• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

A voice came from the threshold stone

Of one whom I had earlier known—

O! I defy thee, Hell, to show

On beds of fire that burn below,

A humbler heart—a deeper wo—

Father, I firmly do believe—

I know—for Death, who comes for me

From regions of the blest afar,

Where there is nothing to deceive,

Hath left his iron gate ajar,

And rays of truth you cannot see

Are flashing thro' Eternity—

I do believe that Eblis hath

A snare in ev'ry human path—

Else how, when in the holy grove

I wandered of the idol, Love,

Who daily scents his snowy wings

With incense of burnt offerings

From the most unpolluted things,

Whose pleasant bowers are yet so riven

Above with trelliced rays from Heaven

No mote may shun—no tiniest fly

The light'ning of his eagle eye—

How was it that Ambition crept,

Unseen, amid the revels there,

Till growing bold, he laughed and leapt

In the tangles of Love's very hair?

1829.

TO ——

1

The bowers whereat, in dreams, I see

The wantonest singing birds

Are lips—and all thy melody

Of lip-begotten words—

2

Thine eyes, in Heaven of heart enshrin'd

Then desolately fall,

O! God! on my funereal mind

Like starlight on a pall—

3

Thy heart—thy heart!—I wake and sigh,

And sleep to dream till day

Of truth that gold can never buy—

Of the trifles that it may.

1829.

TO ——

I HEED not that my earthly lot

Hath-little of Earth in it—

That years of love have been forgot

In the hatred of a minute:—

I mourn not that the desolate

Are happier, sweet, than I,

But that you sorrow for my fate

Who am a passer-by.

1829.

TO THE RIVER——

FAIR river! in thy bright, clear flow

Of crystal, wandering water,

Thou art an emblem of the glow

Of beauty—the unhidden heart—

The playful maziness of art

In old Alberto's daughter;

But when within thy wave she looks—

Which glistens then, and trembles—

Why, then, the prettiest of brooks

Her worshipper resembles;

For in my heart, as in thy stream,

Her image deeply lies—

His heart which trembles at the beam

Of her soul-searching eyes.

1829.

SONG

I SAW thee on thy bridal day—

When a burning blush came o'er thee,

Though happiness around thee lay,

The world all love before thee:

And in thine eye a kindling light

(Whatever it might be)

Was all on Earth my aching sight

Of Loveliness could see.

That blush, perhaps, was maiden shame—

As such it well may pass—

Though its glow hath raised a fiercer flame

In the breast of him, alas!

Who saw thee on that bridal day,

When that deep blush would come o'er thee,

Though happiness around thee lay,

The world all love before thee.

1827.

SPIRITS OF THE DEAD

1

Thy soul shall find itself alone

'Mid dark thoughts of the grey tomb-stone—

Not one, of all the crowd, to pry

Into thine hour of secrecy:

2

Be silent in that solitude

Which is not loneliness—for then

The spirits of the dead who stood

In life before thee are again

In death around thee—and their will

Shall then overshadow thee: be still.

3

For the night—tho' clear—shall frown—

And the stars shall look not down,

From their high thrones in the Heaven,

With light like Hope to mortals given—

But their red orbs, without beam,

To thy weariness shall seem

As a burning and a fever

Which would cling to thee for ever:

4

Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish—

Now are visions ne'er to vanish—

From thy spirit shall they pass

No more—like dew-drop from the grass:

5

The breeze—the breath of God—is still—

And the mist upon the hill

Shadowy—shadowy—yet unbroken,

Is a symbol and a token—

How it hangs upon the trees,

A mystery of mysteries!—

1827.

A DREAM

In visions of the dark night

I have dreamed of joy departed—

But a waking dreams of life and light

Hath left me broken-hearted.

Ah! what is not a dream by day

To him whose eyes are cast

On things around him with a ray

Turned back upon the past?

That holy dream—that holy dream,

While all the world were chiding,

Hath cheered me as a lovely beam