METHUSELAH.
"And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years—and he died."
GENESIS.
And was this all? He died! He who did wait
The slow unfolding of centurial years,
And shake that burden from his heart, which turns
Our temples white, and in his freshness stand
Till cedars mouldered and firm rocks grew grey—
Left he no trace upon the page inspired,
Save this one line—he died?
Perchance he stood
Till all who in his early shadow rose
Faded away, and he was left alone,
A sad, long-living, weary-hearted man,
To fear that Death, remembering all beside,
Had sure forgotten him.
Perchance he roved
Exulting o'er the ever-verdant vales,
While Asia's sun burned fervid on his brow,
Or 'neath some waving palm-tree sate him down,
And in his mantling bosom nursed the pride
That mocks the pale destroyer, and doth think
To live forever.
What majestic plans,
What mighty Babels, what sublime resolves,
Might in that time-defying bosom spring,
Mature, and ripen, and cast off their fruits
For younger generations of bold thought
To wear their harvest diadem, while we
In the poor-hour-glass of our seventy years
Scarce see the buds of some few plants of hopes,
Ere we are laid beside them, dust to dust.
Yet whatsoe'er his lot, in that dim age
Of mystery, when the unwrinkled world had drank
No deluge-cup of bitterness, whate'er
Were earth's illusions to his dazzled eye,
Death found him out at last, and coldly wrote,
With icy pen on life's protracted scroll,
Naught but this brief unflattering line—he died.
Ye gay flower-gatherers on time's crumbling brink,
This shall be said of you, howe'er ye vaunt
Your long to-morrows in an endless line,
Howe'er amid the gardens of your joy
Ye hide yourselves, and bid the pale King pass,
This shall be said of you, at last, he died;
Oh, add one sentence more, he lived to God.