University of Virginia Library

ADIEU TO ALL!

Adieu to All that once could please and charm,
To all that could delight, inspire, and warm,
To anxious joys and to delicious cares,
To all the rich unrest the quick heart shares!
Henceforth Life's fond illusions I resign,
Henceforth let calm monotony be mine—
Imagination with her sunbright wings,
Hope with her troubled though her honeyed springs,
Youth with its rainbows and its Passion-flowers,
Love with his meteors wild and thunder-showers,
Pleasure with all her roses and their thorns,
And all that sweetens Life and that adorns,
Are but the sources of the Grief Supreme
With whose dark shadows Earth doth ever teem,
And all that wakes the heart, but wakes it still
To feel pain's bitter pang and torturing thrill,
To know the stings of anguish and suspense,
The sharp, the keenly-piercing, and intense—
Then sleep my heart—sleep now and never wake,
Forget to bound to thrill—to burn and ache!
Oh! let me live in such cold breathless peace,
That almost consciousness of life shall cease!—
Let me to All breathe such a deep Adieu,
That I may even forget that once I knew.
Adieu to the ardent visions of the Soul,
The rich emotions through its depths that stole,
And to the Ethereal tremblings of the heart,—
The torture with the transports shall depart!
Adieu to all that shook this mind, o'erwrought,
And winged too wildly this impatient thought
To all the trouble of the strange delight
Which stirred my Soul—a tempest in its might—
Since still my happiness seemed evermore
A sea of waves that spurned an Earthly shore,
Yet gained no other—till these billows wild
Back on each other rolled—together heaped and piled!