| |
| RIVER, that rollest by the ancient walls, | |
| Where dwells the lady of my love, when she | |
| Walks by thy brink, and there perchance recalls | |
| A faint and fleeting memory of me; | |
| |
| What if thy deep and ample stream should be | 5 |
| A mirror of my heart, where she may read | |
| The thousand thoughts I now betray to thee, | |
| Wild as thy wave, and headlong as thy speed! | |
| |
| What do I say,—a mirror of my heart? | |
| Are not thy waters sweeping, dark, and strong? | 10 |
| Such as my feelings were and are, thou art; | |
| And such as thou art, were my passions long. | |
| |
| Time may have somewhat tamed them,—not forever; | |
| Thou overflow’st thy banks, and not for aye | |
| Thy bosom overboils, congenial river! | 15 |
| Thy floods subside, and mine have sunk away, | |
| |
| But left long wrecks behind, and now again, | |
| Borne in our old unchanged career, we move; | |
| Thou tendest wildly onwards to the main, | |
| And I—to loving one I should not love. | 20 |
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| The current I behold will sweep beneath | |
| Her native walls, and murmur at her feet; | |
| Her eyes will look on thee, when she shall breathe | |
| The twilight air unharmed by summer’s heat. | |
| |
| She will look on thee,—I have looked on thee, | 25 |
| Full of that thought; and from that moment, ne’er | |
| Thy waters could I dream of, name, or see, | |
| Without the inseparable sigh for her! | |
| |
| Her bright eyes will be imaged in thy stream,— | |
| Yes! they will meet the wave I gaze on now: | 30 |
| Mine cannot witness, even in a dream, | |
| That happy wave repass me in its flow! | |
| |
| The wave that bears my tears returns no more: | |
| Will she return by whom that wave shall sweep?— | |
| Both tread thy banks, both wander on thy shore, | 35 |
| I by thy source, she by the dark-blue deep. | |
| |
| But that which keepeth us apart is not | |
| Distance, nor depth of wave, nor space of earth, | |
| But the distraction of a various lot, | |
| As various as the climates of our birth. | 40 |
| |
| A stranger loves the lady of the land, | |
| Born far beyond the mountains, but his blood | |
| Is all meridian, as if never fanned | |
| By the black wind that chills the polar flood. | |
| |
| My blood is all meridian; were it not, | 45 |
| I had not left my clime, nor should I be, | |
| In spite of tortures ne’er to be forgot, | |
| A slave again of love,—at least of thee. | |
| |
| ’T is vain to struggle,—let me perish young,— | |
| Live as I lived, and love as I have loved; | 50 |
| To dust if I return, from dust I sprung, | |
| And then, at least, my heart can ne’er be moved. | |
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