Why should we weep for thee,
Since thou hast gone unsullied back to heaven,
No stain upon thy spirit's purity,
No sin to be forgiven?
Love watched thee from thy birth,
Fond hearts around thee...
In life's freshness, and its fulness,---
In thy womanhood's young bloom,
While thy brow was all unclouded
With a darkening ray of gloom,---
The Angel Death hath said to thee,
"Thy Father calls thee home."
And, as fades some lovely...
Doom'd as I am in solitude to waste
The present moments, and regret the past;
Depriv'd of every joy I valued most,
My friend torn from me, and my mistress lost;
Call not this gloom I wear, this anxious mien,
The dull effect of humour, or of spleen!
Still, still I mourn, with each returning day,
...
Cromwell is dead, and risen; and dead again,
And risen the third time after he was slain
No wonder! For he’s messenger of Hell:
And now he buffets us, now posts to tell
What’s past; and for one more game new counsel takes
Of his good friend the Devil, who keeps the stakes.
There shall be couches whence faint odours rise,
Divans like sepulchres, deep and profound;
Strange flowers that bloomed beneath diviner skies
...
Death! thou real friend of innocence,
Tho' dreadful unto shivering sense,
I feel my nature tottering o'er
Thy gloomy waves, which loudly roar:
Immense the scene, yet dark the view,
Nor Reason darts her vision thro'.
Virtue! supreme of earthly good,
Oh let thy rays illume the road...
Robbed by Death — but that was easy —
To the failing Eye
I could hold the latest Glowing —
Robbed by Liberty
For Her Jugular Defences —
This, too, I endured —
Hint of Glory — it afforded —
For the Brave Beloved —
Fraud of Distance — Fraud of Danger,
Fraud...
Said Death to Passion
"Give of thine an Acre unto me."
Said Passion, through contracting Breaths
"A Thousand Times Thee Nay."
Bore Death from Passion
All His East
He — sovereign as the Sun
Resituated in the West
And the Debate was done.
I
The clearest eyes in all the world they read
With sense more keen and spirit of sight more true
Than burns and thrills in sunrise, when the dew
Flames, and absorbs the glory round it shed,
As they the light of ages quick and dead,
Closed now,...
So give me back to Death —
The Death I never feared
Except that it deprived of thee —
And now, by Life deprived,
In my own Grave I breathe
And estimate its size —
Its size is all that Hell can guess —
And all that Heaven was —