Tasso and the Sisters Tasso's Spirit: The Nuptials of Juno: The Skeletons: The Spirits of the Ocean. Poems, By Thomas Wade |
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 | Tasso and the Sisters |  |
‘The fears of Genius, in extreme despair
Of doing ought to make his name immortal,
Tho' sad and desolate, have bliss, compar'd
With the o'erwhelming and grief-laden clouds
That wait on Passion when her sun is set.
Each youthful Fancy, in its rising pride,
Creates an idol, before which it bows
As to reality; but soon dull Time
Proves the bright image to be false as dear,
And seldom is it that in after-life
We meet the Spirit of our early dreams.
My fate was otherwise: the very form
Which lit my slumbers, and my waking thoughts
Fill'd with its visionary loveliness,
Before me came in actual being—fair
As her imaginary counterpart:
The fetterless hair—the eye, half blue, half grey,
Shone both as in my musings, and the lips
Whose coolness I had prest in fancied bliss,
Existed—beautiful as ever gave
Sweet sounds in answer to the minstrel-string—
Sweet words respondent to the voice of love!
Her figure was of those that seem as made
For adoration, and of such a form
Was her mind worthy:—she admir'd the swell
Of Ocean's thunder and the Thunder's roar;
She lov'd the wildest elements—her eye
Watch'd the strong eagle in his reckless flight
Whither no other bird had dar'd to mount;
Her ear would listen to the lion's growl,
And therein find a music—and her thoughts
Ran thro' the maze of all sublimity!
Yet in her converse she was gentle ever,
And 'mid surrounding vice did keep as pure
As snows do even in a torrid clime,
Where the hot sun moves all things, save themselves.
But Purity itself in Passion dies:
We met, we lov'd—how wildly, deeply, words
Can shew, no better than an orrery
The stately motion of the living fires
That roll in air: but, oh! between the hour
When first of beauty all my visions were,
And that wherein appear'd young Beauty's self,
Communion I had held with sinful men,
And learn'd to laugh at virtue—marriage rites
I thought an idle mummery, to which
Disgust was near akin—a stranger, love.
When woman gives her heart away, her mind
A prisoner too becomes;—and thus it was
With her who deem'd me guileless as herself;
She drank the poison of my tongue—and fell!
Yes—the sole flash that lit my cheerless sky
Did I extinguish in an hour of guilt;
I stole the honey, but I burnt the bee;
I broke the cypress-head—the cypress died.—
Oh! not a villain on the guilty earth
With him can vie in damn'd hypocrisy,
Who plays deception with a woman's heart,
And blights the bosom that was wholly his.’
Of doing ought to make his name immortal,
Tho' sad and desolate, have bliss, compar'd
With the o'erwhelming and grief-laden clouds
48
Each youthful Fancy, in its rising pride,
Creates an idol, before which it bows
As to reality; but soon dull Time
Proves the bright image to be false as dear,
And seldom is it that in after-life
We meet the Spirit of our early dreams.
My fate was otherwise: the very form
Which lit my slumbers, and my waking thoughts
Fill'd with its visionary loveliness,
Before me came in actual being—fair
As her imaginary counterpart:
The fetterless hair—the eye, half blue, half grey,
Shone both as in my musings, and the lips
Whose coolness I had prest in fancied bliss,
Existed—beautiful as ever gave
Sweet sounds in answer to the minstrel-string—
Sweet words respondent to the voice of love!
Her figure was of those that seem as made
For adoration, and of such a form
Was her mind worthy:—she admir'd the swell
Of Ocean's thunder and the Thunder's roar;
She lov'd the wildest elements—her eye
Watch'd the strong eagle in his reckless flight
Whither no other bird had dar'd to mount;
Her ear would listen to the lion's growl,
And therein find a music—and her thoughts
Ran thro' the maze of all sublimity!
Yet in her converse she was gentle ever,
And 'mid surrounding vice did keep as pure
As snows do even in a torrid clime,
Where the hot sun moves all things, save themselves.
But Purity itself in Passion dies:
49
Can shew, no better than an orrery
The stately motion of the living fires
That roll in air: but, oh! between the hour
When first of beauty all my visions were,
And that wherein appear'd young Beauty's self,
Communion I had held with sinful men,
And learn'd to laugh at virtue—marriage rites
I thought an idle mummery, to which
Disgust was near akin—a stranger, love.
When woman gives her heart away, her mind
A prisoner too becomes;—and thus it was
With her who deem'd me guileless as herself;
She drank the poison of my tongue—and fell!
Yes—the sole flash that lit my cheerless sky
Did I extinguish in an hour of guilt;
I stole the honey, but I burnt the bee;
I broke the cypress-head—the cypress died.—
Oh! not a villain on the guilty earth
With him can vie in damn'd hypocrisy,
Who plays deception with a woman's heart,
And blights the bosom that was wholly his.’
| Tasso and the Sisters | |