Now, could I read thy virgin heart With more than all a lover's art,
every wish I'd copy out,
And write them into mine;
What then I saw might put to rout
A thousand hopes, but fear and doubt Would perish too:-I'd not repine, Or not repine aloud ;
I'd vail my sorrows in a silent shroud, And cherish, as my best relief, The mournful certainty of grief.
I would not twine about my brow, As lovers use, the willow bough, Lest I should seem to think of thee As one who had forsaken me. I'd rather think that thou wert dead,
That gentle sigh thy parting breath, And bind the cypress round my head, As thou wert lost to me in death. So should I fondly hope to inherit An heavenly marriage with thy spirit!
Nay, fly not, Anna, fly not hence, And leave me in this wild suspense. That choking sigh, those flooding tears, Have filled my soul so full of fears, That I am madly driven to borrow From an exaggerated sorrow, A strange perverse alleviation, To this soul-shaking agitation. So moved am I, that to be still, I'd sink beneath a deadlier ill, And bid my brightest hope depart, To quell the fever of my heart.
For, oh! I can no longer bear,
This terror, which is not despair!
Two Enigmas, by Vyvyan Joyeuse :—
My first's an airy thing,
Joying in flowers, Evermore wandering
In Fancy's bowers, Living on beauteous smiles
From eyes that glisten,
And telling of Love's wiles
To ears that listen.
But if, in its first flush
Of warm emotion, My second come to crush Its young devotion, Oh! then it wastes away,
Weeping and waking,
And, on some sunny day, Is blest in breaking.
On the casement frame the wind beat high, Never a star was in the sky;
All Kenneth Hold was wrapt in gloom,
And Sir Everard slept in the Haunted Room.
I sat and sang beside his bed ;
Never a single word I said,
Yet did I scare his slumber;
And a fitful light in his eye-ball glisten'd, And his cheek grew pale as he lay and listen'd, For he thought, or he dream'd, that fiends and fays Were reckoning o'er his fleeting days,
And telling out their number.
Was it my second's ceaseless tone? On my second's hand he laid his own: The hand that trembled in his grasp, Was crush'd by his convulsive clasp.
Sir Everard did not fear my first;
He had seen it in shapes that men deem worst In many a field and flood;
Yet, in the darkness of his dread,
His tongue was parch'd, and his reason fled;
And he watch'd, as the lamp burned low and dim,
To see some Phantom gaunt and grim Come, dabbled o'er with blood.
And oft, from that remembered night, Around the taper's flickering light
The wrinkled beldames told,
Sir Everard had knowledge won
Of many a murther darkly done,
Of fearful sights and fearful sounds
And Ghosts that walk their midnight rounds, In the tower of Kenneth Hold!
Three Sonnets, by Gerard Montgomery :
LADY! I know three poets who know thee And all write sonnets, in the which they swear That thou art most superlatively fair, Meek, silver-voiced—and so forth. As for me, Not having seen thee, I am fancy-free; And, pretty lady, little do I care Whether thou art indeed beyond compare,
A being to whom Bards must bow the knee, Or a mere woman, with good face and shape.- I only know that I'm so tired of hearing The list of thy perfections, that I gape Sometimes, instead of duly sonneteering; And therefore am I called brute, bear, and ape, And other names past mentioning or bearing. March, 1822.
I look'd on the pale face which poets love, And scann'd its sweetness with a steadfast eye; I listen'd to the eloquent witchery
Of her low, plaintive song:-awhile she wove Her cobweb meshes round me, and did move
My soul to a wild worship. Then did I,
By the strong aid of wakeful Memory, Whose sprites for ever at Love's bidding rove, Summon Ianthe from her silent cell.
Sudden, in all the glory and the pride
Of intellectual beauty, at my side
She stood, and on my soul her bright eyes fell,
Beaming with earnest thought:--I heard one tone
Of her far voice-and straight that phantom pale was flown.
Oh! not for worlds, thou simple-soul'd Rosine, `Would I be loved by thee.-Yet I confess That thou dost wear a deeper loveliness Than the most lovely whom these eyes have seen, Save One-and she is of a different mien ; Wild-eyed, and how wild-hearted!-yet no less Fit than thyself a poet's love to bless- My Gloriana bright, my Faery Queen! Thou, Lady, in thy meek, affectionate eyes, Bearest such magic as, I well believe,
Few can resist; to me the charms they weave Spring from thy gentle wedded sympathies: And couldst thou less adore thy wayward mate, Oh! I should hate thee with a poet's hate!
Five Sentimentalities, by Edmund Bruce:
Written in the first leaf of Keats's Poems.
SWEET harp, whose tones like dews of heaven descend, Go, win her heart, whom Nature's self hath taught To love thy strains, with living genius fraught; To many a lonely hour soft pleasure lend, And with the deepest moan of sorrow blend Thy soothing music, that the soul, o'er-wrought, Haply, by care, or pain, or anxious thought, May bless thee, as its comforter and friend. If, with light step, thro' morning dews she fly, Thy measures, like the lark's, to joy be given ; At sultry noon, in languid sweetness die
On her charm'd ear, and when resplendent Even Lights up her star of beauty in the sky, Thrill her rapt soul, and raise it all to heaven.
My groaning stanzas, just to eke my strains out, With gloom enough to blow six Frenchmen's brains out.
THE moonless night envelopes wood and vale, Monotonously deep the waters roll:
And the low clouds are gloomy as my soul; While the far screech-owl's melancholy wail Seems my return to these lone groves to hail, Where, undisturbed, she holds her sad controul; Alas! to those who sit at sorrow's goal, A meeter minstrel than the nightingale !
Bird of ill omen! Thy funereal strain Suits my dark fate. With no foreboding care I dread thee, as the Herald of Despair, But greet thee as the Laggard of his train: Leaving me nought to hope, and nought to fear, Sternly proclaiming his completed reign.
My heart was once a garden fair,
As ever courted Spring's glad showers;
And many a bud, unfolding there,
Gave promise of a world of flowers.
Beneath the Summer's vivid blaze
Those flow'rs their brightest hues display'd;
But, ah! the same too-ardent rays,
Which bade them open, bade them fade!
Yet many a graceful tint, and soft, Mark'd their autumnal slow decline,
And Memory from their relics oft
A melancholy wreath would twine.
Now, o'er those scenes of past delight, If aught of radiance seem to glow, 'Tis but the snow, which, coldly bright, Conceals the wintry waste below.
O! mirk and drear is the starless night, And the wind howls in the tree; But, dearest, there needs no beacon-light To guide my thoughts to thee!
Silent travellers, swift they go
On the wings of the wintry blast;
O'er the rush of the stream, through the drift of the snow,
Till they rest with thee at last.
Dost thou not feel my kisses prest
Warm on thy lip and cheek?
The clasp of my arms, and the throb of my breast,
Too deeply happy to speak?
Oh, can these vivid thoughts impart
A real bliss to me,
Yet die unknown in my lonely heart,
And be as nought to thee?
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