Part 2 — LINES
Reading edition
ON BURNING SOME OLD JOURNALS AND LETTERS.
———
BY THE LATE WALTER HERRIES, ESQ.
———
Ay, let them perish—why recall
Dreams of a by-gone day?
Why lift Oblivion’s funeral pall
Only to find decay?
The heart of youth lies buried there,
With all its hopes and fears,
Its burning joys, its wild despair,
Its agonies and tears.
A light has vanished from the earth,
A glory left the sky,
Since first within my soul had birth
Those visions pure and high;
Or is it that mine eye, grown dim,
Hath lost the power to trace
The glory of the Seraphim
Within life’s holy place?
Methinks I stand midway between
The future and the past,
The onward path is dimly seen,
Behind me clouds are cast;
Why should I seek to pierce that gloom
And call the buried host
Of haunting memories from the tomb—
Each one a tortured ghost?
I could not look upon the page,
With eloquence o’erfraught,
Where, ere my head had grown so sage,
My heart its wild will wrought;
I could not—would not—ponder now
O’er my youth’s wayward madness,
Which left no stain on soul or brow,
Yet shrouded life in sadness.
Ay, let them perish!—from the dream
Of Passion’s wasted hour
There comes no retrospective gleam,
No spectre of the flower:
The treasured wealth of Eastern kings
Enriched their burial fire,
And thus my heart’s most precious things
Shall build its funeral pyre.