The lark may-like that spirit,-play Because the youthful saint reveals The notes fall fainter on the ear, Echo some pulses of her own! The angel stays,-and stays to bless TO THE PICTURE OF A DEAD GIRL. ON FIRST SEEING IT. How pleasing art thou to me, even in death! I love thee, yet,---above all women living. SECOND MAIDEN'S TRAGEDY. THE same-and oh, how beautiful!—the same Remembered well, the sunlight of my youth; But gone the shadow that would steal, the while, To mar its brightness, and to mock its truth!Once more I see thee, as I saw thee last, The lost restored, -the vision of the past! How like to what thou wert-and art not now! Gone where its very wishes are at rest, And all its throbbings hushed, and achings healed; I gaze, till half I deem thee to my breast, In thine immortal loveliness, revealed, And see thee, as in some permitted dream, There where thou art what here thou dost but seem! I loved thee passing well!—thou wert a beam Of pleasant beauty on this stormy sea! With just so much of mirth as might redeem Thou know'st, young mourner! thou hast been Through good and ill, to me, Amid a bleak and blighted scene, A single leafy tree: A star within a stormy sky; An island on the main ; And I have prayed, in agony, Thou, ever, wert a thing of tears, A very sport of hopes and fears, And both too warm and wild! Thy lightest thoughts and wishes wore Too passionate a strain ;— To such how often comes an hour, They never weep again! Thou wert of those whose very morn And, in thine eye, too soon was born And on thy brow youth set the seal May scarcely weep again! Yet, once again, within thine eye, I see the waters start,— The fountains cannot all be dry Within so young a heart! Our love, which clouds have wrapt awhile, Thirsts for the spirit's rain, And I shall yet behold thee smile, Since thou hast wept again! |