And open tombs, there lingereth one whose dream
Is of aught permanent below the skies,
Even let him come and muse among the trees,
For they shall be his teachers; they shall bow
To Wisdom's lessons his forgetful ear,
And, by the whisper of their faded leaves,
Soften to his sad heart the thought of death.
THE TEST OF LIFE.
Death is the test of life.—All else is vain.
The adulation of a fickle crowd,
Victory's proud pomp, and Glory's pageant train
Fleet like the tinting of yon summer cloud.
This Cæsar felt, in that tremendous hour
When the dire dagger search'd his breast so well,
When all unsated still his lust of power
Upbraiding man's ingratitude,—he fell.
Go,—spread of him of Macedon the tale
To the dull bacchanalian's vacant eye,—
How he beneath whose frown the world grew pale,
Sank in the wine cup like, like a drowning fly.
For Sweden s madman, ask Pultowa's walls,
But pensive Memory in her treasure-cell,
The widow's wail and orphan's moan recalls
That lawless murderer's obsequies to swell.
How died Napoleon?—Ask Helena's rock,—
Ask the wild surge which with its hoariest crest
Was but a whisper to the earthquake shock
Of the vex'd passions warring in his breast.
