests and in clouds;
He fills the summer air with latent power,
He hides his venom in the scented flower,
He steals upon thee in the Zephyr's breath,
And festal garlands veil the shafts of death!
Where art thou then, who thus didst rashly cast
Thine all upon the mercy of the blast,
And vainly hope the tree of life to find
Booted in sands that flit before the wind?
Is not that earth thy spirit loved so well,
It wish'd not in a brighter sphere to dwell,
Become a desert now, a vale of gloom,
O'ershadow'd with the midnight of the tomb?
Where shalt thou turn?—It is not thine to raise
To yon pure heaven thy calm confiding gaze,
No gleam reflected from that realm of rest
Steals on the darkness of thy troubled breast;
Not for thine eye shall Faith divinely shed
Her glory round the image of the dead;
And if, when slumber's lonely couch is prest,
The form departed be thy spirit's guest,
It bears no light from purer worlds to this;
Thy future lends not e'en a dream of bliss.
