Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Madness, if thou wilt let me dwell
With Thee in some fantastic hell,
Some chaos of the mind,
For Thee I'll quit the friends of years,
The loves of youth, the hopes and fears
About the heart-strings twined.

For joy has dried, for me, her springs,
And Death has shadow'd with his wings
An Eden to a waste,
And I am left in lone distress,
Mark'd with a curse of hopelessness
Too deep to be erased.

233

I had a friend—Where is she now?
I mock thee with my placid brow,
I mock thee with my smile:
But search, wild Power, my heart's despair;
Her epitaph is written there,
There woe is without guile.

Griefs have o'erwhelm'd me oft before,
But then my buoyant spirit bore
Against their stormy tide:
I listen'd to the voice of men;
Some cheer'd me from the shore, and then
I struggled through with pride.

Oft have I been perplex'd with woes,
But then there was a dear repose
From trouble and from pain:
I look'd in Beauty's tender eyes,
And there encounter'd sympathies
That soothed the aching brain.

I went abroad among the hills;
I traced the streams and humming rills
That through the woodlands stole;

234

I walk'd with Nature, and communed
With all her birds, and they attuned
The jarrings in my soul.

I cannot pray—I still have pray'd,
In weal or woe, for mercy's aid
To guide me on my way;
But this too heavily hath prest;
And there is hardness in my breast,
And now I cannot pray.

Then make me thine! I fear thee not.
Better the shrieking maniac's lot
Than this wild sense of gloom;
These thick still thoughts of full distress,
Brooding o'er blighted happiness
Like yew-trees o'er a tomb.

Then make me thine! I love the tune
Of the starved dog that bays the moon,
While angry echo jars:
Make me thy priest, and let me chaunt,
From some rent fane that spectres haunt,
Strange anthems to the stars.

235

II. Near Lauffenberg.

On Lauffen's river, green and swift,
The rays of morning shine;
Bright mists are on the hills adrift,
The breathing of the Rhine.

The flood, the hills, the hazy veil,
Of other scenes remind,
Where shines a lake in Loughrigg dale,
Where Rotha's waters wind:

An ivied cot by Rotha's side,
Beneath a rocky knoll;
And Her, its ornament and pride,
The treasure of my soul:

Her store of all the heart could crave
To make her beauty dear,
Her sorrows, and her early grave,
The cause that I am here.

236

III. Near Schaffhausen.

HER FAVOURITE FLOWERS.

I cannot bear those brilliant flowers
So blue among the corn,
With which she used in festal hours
Her tresses to adorn.

I cannot bear that they should still
Be beautiful and gay,
When she who loved their bloom so well
Has past in hers away.

IV. SOCIETY. BERNE.

The sad must wear the jester's mask;
And surely 'tis the hardest task
That can the sad employ:
Grief has no privilege to ask
For sympathy from joy.

237

It is a melancholy art
To take the theme the gay impart
With a complacent smile:
They little think the secret heart
Is aching all the while.

V. SCHWYTZ.

The relics of her human charms
Are lock'd in earth's maternal arms
By Grasmere's quiet shore;
Her spirit, ever bright and pure,
Is where there are no ills to cure,
Where pain torments no more.

An exile from a blighted home,
From land to land I vainly roam,
And seek, but cannot find
In nature, nor in powerless art,
Some charm to lull an aching heart,
To soothe a troubled mind.

238

Severe it seems, and only seems,
To rouse from life's delusive dreams
The beautiful and young:
If, like Jemima good as fair,
They wake, we trust, in purer air,
Immortal joys among;

Theirs is the harder lot who mourn,
Who, with a vain compunction, burn
To expiate faults that grieved
A breast they never more can pain,
A heart they cannot please again—
The living, the bereaved.

O vain complaint of selfishness!
Weak wish to paralyse distress!
The tear, the pang, the groan,
Are justly mine, who once possess'd,
Yetn sometimes pain'd, the fondest breast
Where love was ever known.

239

VI. THE LAKE OF LAUWERTZ.

Like Rydal with its sister-isles
The little lake of Lauwertz smiles;
If less exquisitely fair,
Yet the very character;
The very road along the shore,
And tufted rocks projecting o'er;
Straggling orchards like the same,
Plots of green that kindred claim:
E'en the lilies float and lave,
And the reeds are on the wave;
And the lights of morning make
Mimic lines across the lake.
All but Goldau's ruins seem
Rydal in a faithful dream.

Goldau's ruins!—more than all
The resemblance they recall.
Tell they not the o'erwhelming doom
Of soft beauty in its bloom;

240

Virtue, joy, and tenderness,
All that happy homes could bless,
In a moment's awful fate
Crush'd beneath a mountain's weight?
Why should Rydal seem like this?
Let the memory of bliss,
Let its ruin, answer why—
Let Jemima's grave reply.

VII. BERNE.

I saw to day a roseate cheek,
A soft blue eye, and tender air;
Her very traits appear'd to speak,
But only seem'd not quite so fair.

I never see a roseate cheek,
A soft blue eye, and tender air,
But that the features seem to speak
Of early death and lonely care.

241

VIII. LAUSANNE.

Time slowly knits the strongest ties,
No ardent heat at first I felt;
But slowly did her tender eyes
To love the snow of friendship melt.

I play'd no wild enthusiast's part;
Her outward beauty scarce address'd;
She charm'd me by the noble heart
That beat beneath her modest breast.

In after years of wedded life
Her virtues taught me all their claim;
'Twas not the mistress, but the wife
Of whom the lover I became.

Yet—shall remorse the truth avow?
Her form is now but mouldering earth;
And now, alas! and only now,
I know Jemima's utmost worth.

242

So when the sacred light of Heaven
Has first illumined infant eyes,
The child enjoys the blessing given,
Unconscious how divine a prize.

As reason wins by slow degrees
Dominion o'er the ductile mind,
Delighted more the more he sees,
He blesses God he is not blind.

But, if the curse of blindness seals
His orbs, and blots the world from sight,
O then the victim fully feels
The value of the blessed light.