Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

I blamed thy calm and measured speech,
I rashly deemed thy heart was cold;
No uttered word its depths could reach,
No inbreathed voice its powers unfold.

I spoke of him, the son of song,
Chief of the laurel-cinctured train,
Who taught our own sweet island tongue
To sound the deeps of joy and pain;

Of him whose soul seemed all on fire,
With passioned love and purpose high,
While patriot pride and soft desire
Alternate ruled his kindling eye;

Whose star-tuned lyre through Hellas gave
The watchword of awakening might;
Who mourned by far Euphrates' wave
God's chosen sons in captive plight;

Who touched the springs which guide our youth,
Great master of the unerring dart;
Who bared, with O what conscious truth,
The writhings of a wounded heart.

I spoke:—no fire lit up thine eye,
No rapturous praise unchained thy tongue,
Methought a calm, reproachful sigh
On thy meek lips unuttered hung.

Not thine, with sympathetic burst
To hail, like me, the Poet's soul;
Not thine, like me, with maddening thirst
To drain that deep delirious bowl.

Thou couldst not feel as I had felt,
No heart-beat owned the impassioned song,
No plaint thy tearless eye could melt,—
I deemed thy silence did him wrong.

Forgive me! that I thought to lure
Thy rapt gaze by such a spell as this,
Thy spirit was too heavenly pure
To know such fierce unhallowed bliss.

Forgive me! well, methinks, might he
Whose laurelled brows so brightly shine,
Give all the dreams of poesy,
For one brief hour of peace like thine.