WRITTEN AFTER VISITING A TOMB,
NEAR WOODSTOCK, IN THE COUNTY OF KILKENNY.
“Yes! hide beneath the mouldering heap,
The undelighting, slighted thing;
There in the cold earth, buried deep,
In silence let it wait the Spring.”
Mrs Tighe's
Poem on the Lily.
I stood where the lip of song lay low,
Where the dust had gather'd on Beauty's brow;
Where stillness hung on the heart of Love,
And a marble weeper kept watch above.
I stood in the silence of lonely thought,
Of deep affections that inly wrought,
Troubled, and dreamy, and dim with fear—
They knew themselves exiled spirits here!
Then didst thou pass me in radiance by,
Child of the sunbeam, bright butterfly!
Thou that dost bear, on thy fairy wings,
No burden of mortal sufferings.
Thou wert flitting past that solemn tomb,
Over a bright world of joy and bloom;
And strangely I felt, as I saw thee shine,
The all that sever'd thy life and mine.
Mine, with its inborn mysterious things
Of love and grief, its unfathom'd springs;
And quick thoughts wandering o'er earth and sky,
With voices to question eternity!
Thine, in its reckless and joyous way,
Like an embodied breeze at play!
Child of the sunlight!—thou wing'd and free!
One moment, one moment, I envied thee!
Thou art not lonely, though born to roam,
Thou hast no longings that pine for home;
Thou seek'st not the haunts of the bee and bird,
To fly from the sickness of hope deferr'd:
In thy brief being no strife of mind,
No boundless passion, is deeply shrined;
While I, as I gazed on thy swift flight by,
One hour of my soul seem'd infinity!
And she, that voiceless below me slept,
Flow'd not her song from a heart that wept?
—O Love and Song! though of Heaven your powers,
Dark is your fate in this world of ours.
Yet, ere I turn'd from that silent place,
Or ceased from watching thy sunny race,
Thou, even thou, on those glancing wings,
Didst waft me visions of brighter things!
Thou that dost image the freed soul's birth,
And its flight away o'er the mists of earth,
Oh! fitly thy path is through flowers that rise
Round the dark chamber where Genius lies!
