Melville poem Lost Youth in the Christian Register

Retitled "Lost Youth," a version of Herman Melville's poem "C——'s Lament" from Timoleon, Etc. (1891) appeared in the Unitarian Christian Register for November 8, 1900. Then edited by ordained Unitarian minister George Batchelor (1836-1923), The Christian Register was a prominent weekly newspaper published in Boston by the American Unitarian Association.

This is basically the same version later reprinted in the Springfield MA Republican on June 13, 1909, as documented in the previous Melvilliana post Lost Youth. 

Christian Register - November 8, 1900

Lost Youth. 

How lovely was the light of heaven,
What angels leaned from out the sky
     In years when youth was more than wine
     And man and nature seemed divine,
Ere yet I felt that youth must die!

Ere yet I felt that youth must die,
How insubstantial looked the earth!
     Aladdin-land! in each advance,
     Or here or there, a new romance:
I never dreamed would come a dearth. 

And nothing then but had its worth,
Even pain. Yes, pleasures still and pain
     In quick reaction made of life
     A lovers' quarrel, happy strife
In youth that never comes again.

But will youth never come again?
Even to his grave-bed has he gone,
     And left me lone to wake by night
     With heavy heart that erst was light?
I lay it at his head,—a stone!

-- Herman Melville.

A digitized version of Christian Register volume 79 with Melville's poem "Lost Youth" is accessible courtesy of the HathiTrust Digital Library.

https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015080394300?urlappend=%3Bseq=1247

Related post:

• Lost Youth
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2021/05/lost-youth.html

 

Sounds like Melville: Nile Notes by George William Curtis

Curtis's chapter on "Dead Kings" reminds me of the "After Dinner" chapter in the first volume of Mardi. The one on "Memnon" naturally makes me think of Pierre, although Curtis never displays this much depth, pathos, or eloquence:

But Memnon's sculptured woes did once melodiously resound; now all is mute. Fit emblem that of old, poetry was a consecration and an obsequy to all hapless modes of human life; but in a bantering, barren, and prosaic, heartless age, Aurora's music-moan is lost among our drifting sands, which whelm alike the monument and the dirge.  --Herman Melville in Pierre; or, The Ambiguities

Then again, who does?

From the Christian Register, March 22, 1851; found in the online archives of Historical Newspapers at Genealogy Bank.

... Some of the descriptions are exquisitely beautiful, and a dreamy languor pervades the volume, which has something of the charm of a tropical climate. From the style and way of thinking, we at first thought that it might have been written by the author of Typee; but though it appears that this is not the case, we doubt if it would have been written, unless Melville had given a previous specimen of this kind of style. We are glad to see this book, but we should be very sorry if this method of writing were to prevail, or if American young men were to imagine that there was not some higher purpose in foreign travel, than the mere gratification of a taste for artistic effects. 

Published in Boston by David Reed, the Christian Register was regarded as "the leading Unitarian weekly." The 1851 masthead of the Christian Register lists five editors: J. H. Morison, E. Peabody, A. P. Peabody, J. Parkman, and F. D. Huntington.

Christian Register [Boston] - March 22, 1851