Page:Poems of Nature and Life.djvu/346

 336 CONSOLATIONS OF SOLITUDE

And, as the gardens of delight

On either margin heave in sight,

My bark so swiftly shoots ahead,

Scarce can I look ere all is fled.

The verdant shores behind me glide ;

Each hour the river grows more wide ;

And now the castles of Despair,

With frowning towers, rough, bleak, and bare.

Loom from the desolate wastes of Care.

I see gay Pleasure's winged train

Cleaving the gale above the main ;

The wedged phalanx high o'erhead

Soars on its course, all backward sped

To greet the spring on youth's green shore,

A land I must behold no more.

Now in the mist it melts away.

Shrunk to a speck of dusky gray.

Now lost in clouds. O beauteous day I

I see thy sun, which rose like gold,

Set in the distance, pale and cold.

The shades of night around me creep ;

The fogs come drifting o'er the deep ;

Fain would I turn my prow ; 'tis vain ;

The current drives me toward the main.

Never, ah, never to return again !

Along the river shining clear,

A row of lighthouses appear,

One at the boundary of each year,

Whose moving lantern ceaseless burns.

Where every season glows by turns :

Now the green lights of spring appear ;

Now summer's gold burns bright and clear ;

Now autumn gleams with purple hue.

Now the dull blaze of wintry blue.

Swiftly each beacon light is past ;

Another, turning like the last.

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