Page:The North American Review - Volume 5.djvu/350

340  The flight of years began, have laid them down In their last sleep—the dead reign there alone.— So shalt thou rest—and what if thou shalt fall Unnoticed by the living—and no friend Take note of thy departure?Thousands more Will share thy destiny.—The tittering world Dance to the grave.The busy brood of care Plod on, and each one chases as before His favourite phantom.—Yet all these shall leave Their mirth and their employments, and shall come And make their bed with thee!

, if thou hast learnt a truth which needs Experience more than reason, that the world Is full of guilt and misery; and hast known Enough its sorrows, crimes and cares To tire thee of it—enter this wild wood, And view the haunts of Nature.The calm shade Shall bring a kinder calm, and the sweet breeze That makes the green leaves dance, shall waft a balm To thy sick heart.Here thou wilt nothing find Of all that pain’d thee in the haunts of man, And made thee loathe thy life.The primal curse Fell, it is true, upon the unsinning earth, But not in vengeance.Misery is wed To guilt.Hence in these shades we still behold The abodes of gladness, here from tree to tree And through the rustling branches flit the birds In wantonness of spirit;—theirs are strains Of no dissembled rapture—while below The squirrel with rais’d paws and form erect Chirps merrily.In the warm glade the throngs Of dancing insects sport in the mild beam That wak’d them into life.Even the green trees Partake the deep contentment; as they bend To the soft winds the sun from the blue sky Peeps in and sheds a blessing on the scene. Scarce less the cleft-born wild-flower seems to enjoy Existence, than the winged plunderer That sucks its sweets.The massy rocks themselves And the old and ponderous trunks of prostrate trees That lead from knoll to knoll a causeway rude,