Read "Farewell to Nature" by Thomas Gordon Hake online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Vain love for Nature! How these heartaches rust / Into the soul as we return to dust! / Hope's shadow only masks our eventide, / Feigning to lead us to its brighter side, / While yet the mellowing skies that wondrous grow, / Seem left in waiting for the dead below. / But those tranced sunsets,-little they avail, / None travel hence in their alluring trail; / All is a dream, an ancient dream, the same / From the first mortal to the last that came. / Yet could we but for once our eyes unclose / When through the distant days the pageant goes! / Familiar vision, and so soon to be / Entombed within the dead eternity.
Doth Nature know our dream, or is the mind / A passing breath her beauty leaves behind? / Ah! not for this our grateful souls have wrought / Around her sphere a universe of thought. / 'Tis she inspires our dreams, but no reply / Vouchsafes the loving hearts that for her die, / Who only pray, when life's surprise is o'er, / They may partake a glimpse of her once more. / Is it too late? She sees not to the end; / What she hath done she never can amend: / Yet once by us beloved, once only known, / She seems from all the past to be our own.