"ALL IS VANITY, SAITH THE PREACHER.”

1.

FAME, wisdom, love, and power were mine,
And health and youth possess'd me;
My goblets blushed from every vine,
And lovely forms caress'd me;

I sunn'd my heart in beauty's eyes,
And felt my soul grow tender;
All earth can give, or mortal prize,
Was mine of regal splendour.

2.

I strive to number o'er what days

Remembrance can discover, Which all that life or earth displays Would lure me to live over.

There rose no day, there roll'd no hour
Of pleasure unembitter'd;

And not a trapping deck'd my power,
That gall'd not while it glitter'd.

3.

The serpent of the field, by art
And spells, is won from harming;
But that which coils around the heart,
Oh! who hath power of charming?

It will not list to wisdom's lore,
Nor music's voice can lure it;
But there it stings for evermore
The soul that must endure it.

WHEN COLDNESS WRAPS THIS

SUFFERING CLAY.

1.

WHEN coldness wraps this suffering clay,
Ah, whither strays the immortal mind?
It cannot die, it cannot stay,

But leaves it darken'd dust behind.
Then, unembodied, doth it trace

By steps each planet's heavenly way ?
Or fill at once the realms of space,
A thing of eyes, that all survey?

2.

Eternal, boundless, undecay'd,

A thought unseen, but seeing all,
All, all in earth, or skies display'd,
Shall it survey, shall it recall:
Each fainter trace that memory holds
So darkly of departed years,
In one broad glance the soul beholds,

And all, that was, at once appears.

3.

Before Creation peopled earth,

Its eyes shall roll through chaos back; And where the furthest heaven had birth, The spirit trace its rising track. And where the future mars or makes, Its glance dilate o'er all to be, While sun is quench'd or system breaks, Fix'd in its own eternity.

4.

Above or Love, Hope, Hate, or Fear,
It lives all passionless and pure:
An age shall fleet like earthly year;
Its years as moments shall endure.
Away, away, without a wing,

O'er all, through all, its thought shall fly: A nameless and eter na thing,

Forgetting what it was to die.

L

VISION OF BELSHAZZAR.

1.

THE King was on his throne,
The Satraps throng'd the hall;
A thousand bright lamps shone
O'er that high festival.
A thousand cups of gold,

In Judah deem'd divine-
Jehovah's vessels hold

The godless Heathen's wine!

In that same hoar and hall,
The fingers of a hand
Came forth against the wall,

And wrote as if on sand;

The fingers of a man;—
A solitary hand

Along the letters ran,

And traced them like a wand.