New Hampshire Statesman And Concord Register

POETRY.

THE CHANGE

My spirit was sad when evening fell
Around my infant home,
There was a voice that seem'd to tell
Of griefs that were to come—
Of friends whose parting word should be
A long and last farewell to me-
Of change, forgetfulness, and woe,
Blighting what hearts were left to glow

I stood-where years before I stood-
Before that early home;
The winter's whelming torrent flood,
Had flung not there its foam;
Nor there had war, with crimson hand.
Hurled in his wrath the flaming brand,
Nor pestilence nor famine raved.
Nor tyranny the land enslaved.

But there the hand of time had wrought
That perishing change on all,
Which leaves but for the brooding thought
The ruin ere the fall:
Making the heart's deep pulse to be
A warning of eternity,
And love for things of earth to seem
The wasted music of a dream.

The flowers had perished not, but grew
Less floridly and bright ;
They had not the same living hue,
That odorous breath of light,
Which was around them when each stem
Bloom'd for the hand that planted them,-
And every thing besides was gay,
And full of young sweet health as they.

And there were all the things the eye
Had registered within the breast,
Wearing the same reality,
But not the charm of old possest;
And where another's eye had seen
But little change in what had been,—
To me time seem'd, with quicker tread,
His desolating hand to spread.

My heart had borne the blight and storm,
The toil of many years;
But there was round the darkest form.
That woe or peril wears,
No gloom so deep as that which press'd
Heavily on the aching breast,
When hope its long sought home surveyed,
And found each home loved thing decayed.

Tis not the retrospective glance
Adown the stream of years,
That makes us scorn the dizzy dance
Of earthly hopes and fears ;
It is the change of things we love,
For their sakes who are now above—
The change of things whose forms are wrought
Into that linked chain of thought.