Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1857-09-24
Original 4oetrg.
For the Yorkville Enquirer.
NEAR THEE.

NEAR THEE.
I stood near thee that dewy morn among
A gathered few.
We stood that summer morn
Among the marbled mounds and grassy graves,
Whose crowns of lettered stone and roral wreaths
Law silently on breasts whose restless throb
OF agony no longer tell their throes.
They rested. Wreath and crown bespoke peace
Unknown TO soyereignties of earth, save one
; The majesty of DEATH.
stood near thee,
And near new-made little grave untitled;
There listened to the solemn ritual read
And saw. and felt, the act that answers back
The final grave-side charge of earth to earth-y
Ashes to ashes-d4st to- dust; and through
Thy faith beheld the solitary soul,
In lonely loveliness and bouyancy,
Ascending to its parent God, and peace.
7 stood near thee that dewy summer morn,
And dbreathed with thee common prayer for peace;
And marked the touch of spirit-anguish sway
Thy fragile form-a moments trenlor, past,
And all was still-a moments struggle in
The breast where prayerful calm mad been
Briefvas the space we stood, for hastily
They heaped the little mound: then slowly
turned
To trace their several ways.
Brief was the space,
To them yetin it came to me along,
Long fight of struggling years-the ALL Of past
Our blended days have known, with all the hope
And anguish of that past. saw thee as
When, first We met when first thy radiant form
Came like presence from shadow-dream
NV soul had loved for years. As dreaming
youth,
Nv spirit wershippedin its solitude
With wild idolatry before shade
Divine drew-the capo dopera
Of my artistic fancy. Beautiful!
Years thus it hung. My spirit kneeiipg there
Was deemed unconscious (balf it 'pas) of all
The common smiles that beam on US in life,
And wake, each one, its hourly thrill-a fash
OF passions mad bewilderment; was deemed
A dreamy crltlc OIL Tue nchTt ano Soio3
Though waking oft to know that maddening
thrill.
The hour We met that altar-piece became
A radiant life of lovelness in form
The same, but living in thy life, and in
Tbv loyeliness even more divine. saw
Thee as. when blended with that dream of dreams,
Thy being seemed ascending like star
Imust but kneel to in bootless prayer
Like Sapian to his sum- Deity
But never to be mine.
Again, there was
A time when, nearer me, thou vast away
Beyond the distance of the icy poles
From this our sunny land, and yet vast fair
No dream poetic passion ever told
Has bodied forth form to me more fair.
saw thee when thine earliest glance was cast
In half INQUIRY towards this lonely heart,
Whose living TRUTH thou could'st but see, and feel
And know, in every trembling throb it gave
For it was life of life that lived in thoughts
OF thee. My love was like memory
OF home-the one early loved and left
So gratefully it lived, so life-to-life,
So like something neutrality-suspicious.,
1t seemed; so like part Of beings self.
Isaw thee then and round thy beauteous brow
Were coming shades where princely pride had safe
And round thy path ingathering gloom drew nigh
Shades gathered darker and again-again-
The hurrying sorrows came. saw thee then'
And loved the more that Grief had hallowed thee
For BY that aid, read thy heart, scroll
Unread till then. Capacity for love
Is in the heart that knows-so proudly knows
A sorrow so majestic. The soul that bows
1t to the omnipotence of anguish deep
As life and death, and rising smiles through tear
As thou hast done that soul, Ideemed, can love
United by the sanctifying hand
Of sorrow, hearts, / deemed, may near
Life's night together with smile of peace
Brief was the space We stood that summer morn
And they, the gathered few, had quickly turned
Apart their several ways. They went, and thou
And left me to my many thoughts, hut these
Were thoughts OF THEE. The gloom of grie
around
And mines of memory within disturbed
The calm my spirit seeks to keep; but, these
Removed, it trembles back in peace to thee.
HERMITAGE, 1857.