Poems and Essays By the late William Caldwell Roscoe. (Edited with a Prefatory Memoir, by his Brother-in-law, Richard Holt Hutton) |
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 | Poems and Essays |  |
60
FORD GREY OF WERKE TO HIS MISTRESS.
[_]
Written after reading the trial of Ford Lord Grey for a conspiracy to induce Lord Berkeley's daughter to leave her father's home.
When I perceive thee weeping, I am broken
With bitterer anguish than my heart can bear,
And in thy troubled face when I see spoken
The mixture of thy passion and despair,
My spirit rushes to my rainy eyes
With weariness of our long miseries.
With bitterer anguish than my heart can bear,
And in thy troubled face when I see spoken
The mixture of thy passion and despair,
My spirit rushes to my rainy eyes
With weariness of our long miseries.
What I endure! O woe! what I endure
To hear thee paint our lies and wickedness!
And that worst grief, shameful detection sure,
All our brief joys outlasting wretchedness,—
With quivering lips and wide-appealing palms
Accusing me, the author of thy harms.
To hear thee paint our lies and wickedness!
And that worst grief, shameful detection sure,
All our brief joys outlasting wretchedness,—
With quivering lips and wide-appealing palms
Accusing me, the author of thy harms.
But when I picture thee, with locked-up door,
Alone, flung on the ground, and with faint cries
Beating the senseless and obdurate floor
In thy grief's insupportable ecstasies,
As thou didst tell me once thou didst,—oh, why
Make me believe you suffer more than I?
Alone, flung on the ground, and with faint cries
Beating the senseless and obdurate floor
In thy grief's insupportable ecstasies,
As thou didst tell me once thou didst,—oh, why
Make me believe you suffer more than I?
61
For now this picture makes a slave of me:
Whether to stale ambition I return,
Or shake the days with monstrous revelry,
Or through the long nights watch the white stars burn,
Still, still thine image doth like death pursue me,
And cold despair in place of blood runs through me.
Whether to stale ambition I return,
Or shake the days with monstrous revelry,
Or through the long nights watch the white stars burn,
Still, still thine image doth like death pursue me,
And cold despair in place of blood runs through me.
1848.
| Poems and Essays | |