If An Author Would Have

Forgotten Rimes, And College Themes, Worm-eaten Plans, And Embryo Schemes; A Mass Of Heterogeneous Matter. A Chaos Dark, Nor Land Nor Water.

The Well Taught Philosophic Mind To All Compassion Gives; Casts Round The World An Equal Eye, And Feels For All That Lives.

When One By One Our Ties Are Torn, And Friend From Friend Is Snatched Forlorn; When Man Is Left Alone To Mourn, Oh! Then How Sweet It Is To Die!

Eternity.—thy Name Or Glad, Or Fearful, We Pronounce, As Thoughts Wandering In Darkness Shape Thee. Thou Strange Being, Which Art And Must Be, Yet Which Contradict'st All Sense, All Reasoning,—thou, Who Never Wast Less Than Thyself, And Who Still Art Thyself Entire, Though The Deep Draught Which Time Has Taken Equals Thy Present Store—no Line Can Reach To Thy Unfathomed Depths. The Reasoning Sage Who Can Dissect A Sunbeam, Count The Stars, And Measure Distant Worlds, Is Here A Child, And, Humbled, Drops His Calculating Pen.

It Is To Hope, Though Hope Were Lost.