AWAY, AWAY, YE NOTES OF WOE! AWAY, away, ye notes of woe! Be silent, thou once soothing strain, I dare not trust those sounds again. The voice that made those sounds more sweet A dirge, an anthem o'er the dead! Is worse than discord to my heart! "Tis silent all!--but on my ear The well remember'd echoes thrill; I hear a voice I would not hear, A voice that now might well be still: Yet oft my doubting soul 'twill shake; Even slumber owns its gentle tone, Till consciousness will vainly wake To listen, though the dream be flown. Sweet Thyrza! waking as in sleep, Then turn'd from earth its tender beam. Will long lament the vanish'd ray That scatter'd gladness o'er his path. December 6, 1811.43 ONE STRUGGLE MORE, AND I AM FREE. ONE struggle more, and I am free From pangs that rend my heart in twain; One last long sigh to love and thee, Then back to busy life again. It suits me well to mingle now With things that never pleased before : Though every joy is fled below, What future grief can touch me more? Then bring me wine, the banquet bring; In vain my lyre would lightly breathe! Though gay companions o'er the bowl Though pleasure fires the maddening soul, On many a lone and lovely night When stretch'd on fever's sleepless bed, And sickness shrunk my throbbing veins, ""Tis comfort still," I faintly said, VOL. II. "That Thyrza cannot know my pains :" Like freedom to the time-worn slave, My life, when Thyrza ceased to live! My Thyrza's pledge in better days, When love and life alike were new! Thou bitter pledge! thou mournful token! EUTHANASIA. WHEN Time, or soon or late, shall bring Wave gently o'er my dying bed! No band of friends or heirs be there, But silent let me sink to earth, With no officious mourners near: I would not mar one hour of mirth, Nor startle friendship with a tear. Yet Love, if Love in such an hour In her who lives, and him who dies. 'Twere sweet, my Psyche! to the last Thy features still serene to see : Forgetful of its struggles past, E'en Pain itself should smile on thee. But vain the wish-for Beauty still Will shrink, as shrinks the ebbing breath; And woman's tears, produced at will, Deceive in life, unman in death. Then lonely be my latest hour, "Ay, but to die, and go," alas! Where all have gone, and all must go! To be the nothing that I was Ere born to life and living woe! Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen, AND THOU ART DEAD, AS YOUNG AND FAIR. "Heu, quanto minus est cum reliquis versari quam tui meminisse!" AND thou art dead, as young and fair As aught of mortal birth; And form so soft, and charms so rare, Though Earth received them in her bed, There is an eye which could not brook I will not ask where thou liest low, 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, To me there needs no stone to tell, Yet did I love thee to the last Who didst not change through all the past, The love where Death has set his seal, Nor falsehood disavow: 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, 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; The flower in ripen'd bloom unmatch'd I know not if I could have borne The night that follow'd such a morn |