University of Virginia Library

TO IANTHE.

Perchance, desponding maid! thy plaintive strain
Is echoed by a heart as desolate,
And soul as melancholy as thine own.
Perchance, should I a shorter life than thine
Unfold, it would reveal more dreary scenes
Than those thy muse so feelingly portrays;
Fond hopes crushed by the anaconda coil
Of envy, treachery, folly and deceit—
Affections blasted by the breath of scorn—
Loves murdered on the pillow of repose,
Revelling in dreams of holiness, and rapt
To ecstasies of passion pure and high;
Deep feelings tortured on the rack of doubt,
Till their engendering fibres, broken, warped,
Withered and hardened, trembled on the wheel
That killed them, like a wretched maiden's thoughts
On the imperjured object of her love!
Perchance, thou hast not seen the dew of death
Gathering upon the brow of him thou loved'st
Most holily, and felt the life, that was
Thy heaven, trembling in the unequal pulse
Till the heart throbbed no more! Thou hast not seen,
Perchance, the pallid lip striving in vain
To give the parting spirit speech—the eye
Upturned to thy inanguished view, and bent
In dying fondness on thee, till it lost
The light of life and love at once in death!
When the dark tomb holds all we loved below,
'Tis meet to wish us there, that we may blend
The ashes that in life were warmed by fires
Ethereal mutually; and that our souls,
From earth's thrall freed, might rise together on
The worlds they loved to hold converse withal.
But, lovely songstress! (lovely in thy life
And poesy alike,) thou hast fond friends
Who love thee ardently, and would not lose
Thee tearlessly—while I, whom thou hast seen
Sembling a smile that mocked the lip and eye
That wore it, have no tie but grief to bind
My spirit to this sphere; for none would know
When I am buried that I e'er had been.
How little know we what we are, and less
What our companions are! We toil and pain
Ourselves to be the things that nature cries
We are not; and we rack our souls in days
Of sunny loveliness to find a cloud
Where fancying sorrow may complain and sigh.
Oh! if the grief that rends the silent heart
In twain, could write in pangs its harrowing tale,
'Twould shame the moody minstrel's morbid strain,
And burn the heart that listened to its notes.
Such woe is mine, and mine will ever be
Till death, for I have proved the world, and find
Sickness and sorrow universal here.
The wave of Arethusa cannot heal
The soaring soul that laves in its bright stream,
Nor can Pierian waters cool the heart
That burns in feverish anguish. To invest
Our woes in fancy's rainbow robes, and clothe
Pangs with the spirit's sunlight, is to deck
A corse in diamonds, and to lay the dead
Upon a bier of gold—vain pageantry!
Songstress! thou can'st not find among thy friends,
Though full oft near thee, her whose lonely breast
Broods woes too poorly pictured in this strain;
But be it thine to know that a bright face
May often mask a hopeless heart, and forms
So falsely gay as mine be near the tomb.