Litchfield Enquirer

POETRY.

FAREWEEL, TO ----

Farewell! farewell! the world is bright
And beautiful as heaven to-night;
And skies that smile and stars that shine,
Bend o'er that angel-brow of thine,
As if to witch thy gentle thought
With visions from their glory caught,
And win it from earth's rosy chain
Up to its native skies again.

Farewell! farewell! Oh it is strange
How recklessly of chance and change,
Of each dark hour of care and pain,
On bursting heart and burning brain,
Come out, what time the stars are bright,
The thousand Eden-tones of night-
The wind's soft moan--the leaf's low sigh-
The waters leaping to the sky-
As if some unseen angel bent
Over a fairy instrument.

Farewell! farewell! I have left all
That held my unschooled heart in thrall
My boyhood's home--its lake, and hill-
The murmurings of its mountain rill-
Each forest haunt, where charmed I lay
Dreaming the midnight hours away-
And the pale stars that with a smile
Look'd on my lonely watch the while-
And yet I wept not-and methought
My spirit from the world had caught
That iciness of touch and tone
To childhood's feelings all unknown,
And knew not, till I came to part
With something dearer to my heart,
How hope may fade--the pulses chill-
But Love's sweet idols linger still.

Farewell! farewell! I leave thee now,
A bright girl with a laughing brow,
As if earth's darkest cloud might fling
No shadow on Hope's rainbow wing.
So be it ever-may there be
No canker in the world for thee-
No sigh in life's triumphal tone-
No blight upon life's freshness thrown-
But if thy lot should change-each ray
Of sunshine fading fast away,
And every flow'r grow pale and fall
From thy life's rosy coronal,
Then-(for I would not ask a tear
When flowers are bright, and skies are clear
And thy young pulse is leaping free-)
Then, in thy sadness, think of me.

Poughkeepsie.
SEDLEY