University of Virginia Library

FRAGMENTS

AGE AND YOUTH.

“I tell thee,” said the old man, “what is life.
A gulf of troubled waters—where the soul,
Like a vexed bark, is tossed upon the waves
Of pain and pleasure, by the wavering breath
Of passions. They are winds that drive it on,
But only to destruction and despair.
Methinks that we have known some former state
More glorious than our present; and the heart
Is haunted by dim memories—shadows left
By past felicity. Hence do we pine
For vain aspirings—hopes that fill the eyes
With bitter tears for their own vanity.
Are we then fallen from some lovely star,
Whose consciousness is as an unknown curse?”

MUCH CHANGE IN A LITTLE TIME.

And she too—that beloved child, was gone—
Life's last and loveliest link. There was her place
Vacant beside the hearth—he almost dreamed
He saw her still; so present was her thought.
Then some slight thing reminded him how far
The distance was that parted her and him.
Fear dwells around the absent—and our love
For such grows all too anxious, too much filled
With vain regrets, and fond inquietudes:
We know not Love till those we love depart.

VANITY.

Vanity! guiding power, 'tis thine to rule
Statesman and vestryman—the knave or fool.
The Macedonian crossed Hydaspes' wave,
Fierce as the storm, and gloomy as the grave.
Urged by the thought, What would Athenians say,
When next they gathered on a market day?
And the same spirit that induced his toil,
Leads on the cook, to stew, and roast, and boil:
Whether the spice be mixed—the flag unfurled—
Each deems his task the glory of the world.

SUCCESS ALONE SEEN.

Few know of life's beginnings—men behold
The goal achieved;—the warrior, when his sword
Flashes red triumph in the noonday sun;
The poet, when his lyre hangs on the palm;
The statesman, when the crowd proclaim his voice,
And mould opinion on his gifted tongue:
They count not life's first steps, and never think
Upon the many miserable hours
When hope deferred was sickness to the heart.
They reckon not the battle and the march,
The long privations of a wasted youth;
They never see the banner till unfurled.
What are to them the solitary nights,
Past pale and anxious by the sickly lamp,
Till the young poet wins the world at last
To listen to the music long his own?
The crowd attend the statesman's fiery mind
That makes their destiny; but they do not trace
Its struggle, or its long expectancy.
Hard are life's early steps; and, but that youth
Is buoyant, confident, and strong in hope,
Men would behold its threshold, and despair.

LIFE'S MASK.

Which was the true philosopher?—the sage
Who to the sorrows and the crimes of life
Gave tears—or he who laughed at all he saw?
Such mockery is bitter, and yet just:
And Heaven well knows the cause there is to weep.
Methinks that life is what the actor is—
Outside there is the quaint and gibing mask;
Beneath, the pale and careworn countenance.

THE POET'S LOT.

HOPE.

Is not the lark companion of the spring?
And should not Hope—that sky-lark of the heart—
Bear, with her sunny song, Youth company?
Still is its sweetest music poured for love;
And that is not for me; yet will I love,
And hope, though only for her praise and tears;
And they will make the laurel's cold bright leaves
Sweet as the tender myrtle.

LOVE'S FOLLOWERS.

There was an evil in Pandora's box
Beyond all other ones, yet it came forth
In guise so lovely, that men crowded round
And sought it as the dearest of all treasure.
Then were they stung with madness and despair;
High minds were bowed in abject misery.
The hero trampled on his laurell'd crown,
While genius broke the lute it waked no more.
Young maidens, with pale cheeks, and faded eyes,
Wept till they died. Then there were broken hearts—
Insanity—and Jealousy, that feeds
Unto satiety, yet loathes its food;
Suicide digging its own grave; and Hate,
Unquenchable and deadly; and Remorse—
The vulture feeding on its own life-blood.
The evil's name was Love—these curses seem
His followers for ever.

THE WORLD WITHIN.

There was a shadow on his face, that spake
Of passion long since harden'd into thought.
He had a smile, a cold and scornful smile;
Not gaiety, not sweetness, but the sign
Of feelings moulded at their master's will.
A weary world was hidden at that heart;
Sorrow and strife were there, and it had learnt
The weary lessons time and sorrow teach;
And deeply felt itself the vanity
Of love and hope, and now could only feel
Distrust in them, and mockery for those
Who could believe in what he knew was vain.

SECRETS.

Life has dark secrets; and the hearts are few
That treasure not some sorrow from the world—
A sorrow silent, gloomy, and unknown,
Yet colouring the future from the past.
We see the eye subdued, the practised smile,
The word well weighed before it pass the lip,
And know not of the misery within:
Yet there it works incessantly, and fears
The time to come; for time is terrible,
Avenging, and betraying.

A COMPARISON.

A pretty, rainbow sort of life enough;
Filled up with vanities and gay caprice:
Such life is like the garden at Versailles,
Where all is artificial; and the stream
Is held in marble basins, or sent up
Amid the fretted air, in waterfalls,
Fantastic, sparkling; and the element,
The mighty element, a moment's toy;
And, like all toys, ephemeral.

OPINIONS.

He scorned them from the centre of his heart,
For well he knew mankind; and he who knows
Must loathe or pity. He who dwells apart,
With books, and nature, and philosophy,
May lull himself with pity; he who dwells
In crowds and cities, struggling with his race,
Must daily see their falsehood and their faults,
Their cold ingratitude, their selfishness—
How can he choose but loathe them.

LOVE'S TIMIDITY.

THE VISIONARY AND THE TRUE.

RESOLVES.

What mockeries are our most firm resolves;
To will is ours, but not to execute.
We map our future like some unknown coast,
And say, “Here is an harbour, here a rock—
The one we will attain, the other shun:”
And we do neither. Some chance gale spring up
And bears us far o'er some unfathom'd sea,
Our efforts are all vain; at length we yield
To winds and waves that laugh at man's control.

WEAKNESS ENDS WITH LOVE.

DEAR GIFTS.

Life's best gifts are bought dearly. Wealth is won
By years of toil, and often comes too late:
With pleasure comes satiety; and pomp
Is compassed round with vexing vanities:
And genius, earth's most glorious gift, that lasts
When all beside is perished in the dust—
How bitter is the suffering it endures!
How dark the penalty that it exacts!

GENTLENESS PICTURED.

ORNAMENTS.

LIFE SURVEYED.

Not in a close and bounded atmosphere
Does life put forth its noblest and its best;
'Tis from the mountain's top that we look forth,
And see how small the world is at our feet.
There the free winds sweep with unfettered wing;
There the sun rises first, and flings the last,
The purple glories of the summer eve;
There does the eagle build his mighty nest;
And there the snow stains not its purity.
When we descend, the vapour gathers round,
And the path narrows: small and worthless things
Obstruct our way: and, in ourselves, we feel
The strong compulsion of their influence.
We grow like those with whom we daily blend:
To yield is to resemble.

THE DISTURBING SPIRIT.

Doubt, despairing, crime, and craft,
Are upon that honied shaft.
It has made the crowned king
Crouch beneath his suffering;
Made the beauty's cheek more pale
Than the foldings of her veil:
Like a child the soldiers kneel,
Who had mocked at flame or steel;
Bade the fires of genius turn
On their own breasts; and there burn,
A wound, a blight, a curse, a doom,
Bowing young hearts to the tomb.
Well may storm be on the sky,
And the waters roll on high,
When that passion passes by:
Earth below, and heaven above,
Well may bend to thee, O love!

FATE.

The steps of fate are dark and terrible;
And not here may we trace them to the goal.
If I could doubt the heaven in which I hope,
The doubt would vanish, gazing upon life,
And seeing what it needs of peace and rest.
Life is but like a journey during night.
We toil through gloomy paths of the unknown;
Heavy the footsteps are with pitfalls round;
And few and faint the stars that guide our way:
But, at the last, comes morning; glorious
Shines forth the light of day, and so will shine
The heaven which is our future and our home.

LOVE'S ENDING.

And this, then, is love's ending. It is like
The history of some fair southern clime:
Hot fires are in the bosom of the earth,
And the warmed soil puts forth its thousand flowers,
Its fruits of gold—summer's regality;
And sleep and odours float upon the air,
Making it heavy with its own delight.
At length the subterranean element
Bursts from its secret solitude, and lays
All waste before it. The red lava stream
Sweeps like a pestilence; and that which was
A garden for some fairy tale's young queen
Is one wild desert, lost in burning sand.
Thus is it with the heart. Love lights it up
With one rich flush of beauty. Mark the end:
Hopes, that have quarrelled even with themselves,
And joys that make a bitter memory;
While the heart, scorched and withered, and o'erwhelmed
By passion's earthquake, loathes the name of love.

AFFECTION.

There is in life no blessing like affection:
It soothes, it hallows, elevates, subdues,
And bringeth down to earth its native heaven.
It sits beside the cradle patient hours,
Whose sole contentment is to watch and love;
It bendeth o'er the death-bed, and conceals
Its own despair with words of faith and hope.
Life has nought else that may supply its place:
Void is ambition, cold is vanity,
And wealth an empty glitter, without love.

DOUBT.

I tell thee death were far more merciful
Than such a blow. It is death to the heart;
Death to its first affections, its sweet hopes;
The young religion of its guileless faith.
Henceforth the well is troubled at the spring;
The waves run clear no longer; there is doubt
To shut out happiness—perpetual shade;
Which, if the sunshine penetrate, 'tis dim,
And broken ere it reach the stream below.

FAITH ILL REQUITED.

I feel the presence of my own despair;
It darkens round me palpable and vast.
I gave my heart unconsciously; it filled
With love as flowers are filled with early dew,
And with the light of morning. [OMITTED]
If he be false, he who appeared so true,
Can there be any further truth in life,
When falsehood wears such seeming?

CONFIDENCE.

Fear not to trust her destiny with me:
I can remember, in my early youth,
Wandering amid our old ancestral woods,
I found an unfledged dove upon the ground.
I took the callow creature to my care,
And fain had given it to its nest again:
That could not be, and so I made its home
In my affection, and my constant care.
I made its cage of osier-boughs, and hung
A wreath of early leaves and woodland flowers:
I hung it in the sun; and, when the wind
Blew from the cold and bitter east, 'twas screened
With care that never knew forgetfulness.
I loved it, for I petted it, and knew
Its sole dependence was upon my love.

THE WRONGS OF LOVE.

Alas, how bitter are the wrongs of love!
Life has no other sorrow so acute:
For love is made of every fine emotion,
Of generous impulses, and noble thoughts;
It looketh to the stars, and dreams of Heaven;
It nestles 'mid the flowers, and sweetens earth.
Love is aspiring, yet is humble, too:
It doth exalt another o'er itself,
With sweet heart-homage, which delights to raise
That which it worships; yet is fain to win
The idol to its lone and lowly home
Of deep affection. 'Tis an utter wreck
When such hopes perish. From that moment, life
Has in its depths a well of bitterness,
For which there is no healing.

DANGERS FACED.

A PORTRAIT.

Many were lovely there; but, of that many,
Was one who looked the loveliest of any—
The youthful countess. On her cheek the dies
Were crimson with the morning's exercise;
The laugh upon her full red lip yet hung;
And, arrow-like, light words flashed from her tongue.
She had more loveliness than beauty—hers
Was that enchantment which the heart confers.
A mouth, sweet from its smiles; a large dark eye
That had o'er all expression mastery,
Laughing the orb, but yet the long lash made
Somewhat of sadness with its twilight shade;
And suiting well the upcast look that seemed,
At times, as it of melancholy dreamed:
Her cheek was as a rainbow, it so changed
As each emotion o'er its surface ranged—
Her face was full of feeling.

THE CORONATION.

What memories haunt the venerable pile!
It is the mighty treasury of the past,
Where England garners up her glorious dead.
The ancient chivalry are sleeping there—
Men who sought out the Turk in Palestine,
And laid the crescent low before the cross.
The sea has sent her victories: those aisles
Wave with the banners of a thousand fights.
There, too, are the mind's triumphs—in those tombs
Sleep poets and philosophers, whose light
Is on the heaven of our intellect.
The very names inscribed on those old walls
Make the place sacred.

SMALL MISERIES.

Life's smallest miseries are, perhaps, its worst:
Great sufferings have great strength: there is a pride
In the bold energy that braves the worst,
And bears proud in the bearing; but the heart
Consumes with those small sorrows, and small shames,
Which crave, yet cannot ask for sympathy.
They blush that they exist, and yet how keen
The pang that they inflict!

MEMORY.

Ah! there are memories that will not vanish;
Thoughts of the past we have no power to banish;
To shew the heart how powerless mere will,
For we may suffer, and yet struggle still.
It is not at our choice that we forget,
That is a power no science teaches yet:
The heart may be a dark and closed up tomb;
But memory stands a ghost amid the gloom!

THE FIRST DOUBT.

Youth, love, and rank, and wealth—all these combined,
Can these be wretched? Mystery of the mind,
Whose happiness is in itself; but still
Has not that happiness at its own will.
She felt too wretched with the sudden fear—
Had she such lovely rival, and so near?
Ay, bitterest of the bitter this worst pain,
To know love's offering has been in vain;
Rejected, scorn'd, and trampled under foot,
Its bloom and leaves destroyed, but not its root.
“He loves me not!”—no other words nor sound
An echo in the lady's bosom found:
It was a wretchedness too great to bear,
She sank before the presence of despair!

THE PAST.

SELF-BLINDNESS.

What Shakspeare said of lovers, might apply
To all the world—“'Tis well they do not see
The pretty follies that themselves commit.”
Could we but turn upon ourselves the eyes
With which we look on others, life would pass
In one perpetual blush and smile.
The smile, how bitter!—for 'tis scorn's worst task
To scorn ourselves; and yet we could not choose
But mock our actions, all we say or do,
If we but saw them as we others see.
Life's best repose is blindness to itself.

MUSIC OF LAUGHTER.

She had that charming laugh which, like a song,
The song of a spring-bird, wakes suddenly
When we least look for it. It lingered long
Upon the ear, one of the sweet things we
Treasure unconsciously. As steals along
A stream in sunshine, stole its melody,
As musical as it was light and wild,
The buoyant spirit of some fairy child;
Yet mingled with soft sighs, that might express
The depth and truth of earnest tenderness.

THE ROSE.

Why, what a history is on the rose!
A history beyond all other flowers;
But never more, in garden or in grove,
Will the white queen reign paramount again.
She must content her with remembered things,
When her pale leaves were badge for knight and earl;
Pledge of a loyalty which was as pure,
As free from stain, as those white depths her leaves
Unfolded to the earliest breath of June.

WHAT IS SUCCESS?

HUMANITY ANGELIC.

If ever angels walked on weary earth
In human likeness, thou were one of them.
Thy native heaven was with thee, but subdued
By suffering life's inevitable lot;
But the sweet spirit did assert its home
By faith and hope, and only owned its yoke
In the strong love that bound it to its kind.

THE POET'S FIRST ESSAY.

It is a fearful stake the poet casts,
When he comes forth from his sweet solitude
Of hopes, and songs, and visionary things,
To ask the iron verdict of the world.
Till then his home has been in fairyland,
Sheltered in the sweet depths of his own heart;
But the strong need of praise impels him forth;
For never was there poet but he craved
The golden sunshine of secure renown.
That sympathy which is the life of fame,
It is full dearly bought: henceforth he lives
Feverish and anxious, in an unkind world,
That only gives the laurel to the grave.

GOSSIPPING.

These are the spiders of society;
They weave their petty webs of lies and sneers,
And lie themselves in ambush for the spoil.
The web seems fair, and glitters in the sun,
And the poor victim winds him in the toil
Before he dreams of danger, or of death.
Alas, the misery that such inflict!
A word, a look, have power to wring the heart,
And leave it struggling hopeless in the net
Spread by the false and cruel, who delight
In the ingenious torment they contrive.

UNAVAILING REGRET.

THE MARRIAGE VOW.

The altar, 'tis of death! for there are laid
The sacrifice of all youth's sweetest hopes.
It is a dreadful thing for woman's lip
To swear the heart away; yet know that heart
Annuls the vow while speaking, and shrinks back
From the dark future that it dares not face.
The service read above the open grave
Is far less terrible than that which seals
The vow that binds the victim, not the will:
For in the grave is rest.

GIFTS MISUSED.

Oh, what a waste of feeling and of thought
Have been the imprints on my roll of life!
What worthless hours! to what use have I turned
The golden gifts which are my hope and pride!
My power of song, unto how base a use
Has it been put! with its pure ore I made
An idol, living only on the breath
Of idol worshippers. Alas! that ever
Praise should have been what praise has been to me—
The opiate of the mind!

THE FETE.

There was a feast that night
And coloured lamps sent forth their odorous light
Over gold carvings, and the purple fall
Of tapestry; and around each stately hall
Were statues pale, and delicate, and fair,
As all of beauty, save her blush, were there!
And, like light clouds floating around each room,
The censers sent their breathings of perfume;
And scented waters mingled with the breath
Of flowers that died as they rejoiced in death.
The tulip, with its globe of rainbow light;
The red rose, as it languished with delight;
The bride-like hyacinth, drooping as with shame,
And the anemone, whose cheek of flame
Is golden, as it were the flower the sun,
In his noon hour, most loved to look upon.
At first the pillared halls were still and lone,
As if some fairy palace, all unknown
To mortal eye or step:—this was not long—
Wakened the lutes, and rose the sound of song;
And the wide mirrors glittered with the crowd
Of changing shapes: the young, the fair, the proud,
Came thronging in.

LOVE.

Love is a thing of frail and delicate growth;
Soon checked, soon fostered; feeble, and yet strong:
It will endure much, suffer long, and bear
What would weigh down an angel's wing to earth,
And yet mount heavenward; but not the less.
It dieth of a word, a look, a thought;
And when it dies, it dies without a sign
To tell how fair it was in happier hours:
It leaves behind reproaches and regrets,
And bitterness within affection's well,
For which there is no healing.

WANT OF SYMPATHY.

These are the things that fret away the heart—
Cold, cureless trifles; but not felt the less
For mingling with the hourly acts of life.
It is a cruel lot for the fine mind,
Full of emotions generous and true,
To feel its light flung back upon itself;
All its warm impulses repelled and chilled,
Until it finds a refuge in disdain!
And woman, to whom sympathy is life,
The only atmosphere in which her soul
Developes all it has of good and true;
How must she feel the chill!

A POET'S LOVE.

CHANGE.

How much of change lies in a little space!
How soon the spirits leave their youth behind!
The early green forsakes the bough; the flowers,
Nature's more fairy-like and fragile ones,
Droop on the way-side, and the later leaves
Have artifice and culture—so the heart:
How soon its soft spring hours take darker hues!
And hopes, that were like rainbows, melt in shade;
While the fair future, ah! how fair it seemed!
Grows dark and actual.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE DEAD.

PRIDE IN TRIFLES.

Why, life, must mock itself, to mark how small
Are the distinctions of its various pride.
'Tis strange how we delight in the unreal:
The fanciful and the fantastic make
One half our triumphs. Not in mighty things—
The glorious offerings of our mind to fate
Do we ask homage to our vanities,
One half so much as from the false and vain.
The petty trifles that the social world
Has fancied into grandeur.

DEATH IN THE FLOWER.

'Tis a fair tree, the almond-tree: there Spring
Shews the first promise of her rosy wreath;
Or ere the green leaves venture from the bud,
Those fragile blossoms light the winter bough
With delicate colours heralding the rose,
Whose own Aurora they might seem to be.
What lurks beneath their faint and lovely red?
What the dark spirit in those fairy flowers?
'Tis death!

REMEMBRANCE.

Pale Memory sits lone, brooding o'er the past,
That makes her misery. She looketh round,
And asks the wide world for forgetfulness:
She asks in vain; the shadow of past hours
Close palpable around her; shapes arise—
Shadows, yet seeming real; and sad thoughts,
That make a night of darkness and of dreams.
Her empire is upon the dead and gone;
With that she mocks the present and shuts out
The future, till the grave, which is her throne,
Has absolute dominion.

INFLUENCE OF POETRY

This is the charm of poetry: it comes
On sad perturbed moments; and its thoughts,
Like pearls amid the troubled waters, gleam.
That which we garnered in our eager youth,
Becomes a long delight in after years:
The mind is strengthened and the heart refreshed
By some old memory of gifted words,
That bring sweet feelings, answering to our own.
Or dreams that waken some more lofty mood
Than dwelleth with the common-place of life.

THE LAST NIGHT WITH THE DEAD.

How awful is the presence of the dead!
The hours rebuked, stand silent at their side;
Passions are hushed before that stern repose;
Two, and two only, sad exception share—
Sorrow and love,—and these are paramount.
How deep the sorrow, and how strong the love!
Seeming as utterly unfelt before.
Ah! parting tries their depths. At once arise
Affection's treasures, never dreamed till then.
Death teaches heavy lessons hard to bear;
And most it teaches us what we have lost,
In losing those who loved us.

CHANGES IN LONDON.

PRESENTIMENT.

AGE.

Age is a dreary thing when left alone:
It needs the sunshine brought by fresher years;
It lives its youth again while seeing youth,
And childhood brings its childhood back again.
But for the lonely and the aged man
Left to the silent hearth, the vacant home
Where no sweet voices sound, no light steps come
Disturbing memory from its heaviness—
Wo for such lot! 'tis life's most desolate!
Age needeth love and youth to cheer the path—
The short dark pathway leading to the tomb.

HOPE AND LOVE.

A NOBLE LADY.

A pale and stately lady, with a brow
That might have well beseem'd a Roman dame,
Cornelia, ere her glorious children died;
Or that imperial mother, who beheld
Her son forgive his country at her word.
Yet there was trouble written on her face;
The past had left its darkness.

EXPERIENCE TOO LATE.

It is the past that maketh my despair;
The dark, the sad, the irrevocable past.
Alas? why should our lot in life be made,
Before we know that life? Experience comes,
But comes too late. If I could now recall
All that I now regret, how different
Would be my choice! at best a choice of ill;
But better than my miserable past.
Loathed, yet despised, why must I think of it?

BRIDAL FLOWERS.

THE TEMPLE GARDEN.

THE LOST.

DESPONDENCY.

THE MIND'S UNREST.

Mind, dangerous and glorious gift!
Too much thy native heaven has left
Its nature in thee, for thy light
To be content with earthly home.
It hath another, and its sight
Will too much to that other roam;
And heavenly light and earthly clay,
But ill bear with alternate sway:
Till jarring elements create
The evil which they sought to shun,
And deeper feel their mortal state
In struggling for a higher one.
There is no rest for the proud mind,
Conscious of its high powers confined;
Vain dreams and feverish hopes arise,
It is itself its sacrifice.

IMMORTALITY.

Strong as the death it masters, is the hope
That onward looks to immortality:
Let the frame perish, so the soul survive,
Pure, spiritual and loving. I believe
The grave exalts, not separates, the ties
That hold us in affection to our kind.
I will look down from yonder pitying sky,
Watching and waiting those I love on earth
Anxious in heaven until they too are there.
I will attend your guardian angel's side,
And weep away your faults with holy tears;
Your midnight shall be filled with solemn thought:
And when, at length, death brings you to my love,
Mine the first welcome heard in paradise.

BITTER EXPERIENCE.

How often, in this cold and bitter world,
Is the warm heart thrown back upon itself!
Cold, careless, are we of another's grief;
We wrap ourselves in sullen selfishness:
Harsh-judging, narrow-minded, stern and chill
In measuring every action but our own.
How small are some men's motives, and how mean!
There are who never knew one generous thought;
Whose heart-pulse never quickened with the joy
Of kind endeavour, or sweet sympathy.—
There are too many such!

THE HEART'S OMENS.

THE FATHER'S LOVE.

PARTING.

LOVE A MYSTERY.

HAPPINESS WITHIN.

THE POOR.

THE LITTLENESS OF LIFE.

Life is so little in its vanities,
So mean, and looking to such worthless aim,
Truly the dust, of which we are a part,
Predominates amid mortality.
Great crimes have something of nobility;
Mighty their warning, vast is their remorse:
But these small faults, they make one half of life
Belong to lowest natures, and reduce
To their own wretched level nobler things.

FAITH DESTROYED.

Why did I love him? I looked up to him
With earnest admiration, and sweet faith.
I could forgive the miserable hours
His falsehood, and his only, taught my heart;
But I cannot forgive that for his sake,
My faith in good is shaken, and my hopes
Are pale and cold, for they have looked on death.
Why should I love him? he no longer is
That which I loved.

A LADY'S BEAUTY.

Ladye, thy white brow is fair,
Beauty's morning light is there;
And thine eye is like a star,
Dark as those of midnight are:
Round thee satin robe is flung;
Pearls upon thy neck are hung:
Yet thou wearest silk and gem,
As thou hadst forgotten them.
Lovelier is the ray that lies
On thy lip, and in thine eyes.

CURELESS WOUNDS.

PLEASURE BECOMES PAIN.

EARTH LEADS TO HEAVEN.

This is a weary and a wretched life,
With nothing to redeem it but the heart.
Affection, earth's great purifier, stirs
Our embers into flame, and that ascends.
All finer natures walk this bitter world
But for a while, then Heaven asks its own,
And we can but remember and regret.

ILLUSION.

And thus it is with all that made life fair,
Gone with the freshness that it used to wear.
'Tis sad to mark the ravage that the heart
Makes of itself; how one by one depart
The colours that made hope. We seek, we find;
And find, too, charm has, with the change, declined.
Many things have I loved, that now to me
Are as a marvel how they loved could be;
Yet, on we go, desiring to the last
Illusions vain, as any in the past.

SELF-REPROACH.

Deep in the heart is an avenging power,
Conscious of right and wrong. There is no shape
Reproach can take, one half so terrible
As when that shape is given by ourselves.
Justice hath needful punishments, and crime
Is a predestined thing to punishment.
Or soon, or late, there will be no escape
From the stern consequence of its own act.
But in ourself is Fate's worst minister:
There is no wretchedness like self-reproach.

LOVE'S SLAVES.

GENIUS.

Alas! and must this be the fate
That all too often will await
The gifted hand, which shall awake
The poet's lute? and, for its sake,
All but its own sweet self resign,
Thou loved lute, to be only thine!
For what is genius, but deep feeling,
Wakening to glorious revealing?
And what is feeling, but to be
Alive to every misery?

FALSE APPEARANCES.

Who, that had looked on her that morn,
Could dream of all her heart had borne?
Her cheek was red, but who could know
'T was flushing with the strife below?
Her eye was bright, but who could tell
It shone with tears she strove to quell?
Her voice was gay, her step was light,
And beaming, beautiful, and bright:
It was as if life could confer
Nothing but happiness on her.
Ah! who could think that all so fair
Was semblance, and but misery there!

REMORSE.

Alas! he brings me back my early years,
And seems to tell me what I should have been.
How have I wasted God's best gifts, and turned
Their use against myself! It is too late!
Remorse and shame are crushing me to earth,
And I am desperate with my misery!

STERN TRUTH.

Life is made up of vanities—so small,
So mean, the common history of the day,—
That mockery seems the sole philosophy.
Then some stern truth starts up—cold, sudden, strange;
And we are taught what life is by despair:—
The toys, the trifles, and the petty cares,
Melt into nothingness—we know their worth;
The heart avenges every careless thought,
And makes us feel that fate is terrible.

THE POET'S PAST.

Remembrance makes the poet: 'tis the past
Lingering within him, with a keener sense
Than is upon the thoughts of common men,
Of what has been, that fills the actual world
With unreal likenesses of lovely shapes
That were, and are not; and the fairer they,
The more their contrast with existing things;
The more his power, the greater is his grief.
Are we then fallen from some noble star,
Whose consciousness is as an unknown curse:
And we feel capable of happiness
Only to know it is not of our sphere?

THE POWER OF WORDS.

'Tis a strange mystery, the power of words!
Life is in them, and death. A word can send
The crimson colour hurrying to the cheek.
Hurrying with many meanings; or can turn
The current cold and deadly to the heart.
Anger and fear are in them; grief and joy
Are on their sound; yet slight, impalpable:—
A word is but a breath of passing air.

MOONLIGHT.

The moonlight falleth lovely over earth;
And strange, indeed, must be the mind of man
That can resist its beautiful reproach.
How can hate work like fever in the soul
With such entire tranquillity around?
Evil must be our nature to refuse
Such gentle intercession.

UNGUIDED WILL.

God, in thy mercy, keep us with thy hand!
Dark are the thoughts that strive within the heart,
When evil passions rise like sudden storms,
Fearful and fierce! Let us not act those thoughts;
Leave not our course to our unguided will.
Left to ourselves, all crime is possible,
And those who seemed the most removed from guilt
Have sunk the deepest!

THE MASK OF GAIETY.

THE RUINED MIND.

Ah! sad it is to see the deck
Dismasted of some noble wreek;
And sad to see the marble stone
Defaced, and with gray moss o'ergrown;
And sad to see the broken lute
For ever to its music mute,
But what is lute, or fallen tower,
Or ship sunk in its proudest hour,
To awe and majesty combined
In their worst shape—the ruined mind?

SORROWS AND PLEASURES.

It is an awful thing how we forget
The sacred ties that bind us each to each.
Our pleasures might admonish us, and say,
Tremble at that delight which is unshared:
Its selfishness must be its punishment.
All have their sorrows, and how strange it seems
They do not soften more the general heart:
Sorrows should be those universal links
That draw all life together.

THE YOUNG POET'S FATE.

Trace the young poet's fate
Fresh from his solitude—the child of dreams,
His heart upon his lip, he seeks the world
To find him fame and fortune, as if life
Were like a fairy tale. His song has led
The way before him; flatteries fill his ear,
And he seems happy in so many friends.
What marvel if he somewhat overrate
His talents and his state!

THE FEARFUL TRUST.

It is a fearful trust, the trust of love.
In fear, not hope, should woman's heart receive
A guest so terrible. Ah! never more
Will the young spirit know its joyous hours
Of quiet hopes and innocent delights;
Its childhood is departed.

PEACE WROUGHT BY PAIN.

Over that pallid face were wrought
The characters of painful thought;
But on that lip, and in that eye,
Were patience, faith, and piety.
The hope that is not of this earth,
The peace that has in pain its birth;
As if, in the tumult of this life,
Its sorrow, vanity, and strife,
Had been but as the lightning's shock,
Shedding rich ore upon the rock:
Though in the trial scorched and riven,
The gold it wins, is gold from heaven.

CUSTOM AND INDIFFERENCE.

I cannot choose, but marvel at the way
In which we pass our lives from day to day;
Learning strange lessons in the human heart;
And yet, like shadows, letting them depart.
Is misery so familiar, that we bring
Ourselves to view it as “a usual thing?”
We do too little feel each other's pain;
We do too much relax the social chain
That binds us to each other; slight the care
There is for grief, in which we have no share.

YOUTH AND LOVE.

Young, loving, and beloved—these are brief words;
And yet they touch on all the finer chords,
Whose music is our happiness; the tone
May die away, and be no longer known,
In the sad changes brought by darker years,
When the heart has to treasure up its tears,
And life looks mournful on an altered scene—
Still it is much to think that it has been.

THE EARLY DREAM.

THE SICK ROOM.

'Tis midnight, and a starry shower
Weeps its bright tears o'er life and flower;
Sweet, silent, beautiful the night,
Sufficing for her own delight.
But other lights than sky and star,
From yonder casement gleam afar;
The lamp subdued to the heart's gloom
Of suffering, and of sorrow's room.

THE CHARM GONE.

THE FAREWELL.

Farewell!
Shadows and scenes that have, for many hours,
Been my companions; I part from ye like friends—
Dear and familiar ones—with deep sad thoughts,
And hopes, almost misgivings!