The Poetical Works of Ebenezer Elliott :: :: University of Virginia Library

Sad Laura! dost thou mourn with me
The year's autumnal spring?
Sigh'st thou this second wreath to see
Of woodbines blossoming?
So late, so pale, with scentless breath—
Like lingering Hope, that smiles in death;
And, e'en when life is o'er,
Leaves on Misfortune's ice-cold face
The sweetness of its last embrace
To fade, and be no more.
Lo! June's divested primrose sports
A silken coif again;
And, like late-smiling sickness, courts
The coy morn, but in vain!
Lo! half the elm's rich robe is gone!
The ash, a living skeleton,

Deplores his yellow hair!
Yet, while the maple bows her head,
In mournful honours fair,
And while the beach-leaf rustles red,
Methinks the armèd gorse appears
More golden, than when May
Left April dying in her tears,
Beneath the plumy spray;
And, for her lover's triumph won,
Danced with her blue-bell anklets on,
And bless'd his burning eye.
Then, Laura, come, and hear the thrush,
O'er Autumn's gorse, from budding bush,
Pour vernal melody!
Come! and, beneath the fresh green-leaf
That mocks the agèd year,
Thy bard, who loves the joy of grief,
Shall weave a chaplet here;
Not pluck'd from Summer's wither'd bowers,
Not form'd of Autumn's hopeless flowers—
Yet sad and wan as they:
Here, still some flowers of Eden blow;
But, deadly pale, and stain'd with woe,
Like guilt they shun the day;
While Folly treads beneath his feet
The daisy of the vale;
Love's rose, though sick at heart, is sweet—
Joy's leaf is fair, though pale;

And worth admires, resign'd and meek,
The tear-drop on the violet's cheek,
And hope shall death survive;
But, like the gorse, all thorns and gold,
Pride bids the sickening sun behold
How blushing virtues thrive!

Oft, Laura, have we seen (while dewy Spring
Bent to the stockdove's plaintive murmuring
O'er shaded flowers) the lone, wild apple-tree,
With every bough carnation'd pallidly,
In some bright glade, exposed to morning's breeze
Some verdant isle, amid a sea of trees.
It seem'd to live on heaven's own sweets, and call
The wanton winds to kiss its blossoms all.
But soon, like dewdrops in the brightening sun,
Its fragrant soul exhaled—soon, one by one,
Its petals, faded into whiteness, died;
And, sweet in ruin, lay on Canklow's side—
The snow of June. And thus, when time began
His deedful race, the young enthusiast, man,
In first intensest passion bless'd, could see,
Where all was beauty, nought so fair as he;
But from his cheek sin chased th' elysian glow,
And turn'd the brightest hues of love to woe.
O Sin! what havoc hast thou wrought on earth!
To what abortions has thy womb giv'n birth!

When first thy victim, man, conversed with pain,
Love's purest spirit soar'd to God again,
And murmurs issued from the bowers of bliss;
But, when thy treachery poison'd in a kiss,
Hell raised his hands, and mock'd the throne sublime;
Hell scarce believed th' unutterable crime;
Heaven's brightness faded; and, with sadden'd eye,
The blushing angels sigh'd—“Adultery!”

In yonder glen, beneath the aspen lone,
A matron sleeps, without memorial stone;
And children trip unconscious o'er her grave,
Where, through the long grass, steals the lucid wave.
When earth was dark with fear, and, lost and seen,
The high moon glanced the hurried clouds between,
Like some blood-guilty wretch, who, self-exiled,
Wakes in the dead of night with anguish wild,
And, o'er the tree-tops waving to and fro,
Looks on the hopeless sea that moans below;
Then stole she from her faithless husband's side,
Sought Don's dark margin, sobb'd a prayer and died.
He waked not, though a hand unearthly drew
The curtains of his bed, and to the hue
Of ashes changed his cheek. With open eyes,
He slumber'd still; but speechless agonies
Wrought on his face convulsed his heart's despair,
And terror smote his damp, uplifted hair.
His spirit felt a spirit's strong control,
An injured spirit whisper'd to his soul—

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“No worm slinks down when I approach,
No night-bird stints his ditty;
Yet will I mourn thee, though unheard,
For now my love is pity.
Again I'll hear thee talk of truth,
When Rother's rose is sweetest;
Again I'll meet thee, perjured one,
When thou thy new love meetest.
While stars in silence watch my dust,
I'll sigh, where last ye parted,
O'er her who soon shall droop, like me,
Thy victim, broken-hearted.
And in that hour, to love so dear,
The stillest and the fleetest,
Unfelt I'll kiss my rival's cheek,
When Rother's rose is sweetest.”

O thou, whose wings o'er-arch the flood of years,
That rolling, stain'd with crimes, and mix'd with tears,
Whelms in his gulfs each unimmortal form;
Spirit of Brightness! proud to span the storm!
Thy word, O Love! bade light and beauty be,
And Chaos had no form, till touch'd by thee!
Though call'd of old the god of serpent wiles,
Thou source of sweetest, bitterest tears and smiles,
Thy voice endears to man the humblest home;
Fair is the desert, if with love we roam.
Where barks the fox, by golden broom o'erhung,
Where coos the fern-fowl o'er her cowering young,

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Thee gloomiest rocks acclaim, with greeting stern,
To thee the uplands bow their feathery fern:
Shaking the dewdrop from his raptured wings,
The waking thrush salutes his mate, and sings;
With amorous lays the glad lark climbs the sky,
And Heaven to earth pours down his melody.
But in thy name when erring mortals sin,
A plague, a cancer, blackens all within,
Till life groans loud his hopeless load beneath,
And the soul darkens into worse than death.
Then Love's meek question meets with no reply,
Save the fierce glance in hatred's sullen eye:
Sad is the day, and sleepless is the night,
And the rose poisons like the aconite.
Earth's verdant mantle is become a shroud;
Sweet Eden's blushes vanish from the cloud;
The rural walk, that pleased when life was new,
Where pendent woodbines grow, as erst they grew,
Can please no more; the mountain air is dead;
And Nature is a book no longer read.
Suspicion, scorn, contention, treachery come,
And all the fiends that make a hell of home.
Sold to the Furies, ever glad to buy,
Perchance lost man makes haste to kill and die,
Uplifts the assassin's dagger, and lays low
His idol, once adored, though hated now.
Then Horror's harpy hand, and gorgon scowl,
Rend the distracted tresses of his soul.

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He hears sad voices in the silent air;
Heaven seems a marble roof, that spurns his prayer,
Oh, for oblivion, he would barter heaven!
And self-forgotten need he be forgiven?
In thought he sees the midnight stake, the tomb
Delved by the highway-side, in starless gloom,
And the swift bullet flash'd into the brain;
Or robèd Justice and her awful train;
The fetter'd limb—the dungeon's agonies,
The scaffold—and the thousand thousand eyes,
All fix'd on him, whose head despair hath bow'd,
Whose heart is all alone in all that crowd;
And like a hooted traitor, wild with fears,
Who sheds from eyeless sockets blood for tears,
While, raining curses on his guilty head,
The rabble shout him to his death of dread;
Chain'd through the soul, he moves, in anguish blind,
And drags remembrance and remorse behind.

Sad as the marble forms on frailty's tomb,
The few surviving flowers of Eden bloom;
And must the serpent, Falsehood, hide, beneath
Their petals dim, the fang whose touch is death?
Hence to the fiends, thou glistering, fatal Asp!
By the long transport of thy parting clasp,
Then most adored, when falsest fear'd or found,
By thy dear coils around the true heart wound!
By suffering weakness, punish'd for thy guilt,
By all the blood which thou hast damn'd or spilt!

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And, by the victims, who implore thy stay!
False Asp, that poisonest Love! away—away!
Hence, serpent, to the fiends! or darkling, rave
In Bothwell's form, o'er Mary Stuart's grave!
Shed o'er her dust thy tears of blood and fire,
And in repentant agonies, expire!
So shall distrust from Love's elysium fly,
So, the worst fever of the soul shall die,
With all the woes that Herod's ghost could tell,
And Mariamne—loved, alas! too well!
But doom'd with Time to perish, yet shalt thou
Wrinkle with many a snaky fold his brow.
Though from his snowy pinions, never dry,
He hourly shakes the tears of poesy,
While woe shall weep, his wings are shook in vain,
And every plume must wear its pearl of pain.
To bards unborn thy deeds shall furnish themes
More sad than death, more dire than murder's dreams.

No fancied Muse do I invoke to aid
The song that tells of trusting truth betray'd;
Be thou, my Muse, thou darkest name of woe,
Thou saddest of realities below,
Love!—But I call'd not thee, thou Boy of guile,
Cruel, though fair, that joy'st to sting and smile!
Sly urchin, wing'd and arm'd, too, like the bee,
And tressed with living gold—I call'd not thee!
But thee, sweet profligate, who gavest all—
Peace, earth, and Heav'n—for poison'd fire and gall!

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Thee, thee, thou weeping Magdalene, I call!
Alas! o'er thee hath rush'd th' avenging blast;
Through thee the arrows of the grave have pass'd!
Avaunt! thou palest daughter of Despair!
If thou art Love, what form doth Horror wear?
Yet stay! I know thee: in thy faded eye
The light of beauty lingers—soon to die:
Known by the worm that feedeth on the heart,
Stay, guilty Magdalene! we must not part
Till I have told this saddest tale of thine,
And steep'd in tears each slow, complaining line.
For what is sinful passion, but the lamp
That gilds the vapours of a dungeon damp,
And cheers the gloom awhile, with fatal light,
Only to leave at last a deeper night,
And make the darkness horror? Yet for this,
This shadowy glimmering of a troubled bliss,
Insensate man, peace, joy, and hope foregoes;
Reckless, he plunges into cureless woes,
Buys fleeting pleasure with enduring pain,
And, drunk with poison, weeps to drink again.