THE DANUBE to the Severn gave | |
| The darken’d heart that beat no more; | |
| They laid him by the pleasant shore, | |
| And in the hearing of the wave. | |
| |
| There twice a day the Severn fills; | 5 |
| The salt sea-water passes by, | |
| And hushes half the babbling Wye, | |
| And makes a silence in the hills. | |
| |
| The Wye is hush’d nor moved along | |
| And hush’d my deepest grief of all, | 10 |
| When fill’d with tears that cannot fall, | |
| I brim with sorrow drowning song. | |
| |
| The tide flows down, the wave again | |
| Is vocal in its wooded walls; | |
| My deeper anguish also falls, | 15 |
| And I can speak a little then. | |
| |
| I envy not in any moods | |
| The captive void of noble rage, | |
| The linnet born within the cage, | |
| That never knew the summer woods: | 20 |
| |
| I envy not the beast that takes | |
| His license in the field of time, | |
| Unfetter’d by the sense of crime, | |
| To whom a conscience never wakes; | |
| |
| Nor, what may count itself as blest, | 25 |
| The heart that never plighted troth, | |
| But stagnates in the weeds of sloth; | |
| Nor any want-begotten rest. | |
| |
| I hold it true, whate’er befall; | |
| I feel it, when I sorrow most; | 30 |
| ’Tis better to have loved and lost | |
| Than never to have loved at all. | |
| |
| This truth came borne with bier and pall, | |
| I felt it when I sorrowed most, | |
| ’Tis better to have loved and lost, | 35 |
| Than never to have loved at all— | |
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