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Updated: August 18, 2024
Yes, with all thy loveliness, the circle of mirth and gaiety, reflecting happy faces of thy present worshippers, tame is the scene compared with the traditions of a by-gone race, which, notwithstanding the simplicity in forms of customs that governed them, were among the brightest pictures of American life always associated with the beautiful forest, which together are passing away, and oblivion's veil fast gathering around them.
Circling the base of the poetic mount A stream there is, which rolls in lazy flow; Its cold-black waters from oblivion's fount; The vapour poison'd birds that fly too low, Fall with dead swoop, and to the bottom go. Escaped that heavy stream on pinion fleet, Beneath the mountain's lofty frowning brow, Ere aught of perilous ascent you meet, A mead of mildest charm delays the unlab'ring feet.
Obscurely famous in his rut, Unknown, unpopular, "uncut," Where Byron thrilled a continent, To thrill an auction-room content, He struggles through oblivion's bogs, To gain a place in catalogues! And falls asleep and joins the dust In simple hope and modest trust That, though Posterity neglect His bones, his books it will collect, And these will grow O prospect fair!
His silver beard o'er a bosom spread Unvexed by life's commotion, Like a yearly lengthening snow-drift shed On the calm of a frozen ocean: Still o'er him oblivion's waters lay, Though the stream of time kept flowing When they spoke of our King, 'twas but to say That the old man's strength was going.
Hither came those whose spirits had been bowed down beneath the burden of distress, and indulged in the melancholy occupation of silent grief, from which no man ever went forth without benefit. I thought of Falconer's lines: "Full oft shall memory from oblivion's veil Relieve your scenes, and sigh with grief sincere?"
The delegates hoped to establish a Manual Labor College at New Haven that Negroes might there acquire that "classical knowledge which promotes genius and causes man to soar up to those high intellectual enjoyments and acquirements which place him in a situation to shed upon a country and people that scientific grandeur which is imperishable by time, and drowns in oblivion's cup their moral degradation."
O Time the fatal wrack of mortal things, That draws oblivion's curtain over Kings, Their sumptuous monuments, men know them not, Their names without a Record are forgot, Their parts, their ports, their pomp's all laid in th' dust, Nor wit nor gold, nor buildings scape time's rust; But he whose name is grav'd in the white stone Shall last and shine when all of these are gone.
In so many hours, so many minutes, that image as it was will be vanishing, that name will be a memory. All that made either of them ours to love or hate, to be thought of as friend or foe, will have ceased for all time for all the time we anticipate; more, or less as may be, than Oblivion's period, named in her pact with Destiny.
So with the centuries; we remember those which are past not by the mass of common traits in history and development, but by the few events or thoughts unnoticed at the time, but which stand out like mountain peaks raised "above oblivion's sea," when the times are all gathered in and the century begins to blend with the "infinite azure of the past." Not wars and conquests mark a century.
"They who dote on mortal excellences," she says, in her Introduction to the 'Life, "when, by the inevitable fate of all things frail, their adored idols are taken from them, may let loose the winds of passion to bring in a flood of sorrow, whose ebbing tides carry away the dear memory of what they have lost; and when comfort is essayed to such mourners, commonly all objects are removed out of their view which may with their remembrance renew the grief; and in time these remedies succeed, and oblivion's curtain is by degrees drawn over the dead face; and things less lovely are liked, while they are not viewed together with that which was most excellent.
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