From The Knickerbocker New-York Monthly Magazine, 1837, this piece of Poe-ish and Coleridgean scary beauty:
The Poet
Thou dark-eyed, pensive, passionate child of song!
Enthusiast! dreamer! worshipper of things
By the world’s crowd unnoticed, ’mid the throng
Of beautiful creations, Nature flings
The sunlight of existence o’er!
The wings
Of the rude tempest are not half so strong
As thy proud hopes—thy wild imaginings:
Stop! ere their bold and sacrilegious flight
Reach a too-dazzling height!
Venturing sunward, till the flashing eye
Of reason, grown deliriously bright,
Kindle to madness, and to idiocy;
And, from excessive light
To hideous blindness fall, and tenfold night!
Stop! melancholy youth!
Though bright and sparkling be the tide of song,
And many a sunbeam o’er its waters dance
Meanderingly along—
Though it be heaven to quaff of—yet, in truth,
A deadlier venom taints its gay expanse,
More deep, more strong,
Than to the subtlest poison doth belong!
A very demon haunts its fœtid air,
Infatuating with its serpent glance
The wanderer there;
And, with a sad but most bewitching smile,
Luring the credulous one to its desire:
Stirring new feelings, passions, hopes awhile,
And burning thoughts, whose mad, unholy fire,
With its own strength illumes its own funereal pyre!
Stop, if thou’dst live!—or hath life left for thee
No charms, that thou its last terrific scene
Shouldst with such passion worship? Can it be,
That the world nothing hath thou’dst care to win?
No gem, no flower, no loveliness, unseen?
No wonder unexplored? no mystery,
Still undeveloped to the eagle eye
Of Genius, or of Poësy?
Where are the depths of the dark, billowy sea?
Its peopling millions—its gigantic chain
Of gorgeous, glittering waters—wild as free?
Where the big-orb’d sun—the blue-veiled sky?
And its magnificent, diamond-glittering mine
Of ever-burning stars? Oh! can it be,
(Thou fond idolater at every shrine
Where beauty lingers,) can it be that thou
Hast treasured up earth’s glorious things, till now
Thou deem’st it uselessness to turn.
Some unfamiliar object to discern,
And so
Her loveliest features unregarded go?
Away, vain thought! such phrenzy ne’er were thine!
Since, in the humblest, homeliest flower that grows—
Thy very life-breath, as it comes and goes—
There are a thousand things, whose origin,
Whose secret springs, and impulses divine,
No human art nor wisdom can disclose!
Stop, then, sad youth! for life is not all care,
But, hath its hours of rosy-lipped delight;
While the cold grave hath little save despair,
The weary, world-worn spirit to invite.
Stop! I conjure thee I bid the muse away!
Her fatal gifts relinquish or resign;
Her haughty mandates heed not nor obey:
E’en now thy brow hath sorrow’s pallid sign—
Thine eye, though bright, is like the flickering ray
Of a ‘stray sunbeam, o’er some ruin’d shrine,’
Lighting up vestiges almost divine,
In sad, yet, dimly-beautiful decay!
Thy cheek is sunken, and the fickle play
Of the faint smile that curls thy parted lip
Hath something fearful in it, though so gay!
A something treacherously calm, and deep,
Such as on sunny waters seems to sleep,
When hid beneath some passing shadows gray,
The subtle storm-fiend watches for his prey.
Stop! ere thine hour of dalliance be over;
Ere Health abandon thee, and quench her light
In the dark stream of death, (the faithless rover!)
Ere Hope herself take flight
Down to the depths of that dark-flowing river,
Whose sombre shores are clothed in endless night;
Ere thou be wrested from us—and for ever!
Blotted, like some loved planet, from our sight!
And, save the ties
That not e’en Destiny itself can sever,
A feeble reminiscence or a name
Be all thou leav’st us of thee ’neath the skies—
Or some rude stone, perchance, to greet our eyes,
And, with its speechless eloquence proclaim:
‘Here lies
Another victim to thy love, O Fame!’
Philadelphia, 1837.
J. S. D. S.
Special thanks to my lovely wife, who helped with formatting.God, doesn’t CSS suck?