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Title: Melancholy
Author: James Avis Bartley [
More Titles by Bartley]
There comes a time for flowers to fade, and light to die in gloom,
There is a time for mortal bliss to know a certain doom.
Sometimes I feel that I have reached that hour, and I have felt,
When pondering o'er the dreary change, my spirit in me melt.
The joyful trust, the bounding hopes, that laughed at scorned defeat,
The feeling, like pure rock-born streams, as strong, as deep, and sweet;
The soul that thrilled with transport wild, at Beauty's magic name;
Ah! all have strangely altered now,--I am no more the same.
And now I feel alone and sad amid an ocean wide,
I care not much to what strange coast my single plank may ride,
I am alone--what matters it where my bowed frame may be,
Since now my heart is never more by land or rolling sea.
I feel that as yon Night now throws its mantle o'er the earth,
Till ghostly shapes and ghostly sounds, go dimly walking forth--
That soon the night of Death may throw its mantle over me,
And unfamiliar things shall rise from dark eternity.
Yet, would I hope, when such shall come, to dwell not with pain,
But walk, with a triumphant song, o'er heaven's unshadowed plain--
Where Youth and Hope, and Love and Joy, (the angels,) ever smile,
And evermore the aching heart from woe and grief beguile.
[The end]
James Avis Bartley's poem: Melancholy
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