Unmoor the skiff,--unmoor the skiff,-- The night wind's sigh is on the air, And o'er the highest Alpine cliff, The pale moon rises, broad and clear. The murmuring waves are tranquil now, And on their breast each twinkling star With which Night gems her dusky brow, Flings its mild radiance from afar.
Put off upon the deep blue sea, And leave the banquet and the ball; For solitude, when shared with thee, Is dearer than the carnival. And in my heart are thoughts of love, Such thoughts as lips should only breathe, When the bright stars keep watch above, And the calm waters sleep beneath!
The tale I have for thee, perchance, May to thine eye anew impart The long-lost gladness of its glance, And soothe the sorrows of thy heart; Come, I will sing for thee again, The songs which once our mothers sung, Ere tyranny its galling chain On them, and those they loved, had hung.
Thou'rt sad; thou say'st that in the halls Which echoed once our father's tread, The stranger's idle footstep falls, With sound that might awake the dead! The mighty dead! whose dust aroundAn atmosphere of reverence sheds; If aught of earthly voice or sound, Might reach them in their marble beds.
That she to whom the deep gave birth,-- Fair Venice! to whose queenly stores The wealth and beauty of the earth Were wafted from an hundred shores! Now on her wave-girt site, forlorn, Sits shrouded in affliction's night,-- The object of the tyrant's scorn, Sad monument of fallen might.
Well, tho' in her deserted halls The fire on Freedom's shrine is dead, Tho' o'er her darkened, crumbling walls, Stern Desolation's pall isspread; Is not the second better part, To that which rends the despot's chain, To wear it with a dauntless heart, To feel yet shrink not from its pain?
Then let the creeping ivy twine Its wreaths about each ruined arch, Till Time shall crush them in the brine, Beneath its all-triumphant march! Then let the swelling waters close Above the sea-child's sinking frame, And hide for ever from her foes, Each trace and vestige of her shame.
Shall we at last less calmly sleep, When in the narrow death-house pent, Because the bosom of the deepShall be our only monument? No! by the waste of waters bid, Our tombs as well shall keep their trust, As tho' a marble pyramid Were piled above our mangled dust!
Written in the National Gallery, at the city of Washington, on looking at a Mummy, supposed to have belonged to a race extinct before the occupation of the Western Continent by the people in whose possession the Europeans found it.
Sole and mysterious relic of a race That long has ceased to be, whose very name, Time, ever bearing on with steady pace, Has swept away from earth, leaving thy frame, Darkened by thirty centuries, to claim, Among the records of the things that were, Its place,--Tradition has forgot thee-- Fame, If ever fame was thine, has ceased to bear Her record of thee,--say, what dost thou here?
Three thousand years ago a mother's arms Were wrapped about that dark and ghastly form, And all the loveliness of childhood's charms Glowed on that cheek, with life then flushed and warm; Say, what preserved thee from the hungry worm That haunts with gnawing tooth the gloomy bed Spread for the lifeless? Tell what could disarm Decay of half its power, and while it fed On empires--races--make it spare the dead!
How strange to contemplate the wondrous story, When those deep sunken eyes first saw the light, Lost Babylon was in her midday glory,-- Upon her pride and power had fall'n no blight; And Tyre, the ancient mariner's delight, Whose merchantmen were princes, and whose name Was theme of praise to all, has left her site To utter barren nakedness andshame,-- Yet thou, amid all change, art still the same.
