THE world is dreary,
And I am weary
Of wandering on without thee, Mary;
A joy was erewhile
In thy voice and thy smile,
And 'tis gone, when I should be gone too, Mary.
My dearest Mary, wherefore hast thou gone,
And left me in this dreary world alone!
Thy form is here indeed- —a lovely one—
But thou art fled, gone down the dreary road,
That leads to Sorrow's most obscure abode;
Thou sittest on the hearth of pale despair,
Where
For thine own sake I cannot follow thee.
WHEN a lover clasps his fairest,
Then be our dread sport the rarest.
Their caresses were like the chaff
In the tempest, and be our laugh
His despair-her epitaph!
When a mother clasps her child,
Watch till dusty Death has piled
His cold ashes on the clay;
She has loved it many a day—
She remains,—it fades away.
ONE sung of thee who left the tale untold,
Like the false dawns which perish in the bursting: Like empty cups of wrought and dædal gold,
Which mock the lips with air, when they are thirsting.
AND where is truth? On tombs? for such to thee
Has been my heart-and thy dead memory
Has lain from childhood, many a changeful year—
Unchangingly preserved and buried there.
IN the cave which wild weeds cover
Wait for thine ethereal lover;
For the pallid moon is waning,
O'er the spiral cypress hanging
And the moon no cloud is staining.
It was once a Roman's chamber,
Where he kept his darkest revels,
And the wild weeds twine and clamber;
It was then a chasm for devils.
THERE is a warm and gentle atmosphere
About the form of one we love, and thus
As in a tender mist our spirits are
Wrapt in the- —of that which is to us
The health of life's own life.
How sweet it is to sit and read the tales
Of mighty poets, and to hear the while
Sweet music, which when the attention fails
Fills the dim pause
WHAT men gain fairly—that they should possess,
And children may inherit idleness,
From him who earns it-This is understood;
Private injustice may be general good.
But he who gains by base and armed wrong,
Or guilty fraud, or base compliances,
May be despoiled; even as a stolen dress
Is stript from a convicted thief, and he
Left in the nakedness of infamy.
WAKE the serpent not-lest he
Should not know the way to go,—
Let him crawl which yet lies sleeping
Through the deep grass of the meadow!
Not a bee shall hear him creeping,
Not a May-fly shall awaken,
From its cradling blue-bell shaken,
Not the starlight as he's sliding
Through the grass with silent gliding.
ROME has fallen, ye see it lying
Heaped in undistinguished ruin :
Nature is alone undying.
THE fitful alternations of the rain,
When the chill wind, languid as with pain.
Of its own heavy moisture, here and there
Drives through the grey and beamless atmosphere.
I WOULD not be a king-enough
Of woe it is to love;
The path to power is steep and rough,
And tempests reign above.
I would not climb the imperial throne;
"Tis built on ice which fortune's sun
Thaws in the height of noon.
Then farewell, king, yet were I one,
Care would not come so soon.
Would he and I were far away
Keeping flocks on Himelay!
Whose throne is in the depth of human thought, I do adjure thy power and thee
By all that man may be, by all that he is not, By all that he has been and yet must be!
HE wanders, like a day-appearing dream, Through the dim wildernesses of the mind; Through desert woods and tracts, which seem Like ocean, homeless, boundless, unconfined.
WHO DESIRED THAT ON HIS TOMB SHOULD BE INSCRIBED
"HERE lieth One whose name was writ on water!"
But ere the breath that could erase it blew,
Death, in remorse for that fell slaughter,
Death, the immortalising winter flew,
Athwart the stream, and time's monthless torrent grew
A scroll of crystal, blazoning the name
THE rude wind is singing
The dirge of the music dead,
The cold worms are clinging
Where kisses were lately fed.
WHAT art thou, Presumptuous, who profanest
The wreath to mighty poets only due,
Even whilst like a forgotten moon thou wanest?
Touch not those leaves which for the eternal few,
Who wander o'er the paradise of fame,
In sacred dedication ever grew,
One of the crowd thou art without a name.
Ah, friend, 'tis the false laurel that I wear;
Bright though it seem, it is not the same
As that which bound Milton's immortal hair;
Its dew is poison and the hopes that quicken
Under its chilling shade, though seeming fair,
Are flowers which die almost before they sicken.
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