Album Verses

ithin a rock, whose shadows linger,At moonlight hours, on Erie’s sea,Some unseen, Indian spirit’s fingerWoke in far times sweet minstrelsy.’Twas in the summer twilight only,When evening winds the green leaves stirred,And all beside was mute and lonelyIts wild aërial tones were heard.

So I—that fabled rock resembling,With heart as cold, and head as hard—Appear, although with fear and trembling,At Beauty’s call, as Beauty’s bard.Yet why despair if winds can summonMinstrels and music when they please?For who but deems the lips of womanMore potent than an evening breeze?

Her lips the magic word have spoken,That bids me call from far and nearEach minstrel-pen, to leave its tokenOf fealty and of friendship here.These consecrated leaves are givenTo you, ye rhyme-composing elves;

To poets who were taught by Heaven,And poets who have taught themselves.

To wits, whose thistle-shafts by flowersAre hid, their points in balsam dipped;To humor, in his happiest hours,And punsters—if their wings are clipped.But friendship, with her smiling features,Will come, ’tis hoped, without a call;For though your wits are clever creatures,One line of hers is worth them all.

Let names of heroes and of sages,On history’s leaf eternal be;A few brief years on Beauty’s pagesAre worth their immortality.At least this charmèd book permits usTo brave oblivion’s withering power,Till she who summons us, forgets us;And who would live beyond that hour?