Page:Poems of Sentiment and Imagination.djvu/118

114 Each phantom with the whimsey to recount

How he on earth was one of Fortune's slaves.

As in one grand kaleidoscope they passed,

I saw all ranks of form and intellect,

And noble men among the meanest classed,

Compelled by sorrow to appear abject:

The scholar with his proud, pale, thoughtful brow,

The poet with his bright but sunken eye;

Artist and statesman—each told why and how

Among the unhonored dead he came to lie.

Strange were the tales these phantom beings told

Of lives worn out in struggles against fate,

Pining for that whose paltry price was gold—

Yet Gold held destiny subordinate;

A proud, stern man, with face of manhood's prime,

Whose hair was silvered in a single night,

Had seen his treasures in one hour of time

Taken forever from his doating sight—

Wife, children, riches—and his heart gave way—

That high, brave heart, that erst had been so strong,

And had endured so much! It could not stay

This last great agony, and broke ere long;

He had been poor in youth, and pace by pace

Had toiled his way along the steep ascent,

Till he had won of men an honored place,

And love and wealth were with his laurels blent.

Oft had his spirit fainted—still he turned

His eye upon the goal he strove to gain,

Till that for which his ardent soul so burned,

And more was won, and yet it was in vain;

And one—a student with a pale, clear face,

Through which the soul within shone like a light,

And on whose brow yet lingered many a trace

Of passionate struggle with the spoiler's might—