| |
| AND thou art dead, as young and fair | |
| As aught of mortal birth; | |
| And form so soft, and charms so rare, | |
| Too soon return’d to Earth! | |
| Though Earth received them in her bed | 5 |
| And o’er the spot the crowd may tread | |
| In carelessness or mirth, | |
| There is an eye which could not brook | |
| A moment on that grave to look. | |
| |
| I will not ask where thou liest low, | 10 |
| Nor gaze upon the spot; | |
| There flowers or weeds at will may grow, | |
| So I behold them not: | |
| It is enough for me to prove | |
| That what I loved, and long must love, | 15 |
| Like common earth can rot; | |
| To me there needs no stone to tell, | |
| ’Tis Nothing that I loved so well. | |
| |
| Yet did I love thee to the last | |
| As fervently as thou, | 20 |
| Who didst not change through all the past, | |
| And canst not alter now. | |
| The love where Death has set his seal, | |
| Nor age can chill, nor rival steal, | |
| Nor falsehood disavow: | 25 |
| And, what were worse, thou canst not see | |
| Or wrong, or change, or fault in me. | |
| |
| The better days of life were ours; | |
| The worst can be but mine; | |
| The sun that cheers, the storm that lowers, | 30 |
| Shall never more be thine. | |
| The silence of that dreamless sleep | |
| I envy now too much to weep; | |
| Nor need I to repine | |
| That all those charms have pass’d away, | 35 |
| I might have watch’d through long decay. | |
| |
| The flower in ripen’d bloom unmatch’d | |
| Must fall the earliest prey; | |
| Though by no hand untimely snatched, | |
| The leaves must drop away; | 40 |
| And yet it were a greater grief | |
| To watch it withering, leaf by leaf, | |
| Than see it pluck’d to-day; | |
| Since earthly eye but ill can bear | |
| To trace the change to foul from fair. | 45 |
| |
| I know not if I could have borne | |
| To see thy beauties fade; | |
| The night that followed such a morn | |
| Had worn a deeper shade; | |
| Thy day without a cloud hath pass’d, | 50 |
| And thou wert lovely to the last; | |
| Extinguish’d, not decay’d; | |
| As stars that shoot along the sky | |
| Shine brightest as they fall from high. | |
| |
| As once I wept, if I could weep, | 55 |
| My tears might well be shed, | |
| To think I was not near to keep | |
| One vigil o’er thy bed; | |
| To gaze, how fondly! on thy face, | |
| To fold thee in a faint embrace, | 60 |
| Uphold thy drooping head; | |
| And show that love, however vain, | |
| Nor thou nor I can feel again. | |
| |
| Yet how much less it were to gain, | |
| Though thou hast left me free, | 65 |
| The loveliest things that still remain, | |
| Than thus remember thee! | |
| The all of thine that cannot die | |
| Through dark and dread Eternity | |
| Returns again to me, | 70 |
| And more thy buried love endears | |
| Than aught, except its living years. | |
| |
