University of Virginia Library


30

ELYSIUM.

(FROM AN UNFINISHED POEM.)

She dwelleth in Elysium; there,
Like Echo floating in the air;
Feeding on light as feed the flowers,
She fleets away uncounted hours,
Where halcyon Peace, among, the blest,
Sits brooding o'er her tranquil nest.
She needs no impulse; one she is,
Whom thought supplies with ample bliss:
The fancies fashioned in her mind
By heaven, are after its own kind;
Like sky-reflections in a lake,
Whose ealm no winds occur to break.
Her memory is purified,
And she seems never to have sighed:
She hath forgot the way to weep,
Her being is a joyous sleep;
The mere imagining of pain,
Hath passed, and cannot come again.
Except of pleasure most intense
And constant, she hath lost all sense;

31

Her life is day without a night,
An endless, innocent delight;
No chance her happiness now mars,
Howe'er Fate twine her wreaths of stars
And palpable and pure, the part,
Which pleasure playeth with her heart;
For every joy that seeks the maid,
Foregoes its common painful shade,
Like shapes that issue from the grove,
Arcadian, dedicate to Jove.