Two Additional Poems

Hello again, friends.  What an exciting time it is in Griswoldia.  I am very pleased to present yet more samples of my poetry, these ones written when I was in my very early twenties.  You will see that they display the burgeoning powers that would be more evident in my later works, already posted on this very blog.

We would like, again and always, to express our deepest gratitude to the brilliant and beautiful Ann Neilson of the Materialistic Maiden blog for her tireless efforts in uncovering these forgotten gems from my beloved pen. Were it not for her, these poems would still languish in obscurity.

My other poetry can be found here, here, here and here.


This first poem was printed in the August 1837 number of "The Ladies Companion and Literary Expositor":

          Original.

          THE MIDNIGHT WIND.

          BY RUFUS W. GRISWOLD

‘Tis midnight, and the gentle air

   Comes through the open lattice now,

And waves aside the thin dark hair

   That mantles o’er my burning brow.

The midnight air! Oh, now it brings

Healing upon its dewy wings;

The garniture of pleasant hills—

   The vales in beauty spreading wide,

Along which play a thousand rills,

   Whose waters, as they onward glide,

To mingle with the flowing river,

Are filled with melody for ever;

The moon that looks upon the deep,

   Whose waves beneath its beams are bright

As cloudless skies in summer sleep

   When studded with the stars of night,

And every billow sending high

A rival glory to the sky;

The flowers, the rich and gorgeous flowers,

   Upon whose leaves the dews distil,

Amid a thousand fairy bowers,

   And earth and air with perfume fill,

And every bright and joyous thing

That to this pleasant world doth cling;

All, all, oh balmy air, in thee

   Seem sweetly blended, as e’en now

From vale and hill and moonlit sea,

   Though visitest my fevered brow;

And mingling with my fitful breath,

Thou seem’st a victor over death.

Rockaway Pavilion.

This next piece was printed in the same literary journal mentioned above, but in September of 1837.

           Original.

          SONNET.

          BY RUFUS W. GRISWOLD.

                “It seems but yesterday,” said Dacre, “that we played our childish games together.  Now lie they in that tomb, and no memorial reminds those who are left, that such men ever lived.  Indeed, we do ‘fade as a leaf.”

HERE were they born, where now their ashes lie,

   From here went forth upon their pilgrimage,

And reaped earth’s pleasures, and returned to die.

   Such are men’s histories in every age:

Thus do they live, and thus they pass away.

   At morn they bud, and at meridian bloom,

And ere has passed from earth the sun’s last ray

   They sleep neglected in the mouldering tomb.

They rise, like shadows, on time’s tossing wave,

   They float, like bubbles, on her troubled stream,

And then they sink into oblivion’s grave,

   Their lives are fleeting as a summer’s dream.

And all are gone—the evil and the just—

Earth unto earth returns, and dust goes back to dust.

You are welcome...