A Fragment
Lines:40Movement:Romanticism
Could I remount the river of my yearsTo the first fountain of our smiles and tears,I would not trace again the stream of hoursBetween their outworn banks of withered flowers,But bid it flow as now--until it glidesInto the number of the nameless tides. What is this Death?--a quiet of the heart?The whole of that of which we are a part?For Life is but a vision--what I seeOf all which lives alone is Life to me,And being so--the absent are the dead,Who haunt us from tranquillity, and spreadA dreary shroud around us, and investWith sad remembrancers our hours of rest. The absent are the dead--for they are cold,And ne'er can be what once we did behold;And they are changed, and cheerless,--or if yetThe unforgotten do not all forget,Since thus divided--equal must it beIf the deep barrier be of earth, or sea;It may be both--but one day end it mustIn the dark union of insensate dust. The under-earth inhabitants--are theyBut mingled millions decomposed to clay?The ashes of a thousand ages spreadWherever Man has trodden or shall tread?Or do they in their silent cities dwellEach in his incommunicative cell?Or have they their own language? and a senseOf breathless being?--darkened and intenseAs Midnight in her solitude?--Oh Earth!Where are the past?--and wherefore had they birth?The dead are thy inheritors--and weBut bubbles on thy surface; and the keyOf thy profundity is in the Grave,The ebon portal of thy peopled cave,Where I would walk in spirit, and beholdOur elements resolved to things untold,And fathom hidden wonders, and exploreThe essence of great bosoms now no more.