SOLILOQUY OF AN OCTOGENARIAN.
Reading edition
———
BY PLINY EARLE, M. D.
———
’Tis nearly past—this fitful dream,
Whose phantoms dazzle to deceive,
Like glittering bubbles on the stream,
Or meteors in a summer eve;
And now, half-opening to my sight,
I see the realms of lasting Light.
These feeble pulses speak of death;
This clouded vision bids me look,
With the undaunted eye of faith,
To climes for which Elijah took
From Carmel’s cliffs his joyous way—
Translated to eternal day.
The blood which, in my childhood, rushed
Like mountain torrents in the isles
Where earth with constant life is flushed,
And everlasting summer smiles,
Now struggles in its sluggish flow,
Like streams through Greenland’s bank of snow;
Yet not all frozen,—if a beam
Of light return from earlier years,
If, from the spell of childhood’s dream,
Triumphant over grief and tears,
One bright, enchanting moment come,
Like a lost, loved one welcomed home,
The loosened current, warmed anew,
Hurries along these frigid veins,
As the hot Geyser rushes through
The frozen banks on Iceland’s plains;
And, all forgetful of my years,
I yield again to child-like tears.
Go, tell me not of loving earth;
Tell me not life is fraught with joy;
Say not this world has given birth
To happiness without alloy;
Too subtle is the spirit’s bliss
To stay in atmosphere like this.
There’s not a pang that rends the heart,
In the long catalogue of woe,
Of which I have not shared a part,
In this, my pilgrimage below;
I’ve quaffed at sorrow’s bitter cup,
And drank its turbid waters up.
And now I wish to lay me down,
My mother, Earth, upon thy breast,
When the green turf, with flowers o’ergrown,
Shall flourish o’er my couch of rest;
Gladly would I resign this trust,
And dust consign to native dust.
Why should I not? my former friends
Have fallen round me, one by one,
As fall the leaves when autumn sends
His breezes through the forests dun.
The grave has garnered all my love,
Why, why remain its walls above?—
Here do I stand alone—alone—
As stands the stern and sturdy oak,
When all its forest-frères are gone,
Before the woodman’s fatal stroke,
Or wintry tempest sweeping by,
With the leagued legions of the sky.
Then speed thou home, my wearied soul,
On angel-pinions; bend thine eye,
Unmoved, upon the glorious goal
That waits thy coming in the sky.
Ho, for the waters which arise
At Zion’s foot, in Paradise!
There shall thou lift thy spirit-tongue,
In praises, that thy bonds are riven,
As, by the fountain, Miriam sung
Hosannahs to the God of Heaven,
When Israel, freed from Pharoah’s hand,
Departed for the promised land.