| |
| ART 1 thou a husband?—hast thou lost | |
| The partner of thy joys—thy woes; | |
| Didst watch her when in anguish tost, | |
| And share the dire conflicting throes | |
| Of agonized mortality, | 5 |
| Till e’en to thee ’t was bliss to close | |
| The last fond look of her glazed eye? | |
| |
| Art thou a father?—hath thy son, | |
| The prop of thy declining life, | |
| Fail’d ere his manly race was run, | 10 |
| And left thee to a world of strife? | |
| Dost thou pursue in cold neglect | |
| The remnant of thy journey here; | |
| No one thy frailties to protect, | |
| Or gray-hair’d sorrows to revere? | 15 |
| Is it denied thy stricken heart | |
| To gaze upon the face of one, | |
| Who seem’d thy former counterpart, | |
| Recalling ages long since gone? | |
| To see the follies that were thine | 20 |
| When life ran frolic through each vein; | |
| And thus, e’en in thy life’s decline | |
| To live the hours of youth again. | |
| |
| Art thou a lover?—is the theme | |
| Of all thy raptures torn from thee; | 25 |
| Hast broke the wild ecstatic dream | |
| And woke to actual agony? | |
| The eyes where countless cupids play’d; | |
| The form as light as gossamer; | |
| The neck where thy warm lips have stray’d— | 30 |
| Say, does the grave worm fatten there? | |
| |
| If so, say, hast thou never known | |
| The joy of gazing on the sky | |
| While nature sleeps, and you alone | |
| Seem roused to thought and misery. | 35 |
| Hast never watch’d the pallid moon, | |
| While resting on some sifted cloud, | |
| Pure as the fretful ocean’s foam, | |
| And filmy as an angel’s shroud. | |
| Gazed on her while her crescent pride | 40 |
| Seem’d through a sea of pitch to float; | |
| Then from the depth of darkness glide, | |
| And burst to view a fairy boat; | |
| And shed her beams so strong and bright, | |
| That the globe seem’d a chrysolite?— | 45 |
| ’T is heavenly at that hour to muse, | |
| When sleep is o’er the senses stealing, | |
| And e’en to agony profuse, | |
| Indulge the luxury of feeling. | |
| The features to recall of those, | 50 |
| Who moulder in their last repose; | |
| To chase each image that may rise | |
| In mockery before the eyes, | |
| Until you catch the happy clue | |
| That brings to life the wonted smile, | 55 |
| And gives the cheek its roseate hue | |
| That moulders in decay the while; | |
| Then dead to reason; dead to pain, | |
| You dream an hour of bliss again. | |
