Читать книгу Graham's Magazine, Vol. XLI, No. 6, December 1852 - Various - Страница 7

  It was the twilight, and we sat alone.

  We sat alone beside the winter fire —

  My friend and I – a fire that crackled well,

  And sounded through the stillness as a flame

  Shoots through the dark. The embers of the sun

  Had died to ashes. While it sunk we talked

  Of Love, of Beauty, Poetry and Hope,

  Which are religion. For, is Beauty loved,

  Then God is loved, and in our loving we

  Do emulate his noblest attribute.

  But all our words had failed to silentness,

  And memories clustered in the heart’s twilight,

  As shadows in a wood; and all was still.

  But in the quietness there seemed to grow

  A sympathetic mood, and we to look,

  As through glass, into each other’s mind,

  Calm reading, while our thoughts and feelings verged

  In a soft sadness to one common point.

  Then low I spoke: – “Were it not sweet and well

  To die from out this chaos of a life

  Into the waiting dark, and leave our toil

  To stronger minds and hands? To spurn the clay,

  And mount the crystal air in spiral gyre,

  Glad-voiced, and angel-winged, like bird uncaged?

  I think it sweet! or so it seemeth now,

  When I look back, as down a charnel-vault,

  Into the retrospect, and see it all; —

  See every should-be that was never done,

  And every would-be that has died its death,

  And my hot dreams, and my distempered hopes,