The Southern Literary Messenger, Volume I., 1834-35

True Consolation.

He had wept o'er the honored, in age who die;
O'er the loved,—in beauty's bloom;
O'er the blighted buds of infancy:
Till all earth was to him a Tomb.

And sorrow had drunk his youthful blood,
And hastened the work of Time;
And the cankering tooth of ingratitude
Had withered his manhood's prime.

But he turned from earth, and he looked to the sky,
His sorrow by faith beguiling;
Where Mercy sits enthroned on high,
With his loved ones round her smiling.

He looked to Eternity's bright shore,
From the wreck of perished years;
And Mercy's voice, through the storm's wild roar,
Came down to sooth his fears.

That gentle voice has charmed away
The frenzy from his brain;
And his withered heart, in her eye's mild ray,
May bud and bloom again;

And her smile has chased the gloom from his brow,
So late by clouds o'ercast;
And his cheek is bright with the sun-set glow,
That tells that the Storm is past.

And his heart returns to the world again,
But forgets not the world above;
For Heaven sends love to sooth earthly pain,
But Heaven's whole bliss is Love.

For the Southern Literary Messenger.