Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Farewell—the spring, with all spring-flowers, will come,
To bless and cheer thee in thy woodland home,
With all her gladdening spells and wildering tones—
Her vernal treasures, stained like precious stones—
Her wandering scents — her rainbow-splendours bright—
Her dancing waves, like floods of silvery light—
Her flower-awakening smiles—her hurrying birds—
And golden airs, that waft love's murmured words,
And soften them to music more divine!
Alas! some other voice perchance than mine
May pour its plaint in thy forgetful ear:
Yet no—I will not nurse those thoughts of fear,
Oh, tell me—will thy soul remember still?
Will thy swoln heart and quickened pulses thrill

With recollected tones of mine—once dear
Beyond all heaven's spring music to thine ear?
To golden lands I go—to glorious shores,
Where the sweet sunshine streams, and heaves, and pours,
As though 'twould turn each glittering leaf to fire,
Which thrills and murmurs like a wakening lyre
To the rich musk-wind's breathings—sweeping past
With spells, and gifts, that ev'n might flush the waste;
Where birds, flowers, skies, magnificently strange,
Astonish and enchant with ceaseless change!
Yet, though they momently may touch and charm
My melancholy heart, till throng and swarm
Emotions long suppressed—too soon, alas!
Those fine emotions melt away and pass—
To leave a desert's dreary span behind,
That worst of deserts—a dejected mind;
The after-thought—nay, even the under-strain,
Burdened with sorrowing tenderness and pain!
And indistinct, but deep, will be the gloom
Haunting those scenes of rainbow-coloured bloom;

And thou—O! say, wilt thou accord one sigh
To hallow and to embalm my memory?
Wilt thou—my life's own treasure—wilt thou cast
One weeping glance on the unanswering past?
Yet, no! fix not thy vain beseeching gaze
On the dull track of ne'er-returning days;
Turn to the future thy deep-speaking eyes,
And speed its passage from the pitying skies.