- Earthly Pomp
- Oh, earthly pomp is but a dream,
- And like a meteor’s short-lived gleam;
- And all the sons of glory soon
- Will rest beneath the mould’ring stone.
- And Genius is a star whose light
- Is soon to sink in endless night,
- And heavenly beauty’s angel form
- Will bend like flower in winter’s storm.
- My Low and Humble Home
- I left my low and humble home,
- Far from my Father’s fields to roam.
- My peaceful cot no more had charms,
- My only joy was War’s alarms.
- I panted for the field of fight,
- I gaz’d upon the deathless light,
- Which o’er the Hero’s grave is shed,
- The glorious memory of the dead.
- Ambition show’d a distant star,
- That shed its radiance bright and far,
- And pointed to a path which led
- O’er heaps of dying and of dead;
- Onward I press’d with eager feet,
- And War’s dread thunder still would greet
- My reckless ears. Where’er I trod,
- I saw the green and verdant sod,
- Turn red with blood of slaughter’d foes,
- And Fury veil’d in smoke arose.
- I gain’d the envied height; and there,
- I sigh’d for that lone cottage, where
- The early hours of life flew by,
- On wings of youthful ecstasy.
- Too late I found that Glory’s ray,
- Could never bring one happy day.
- Address to the Moon
- How sweet the silver Moon’s pale ray,
- Falls trembling on the distant bay,
- O’er which the breezes sigh no more,
- Nor billows lash the sounding shore.
- Say, do the eyes of those I love,
- Behold thee as thou soar’st above,
- Lonely, majestic and serene,
- The calm and placid evening’s Queen?
- Say, if upon thy peaceful breast,
- Departed spirits find their rest,
- For who would wish a fairer home,
- Than in that bright, refulgent dome?
- The Ocean
- The ocean has its silent caves,
- Deep, quiet and alone;
- Though there be fury on the waves,
- Beneath them there is none.
- The awful spirits of the deep
- Hold their communion there;
- And there are those for whom we weep,
- The young, the bright, the fair.
- Calmly the wearied seamen rest
- Beneath their own blue sea.
- The ocean solitudes are blest,
- For there is purity.
- The earth has guilt, the earth has care,
- Unquiet are its graves;
- But peaceful sleep is ever there,
- Beneath the dark blue waves.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) was an American writer better known for his fiction than his poetry. Yet his interest in history, morality and religion, which became trademarks of his fiction – including his most famous work, The Scarlet Letter (1850), also carried over into his poetic output. Although the extant poems number less than a dozen, they offer a snapshot into the same concerns that defined Hawthorne as a major American writer – an influence for Henry James and William Faulkner, among others.