A Nathaniel Hawthorne snapshot

• Earthly Pomp
• Oh, earthly pomp is but a dream,
• And like a meteor’s short-lived gleam;
• And all the sons of glory soon
• Will rest beneath the mould’ring stone.
• And Genius is a star whose light
• Is soon to sink in endless night,
• And heavenly beauty’s angel form
• Will bend like flower in winter’s storm.

• My Low and Humble Home
• I left my low and humble home,
• Far from my Father’s fields to roam.
• My peaceful cot no more had charms,
• My only joy was War’s alarms.
• I panted for the field of fight,
• I gaz’d upon the deathless light,
• Which o’er the Hero’s grave is shed,
• The glorious memory of the dead.
• Ambition show’d a distant star,
• That shed its radiance bright and far,
• And pointed to a path which led
• O’er heaps of dying and of dead;
• Onward I press’d with eager feet,
• And War’s dread thunder still would greet
• My reckless ears. Where’er I trod,
• I saw the green and verdant sod,
• Turn red with blood of slaughter’d foes,
• And Fury veil’d in smoke arose.
• I gain’d the envied height; and there,
• I sigh’d for that lone cottage, where
• The early hours of life flew by,
• On wings of youthful ecstasy.
• Too late I found that Glory’s ray,
• Could never bring one happy day.

• Address to the Moon
• How sweet the silver Moon’s pale ray,
• Falls trembling on the distant bay,
• O’er which the breezes sigh no more,
• Nor billows lash the sounding shore.
• Say, do the eyes of those I love,
• Behold thee as thou soar’st above,
• Lonely, majestic and serene,
• The calm and placid evening’s Queen?
• Say, if upon thy peaceful breast,
• Departed spirits find their rest,
• For who would wish a fairer home,
• Than in that bright, refulgent dome?

• The Ocean
• The ocean has its silent caves,
• Deep, quiet and alone;
• Though there be fury on the waves,
• Beneath them there is none.
• The awful spirits of the deep
• Hold their communion there;
• And there are those for whom we weep,
• The young, the bright, the fair.

• Calmly the wearied seamen rest
• Beneath their own blue sea.
• The ocean solitudes are blest,
• For there is purity.
• The earth has guilt, the earth has care,
• Unquiet are its graves;
• But peaceful sleep is ever there,
• Beneath the dark blue waves.

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) was an American writer better known for his fiction than his poetry. Yet his interest in history, morality and religion, which became trademarks of his fiction – including his most famous work, The Scarlet Letter (1850), also carried over into his poetic output. Although the extant poems number less than a dozen, they offer a snapshot into the same concerns that defined Hawthorne as a major American writer – an influence for Henry James and William Faulkner, among others.