'Mid the half-lit air, and the lonely place,
Rose the buried Pleasures of perish'd years.
I saw the Past, with her pallid face,
Whose smiles had turned to tears.
On many a burial stone,
I read the names of beings once known,
Who oft in childish glee,
Had jumped across the graves with me--
Sported, many a truant day,
Where--now their ashes lay.

There the dead Poet had been placed,
Who died in the dawn of thought--
And there, the girl whose virtues graced
The lines his love had wrought--
Beauty's power, and Talent's pride,
And Passion's fever, early chill'd
The heart that felt, the eye that thrill'd,
All, the dazzling dreams of each,
Faded, out of Rapture's reach.

O, when they trifled, on this spot,
Not long ago,
Little they thought, 'twould be their lot,
So soon to lie here lone and low,
'Neath a chilly coverlid of clay,
And few or none to go
'Mid the glimmering dusk of a summer day,
To the dim place where they lay,
And pause and pray,
And think how little worth,
Is all that frets our hearts on earth.

The sun had sunk, and the summer skies
Were dotted with specks of light,
That melted soon, in the deep moon-rise,
That flowed over Croton Height.
For the Evening, in her robe of white,
Smiled o'er sea and land, with pensive eyes,
Saddening the heart, like the first fair night
After a loved one dies.