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[Illustration: Drawn & Engraved by J. N. Gimbrede

_Give me the calm of Days decline to muse upon my own_]




                               HALLOWEEN,

                               A ROMAUNT,

                                  WITH

                                 LAYS,

                       MEDITATIVE AND DEVOTIONAL.

                 *        *        *        *        *
                                   BY
                   THE AUTHOR OF “CHRISTIAN BALLADS.”
                 *        *        *        *        *

                               HARTFORD:
                             H. S. PARSONS.
                                 1845.




      Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1844, by
                            H. S. PARSONS,
      In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of Connecticut.



                             Stereotyped by
                           RICHARD H. HOBBS,
                            Hartford, Conn.

                               Printed by
                       CASE, TIFFANY AND BURNHAM,
                            Hartford, Conn.




                                PREFACE.


HALLOWEEN has been printed, though never published before. In the winter
of 1842 I had a private edition, of fifty copies, struck off for my
friends. These have been freely loaned and circulated, till the book has
been enquired for by strangers, at my bookseller’s; and at his instance,
I now allow it to appear. Though I had not intended this, and for many
private reasons rather disliked the idea of making it public; I suppose,
on the whole, that it will be better to publish it now, than in after
life, and to edit it myself, than to leave it to a survivor.

A curious incident suggested this little poem. It was written when I was
but twenty. The same theme would now inspire a very different strain;
and I can approve it only as a true exhibition of the manifold emotions
at work, in a mind disposed to be religious, at that period of life when
the world entices most, and character is yet fervid and unstamped. I am
willing to make it public, therefore, if the gentle few, who have
heretofore been my public, will vouchsafe to consider it only in
reference to its place, between the trifles I have written before and
after it. In its proper position I think its effect will be happy; for
it is a favorite habit of mine to regard all that an author publishes,
as his only complete work; in which, if he be a poet, the several parts
will bear but the proportion of a stanza or a canto. I think this is an
ennobling view to take of any writer; but a profitable one especially,
where authors have written much, and ventured often before the world,
while their opinions were in a state of progress and transition. By such
a rule, I hope my own friends will judge whatever I have already, or may
hereafter, put forth. I should be sorry if Politiano’s experience were
not always mine, with regard to all I have yet published:

        Dum relego scripsisse pudet; quia plurima cerno,
          Me quoque, qui feci, judice, digna lini.

                                                             A. C. C.

St. John’s Rectory, Hartford,

   May, 1844.




                               HALLOWEEN.


             TO A LADY.

                 I.

    If souls, once more, to these their haunts on earth,
      Can come, dear Lady, from the Spirit-land,
    I ask’d thee,—would it spoil thine hour of mirth,
      To see some sudden shape before thee stand!
      And a cold shudder told me, and thine hand
    Press’d dearer to mine own. But then said I,
      Oh! if thy friend were dead, and could command
    Some midnight hour to visit thee; reply,
    Say, would it grieve thee, Love, if love could never die!

                 II.

    I have been roaming in that Spirit-world,
      And still my deathless love return’d to thee:
    And still thy brow, thy locks in lustre curl’d,
      And thy dear eye of beauty shone on me:
      And thou, my guardian angel, changelessly,
    Though all abandon’d, still wouldst leave me not!
      And then I thought, if e’er an hour should be,
    When my poor soul might leave that rayless spot,
    Thee would my spirit seek, forgetless, unforgot.

                 III.

    Fear not, dear Lady, if my voice to thee,
      Sounds then thus sadly, from the Spirit-land;
    The dream is o’er that then unhearted me,
      And I in living shape before thee stand.
      But take my story in thy lily hand,
    And in some hour when sadness were not sad,
      Let these loose numbers by thine eye be scann’d.
    Learn what deep sorrows in my heart I had,
    When I was far from thee, and all that’s bright and glad.

                 *        *        *        *        *

       ————————————————

      ὰθανάτας ὶδεας ὲπιδώμεθα
      τηλεσκόπῳ ὄμματι γαῖαν.
                _Aristophanes. Clouds. 286._

       ————————————————

                 *        *        *        *        *

                 I.

    I have been near the gates of death,
      And thought I passed them thro’;
    Ev’n now my spirit quivereth,
      To think of where it flew!
    Oh it was hard to yield my breath;
      ’Twas hard to breathe anew;
    It was hard to come to life again,
      And Earth once more to view!
    To wake, and find ’twas all in vain,
      The death-pang and adieu!

                 II.

    Many there be who die in throes,
      And groans, and fearful anguish:
    And there be those, who waste in woes;
      And many there be who languish;
    But few there be, who die like me,
      Then wake again to sorrow;
    Who strive with death, and feel them free,
      But are bound again to-morrow;
    Who wrestle through all its agony,
    And strive no more in its chains to be,
    But are born again to misery,
      In the dying years they borrow.

                 III.

    I have been near the gates of death,
      And know ’tis hard to die;
    That the mortal flesh it shuddereth
      In the spell of death to lie:
    That fearful it is—the ebbing breath;
      And awful—the closing eye,
    When powerless all, it curtaineth
      The soul, from its loved ones by;
    When it closeth slow o’er the leaden gaze,
    That wraps, like the mariner’s home, in a haze,
      The dear ones that comfort us nigh.

                 IV.

    ’Tis awful,—the hour when death comes on,
    When the voice of cheer or wail is gone;
    To feel the lip o’er the dry tooth ope,
    To catch half a ray through the eyelid’s scope,
    Then shudder, though powerless all, to feel
    The frost o’er the glazing orbs congeal,
    When the breath grows low, and the heart is chill,
    Though the blood creeps ghostlike around it still,
    And to gasp a moment, and struggle