The currentless waters are dead and still
But the light wind plays with the boat at will,
And lazily in and out again,
It floats the length of the rusty chain,
Like the weary march of the hands of time,
That meet and part at the noontide chime,
And the shore is kissed at each turn anew,
By the dripping bow of the old canoe.
Oh, many a time, with a careless hand,
I have pushed it away from the pebbly strand,
And paddled it down where the stream runs thick,
Where the whirls are wild and the eddies are thick,
And laughed as I leaned o'er the rocking side-
And looked below in the broken tide-
To see that the faces and boats were two,
That were mirrored back from the old canoe.
But, now, as I lean o'er the crumbling side,
And look below in the sluggish tide,
The face that I see is graver grown,
And the laugh that I hear has a soberer tone,
And the hands that lent to the light skiff wings
Have grown familiar with sterner things;
But I love to think of the hours that sped,
As I rocked where the whirls their white spray shed, Ere the blossoms waved, or the green grass grew O'er the moldering stern of the old canoe.
AM dying, Egypt, dying,
Ebbs the crimson life-tide fast,
And the dark Plutonian shadows
Gather on the evening blast.
Let thine arm, O queen, support me,
Hush thy sobs and bow thine ear,
Harken to the great heart secrets,
Thou, and thou alone must hear.
Though my scarred and veteran legions
Bear their eagles high no more,
And my wrecked and scattered galleys
Strew dark Actium's fatal shore;
Though no glittering guards surround me,
Prompt to do their master's will,
I must perish like a Roman,
Die the great triumvir still.
Let not Cæsar's servile minions
Mock the lion thus laid low;
'Twas no foeman's hand that slew him,
'Twas his own that struck the blow;
Here, then, pillowed on thy bosom,
Ere his star fades quite away,
Him who drunk with thy caresses,
Madly flung a world away.
Should the base, plebeian rabble
Dare assail my fame at Rome,
Where the noble spouse, Octavia,
Weeps within her widowed home,
Seek her, say the gods have told me,
Altars, augurs, circling wings,
That her blood with mine commingled,
Yet shall mount the throne of kings.
And for thee, star-eyed Egyptian!
Glorious Sorceress of the Nile,
Light the path to Stygian horrors
With the splendors of thy smile.
Give the Cæsar crowns and arches,
Let his brow the laurel twine,
I can scorn the Senate's triumphs,
Triumphing in love like thine.
I am dying, Egypt, dying,
Hark! the insulting foeman's cry, They are coming quick, my falchion!
Let me front them ere I die.
Ah! no more amid the battle
Shall my heart exulting swell,
Isis and Osiris guard thee,
Cleopatra, Rome, farewell!
FROM THE CASTLE OF INDOLENCE."
HIS globe pourtray'd the race of learned men,
Still at their books, and turning o'er the page,
Backwards and forwards; oft they snatch the
pen,
As if inspired, and in a Thespian rage;
Then write, and blot, as would your ruth engage;
Why, authors, all this scrawl and scribbling sore?
To lose the present, gain the future age,
Praised to be when you can hear no more,
And much enrich'd with fame, when useless worldly store.
Their only labour was to kill the time
(And labour dire it is, and weary woe;)
They sit, and loll; turn o'er some idle rhyme;
Then, rising sudden, to the glass they go,
Or saunter forth, with tottering step and slow:
This soon too rude an exercise they find;
Straight on the couch their limbs again they throw,
Where hours and hours they sighing lie reclined,
And court the vapoury god, soft breathing in the wind.
I care not, Fortune, what you me deny;
You cannot rob me of free Nature's grace;
You cannot shut the windows of the sky,
Through which Aurora shows her brightening face;
You cannot bar my constant feet to trace
The woods and lawns, by living stream at eve.
Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace,
And I their toys to the great children leave:
Of fancy, reason, virtue, nought can me bereave.
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