By what astrology of fear or hopé Like the new moon thy life appears; And widening outward into night A luminous circle, faint and dim, Rounds and completes the perfect sphere; A pale and feeble adumbration, Of the great world of light, that lies Behind all human destinies. Ah! if thy fate, with anguish fraught, With the hot tears and sweat of toil, - Until the overburdened brain, Weary with labor, faint with pain, Like a jarred pendulum, retain From labor there shall come forth rest. And if a more auspicious fate Still let it ever be thy pride To cheer the dreary march along Of the great army of the poor, O'er desert sand, o'er dangerous moor. Nor to thyself the task shall be Without reward; for thou shalt learn The wisdom early to discern True beauty in utility; As great Pythagoras of yore, Standing beside the blacksmith's door, And hearing the hammers, as they smote The anvils with a different note, Stole from the varying tones, that hung iron tongue, Vibrant on every The secret of the sounding wire, Enough! I will not play the Seer; For, like Acestes' shaft of old, The swift thought kindles as it flies. And burns to ashes in the skies. THE OCCULTATION OF ORION. I SAW, as in a dream sublime, The balance in the hand of Time. And day, with all its hours of light, Like the astrologers of eld, In that bright vision I beheld Greater and deeper mysteries. Its wondrous and harmonious strings, Where, chanting through his beard of snows, And down the sunless realms of space Reverberates the thunder of his bass. Beneath the sky's triumphal arch This music sounded like a march, |