AND THOU ART DEAD. "Heu, quanto minus est cum reliquis versari quam tui meminisse!' AND thou art dead, as young and fair And form so soft, and charms so rare, Though earth received them in her bed, There is an eye which could not brook I will not ask where thou liest low, Nor gaze upon the spot; There flowers or weeds at will may grow, So I behold them not : It is enough for me to prove That what I loved, and long must love, To me there needs no stone to tell, Yet did I love thee to the last As fervently as thou, Who didst not change through all the past, The love where Death has set his seal, Nor falsehood disavow: And, what were worse, thou canst not see Or wrong, or change, or fault in me. The better days of life were ours; The sun that cheers, the storm that lowers, I envy now too much to weep; Nor need I to repine That all those charms have pass'd away, The flower in ripen'd bloom unmatch'd And yet it were a greater grief Since earthly eye but ill can bear I know not if I could have borne The night that follow'd such a morn The day without a cloud hath pass'd, As stars that shoot along the sky As once I wept, if I could weep, To gaze, how fondly! on thy face, Yet how much less it were to gain, And more thy buried love endears. WHEN WE TWO PARTED. WHEN we two parted In silence and tears, Half broken-hearted To sever for years, Pale grew thy cheek and cold, Colder thy kiss ; Sorrow to this. STANZAS FOR MUSIC. "O Lachrymarum fons, tenero sacros Pectore te, pia Nympha, sensit." GRAY'S Poemata. THERE's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away, When the glow of early thought declines in feeling's dull decay; 'Tis not on youth's smooth cheek the blush alone, which fades so fast, But the tender bloom of heart is gone, ere youth itself be past. Then the few whose spirits float above the wreck of happiness Are driven o'er the shoals of guilt or ocean of excess : The magnet of their course is gone, or only points in vain The shore to which their shiver'd sail shall never stretch again. Then the mortal coldness of the soul like death itself comes down ; It cannot feel for others' woes, it dare not dream its own; That heavy chill has frozen o'er the fountain of our tears, And though the eye may sparkle still, 'tis where the ice appears. |