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?