| |
| THAMES swept along in summer pride, | |
| Sparkling beneath his verdant edge; | |
| With frolic kiss, as half denied, | |
| Light airs were glancing o’er the tide, | |
| Or whispering in the secret sedge. | 5 |
| |
| Cheerful the landscape’s sunny green, | |
| Yet still, in pensive mood reclined, | |
| Pondering of things to be, or been, | |
| I shrank at many a visioned scene | |
| Of fear, before; of grief, behind. | 10 |
| |
| The insect tribes, but newly born, | |
| Were flaunting in the awakening ray; | |
| In me they woke no touch of scorn; | |
| I saw them frail, but more to mourn | |
| The kindred doom of man’s decay. | 15 |
| |
| For here, of old, his booty won, | |
| The Dane caroused in barbarous glee, | |
| Or Roman veteran, toil-foredone, | |
| Lay stretched beneath the westering sun, | |
| In dreams of pleasant Italy. | 20 |
| |
| Or floating by, in gallant show, | |
| Gay beauty glanced at monarch’s jest, | |
| Nor marked where, high above the prow, | |
| Mid mirth and wine, and music’s flow, | |
| Sat Change,—a dark and threatening guest. | 25 |
| |
| Their mirth is sped; their gravest theme | |
| Sleeps with the things that cease to be; | |
| Their longest life, a morning gleam; | |
| A bubble bursting on the stream, | |
| Then swept to Time’s unfathomed sea. | 30 |
| |
| Yes! all, beneath or change or chance, | |
| And passing, like the passing river, | |
| The wassail shout, the dreamer’s trance, | |
| And monarch’s jest, and beauty’s glance, | |
| Were human all, and gone forever! | 35 |
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