| Alfred H. Miles, ed. The Sacred Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907. | | | IX Poems (1840).
IV. Heart’s-Ease | | By Caroline Clive (1801–1873) |
| | | OH heart-ease, dost thou lie within that flower? | |
| How shall I draw thee thence?—so much I need | |
| The healing aid of thine enshrined power | |
| To veil the past, and bid the time good speed! | |
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| I gather it—It withers on my breast; | 5 |
| The heart’s-ease dies when it is laid to mine; | |
| Methinks there is no shape by joy possess’d | |
| Would better fare than thou upon that shrine. | |
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| Take from me things gone by—oh! change the past— | |
| Renew the lost—restore me the decay’d;— | 10 |
| Bring back the days whose tide has ebb’d so fast— | |
| Give form again to the fantastic shade! | |
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| My hope, that never grew to certainty,— | |
| My youth, that perish’d in its vain desire,— | |
| My fond ambition, crush’d ere it could be | 15 |
| Aught save a self-consuming, wasted fire; | |
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| Bring these anew, and set me once again | |
| In the delusion of life’s infancy— | |
| I was not happy, but I knew not then | |
| That happy I was never doom’d to be. | 20 |
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| Till these things are, and pow’rs divine descend,— | |
| Love, kindness, joy, and hope to gild my day,— | |
| In vain the emblem leaves towards me bend; | |
| Thy spirit, Heart-Ease, is too far away! | | | | |
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