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| NO more, no more—oh, never more returning, | |
| Will thy beloved presence gladden earth; | |
| No more wilt thou with sad, yet anxious yearning | |
| Cling to those hopes which have no mortal birth. | |
| Thou art gone from us, and with thee departed, | 5 |
| How many lovely things have vanished too; | |
| Deep thoughts that at thy will to being started, | |
| And feelings, teaching us our own were true. | |
| Thou hast been round us, like a viewless spirit, | |
| Known only by the music on the air; | 10 |
| The leaf or flowers which thou hast named inherit | |
| A beauty known but from thy breathing there: | |
| For thou didst on them fling thy strong emotion, | |
| The likeness from itself the fond heart gave; | |
| As planets from afar look down on ocean, | 15 |
| And give their own sweet image to the wave. | |
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| And thou didst bring from foreign lands their treasures | |
| As floats thy various melody along; | |
| We know the softness of Italian measures, | |
| And the grave cadence of Castilian song. | 20 |
| A general bond of union is the poet, | |
| By its immortal verse is language known, | |
| And for the sake of song do others know it— | |
| One glorious poet makes the world his own. | |
| And thou—how far thy gentle sway extended! | 25 |
| The heart’s sweet empire over land and sea; | |
| Many a stranger and far flower was blended | |
| In the soft wreath that glory bound for thee. | |
| The echoes of the Susquehanna’s waters | |
| Paused in the pine-woods words of thine to hear; | 30 |
| And to the wide Atlantic’s younger daughters | |
| Thy name was lovely, and thy song was dear. | |
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| Was not this purchased all too dearly?—never | |
| Can fame atone for all that fame hath cost. | |
| We see the goal, but know not the endeavour, | 35 |
| Nor what fond hopes have on the way been lost. | |
| What do we know of the unquiet pillow, | |
| By the worn cheek and tearful eyelid prest, | |
| When thoughts chased thoughts, like the tumultuous billow, | |
| Whose very light and foam reveals unrest? | 40 |
| We say, the song is sorrowful, but know not | |
| What may have left that sorrow on the song; | |
| However mournful words may be, they show not | |
| The whole extent of wretchedness and wrong. | |
| They cannot paint the long sad hours, passed only | 45 |
| In vain regrets o’er what we feel we are. | |
| Alas! the kingdom of the lute is lonely— | |
| Cold is the worship coming from afar. | |
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| Yet what is mind in woman, but revealing | |
| In sweet clear light the hidden world below, | 50 |
| By quicker fancies and a keener feeling | |
| Than those around, the cold and careless, know? | |
| What is to feed such feeling, but to culture | |
| A soil whence pain will never more depart? | |
| The fable of Prometheus and the vulture | 55 |
| Reveals the poet’s and the woman’s heart. | |
| Unkindly are they judged—unkindly treated— | |
| By careless tongues and by ungenerous words; | |
| While cruel sneer, and hard reproach, repeated, | |
| Jar the fine music of the spirit’s chords. | 60 |
| Wert thou not weary—thou whose soothing numbers | |
| Gave other lips the joy thine own had not? | |
| Didst thou not welcome thankfully the slumbers | |
| Which closed around thy mourning human lot? | |
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| What on this earth could answer thy requiring, | 65 |
| For earnest faith—for love, the deep and true, | |
| The beautiful, which was thy soul’s desiring, | |
| But only from thyself its being drew. | |
| How is the warm and loving heart requited | |
| In this harsh world, where it awhile must dwell. | 70 |
| Its best affections wronged, betrayed, and slighted— | |
| Such is the doom of those who love too well. | |
| Better the weary dove should close its pinion, | |
| Fold up its golden wings and be at peace: | |
| Enter, O ladye, that serene dominion | 75 |
| Where earthly cares and earthly sorrows cease. | |
| Fame’s troubled hour has cleared, and now replying, | |
| A thousand hearts their music ask of thine. | |
| Sleep with a light, the lovely and undying | |
| Around thy grave—a grave which is a shrine. | 80 |
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