 | Poems descriptive, dramatic, legendary and contemplative |  |
166
FIRST PURPOSELESS STRIVINGS OF THE IMAGINATION.
A sickness at the heart that ever pinesFor solitude, and baffled in the prayer,
Swells sometimes to a passion like despair!
Jealous of eyes—suspecting all designs,
And trembling for a secret which the heart
Grasps not itself;—still searching, as a life
The soothing of another, yet at strife
With him who first assumes the soother's part,
Nor trusting till too late!—A resolute will
To pine, and be alone, and desolate still;
By day in wood and wild, with vexing thought,
Removed from human converse; and by night
Striving in dreams, and, at the morning's light,
Looking, as with an angel we had fought.
| Poems descriptive, dramatic, legendary and contemplative | |