The Works of Thomas Love Peacock :: :: University of Virginia Library

ROMANCE

Death! the mourner's surest aid!
Mark my sad devotion:
Hear a lost, forsaken maid,
Mourn with wild emotion!
I my griefs unpitied pour
To the winds that round me roar,
On the billow-beaten shore
Of the lonely ocean.

Where the sea's extremest line
Seems with ether blended,
Still I see the white sails shine
To the breeze extended.

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False one! still I mark thy sail
Spread to catch the favoring gale,
Soon shall storms thy bark assail,
And thy crimes be ended!

By the mighty tempests tost,
Death-flames round thee burning,
On a bleak and desert coast,
Whence is no returning;—
Thou o'er all thy friends shalt weep,
Buried in th' unpitying deep;
Thou thy watch of woe shalt keep,
Vainly, deeply, mourning.

Unattended shalt thou rove,
O'er the mountain dreary,
Through the haunted, pathless grove,
Through the desert eerie:
Unassuaged thy tears shall flow;
None shall sooth or share thy woe,
When thy blood runs cold and slow,
And thy limbs are weary!

Far from haunts of humankind,
Vengeful Heaven impelling,
Thou thy dying bed shalt find,
Where cold blasts are yelling.
None shall hear thee, none shall save,
In thy monumental cave,
None shall weep, where tempests rave
Round thy narrow dwelling!