Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TO JOSEPH ATKINSON, ESQ.; FROM BERMUDA, by THOMAS MOORE


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO JOSEPH ATKINSON, ESQ.; FROM BERMUDA, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: The daylight is gone-but, before we depart
Last Line: Of the wave that would carry your wanderer home!
Alternate Author Name(s): Little, Thomas
Subject(s): Homecoming


"THE daylight is gone -- but, before we depart,
One cup shall go round to the friend of my heart,
To the kindest, the dearest -- oh! judge by the tear,
That I shed while I name him, how kind and how dear!"

'Twas thus, by the shade of a calabash tree,
With a few who could feel and remember like me,
The charm, that to sweeten my goblet I threw,
Was a tear to the past and a blessing on you!

Oh! say, do you thus, in the luminous hour
Of wine and of wit, when the heart is in flower,
And shoots from the lip, under Bacchus's dew,
In blossoms of thought ever springing and new --
Do you sometimes remember, and hallow the brim
Of your cup with a sigh, as you crown it to him
Who is lonely and sad in these valleys so fair,
And would pine in elysium, if friends were not there?

Last night, when we came from the calabash tree,
When my limbs were at rest and my spirit was free,
The glow of the grape and the dreams of the day
Put the magical springs of my fancy in play;
And, oh! such a vision as haunted me then
I could slumber for ages to witness again!
The many I like, and the few I adore,
The friends, who were dear and beloved before,
But never till now so beloved and dear,
At the call of my fancy surrounded me here!
Soon, soon did the flattering spell of their smile
To a paradise brighten the blest little isle;
Serener the wave, as they look'd on it, flow'd,
And warmer the rose, as they gather'd it, glow'd!
Not the valleys Heraean (though water'd by rills
Of the pearliest flow, from those pastoral hills,
Where the song of the shepherd, primaeval and wild
Was taught to the nymphs by their mystical child)
Could display such a bloom of delight, as was given
By the magic of love, to this miniature heaven!

Oh, magic of love! unembellish'd by you,
Has the garden a blush or the herbage a hue?
Or blooms there a prospect in nature or art,
Like the vista that shines through the eye to the heart?

Alas! that a vision so happy should fade!
That, when morning around me in brilliancy play'd,
The rose and the stream I had thought of at night
Should still be before me, unfadingly bright;
While the friends, who had seem'd to hang over the stream,
And to gather the roses, had fled with my dream!

But see, through the harbour, in floating array,
The bark that must carry these pages away
Impatiently flutters her wing to the wind,
And will soon leave the bowers of Ariel behind!

What billows, what gales is she fated to prove,
Ere she sleep in the lee of the land that I love!
Yet pleasant the swell of those billows would be,
And the sound of those gales would be music to me!
Not the tranquillest air that the winds ever blew,
Not the silvery lapse of the summer-eve dew,
Were as sweet as the breeze, or as bright as the foam
Of the wave that would carry your wanderer home!





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