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, 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, Like common earth can rot; To me there needs no stone to tell, Yet did I love thee to the last As fervently as thou, 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 sun that cheers, the storm that lowers, That all those charms have passed away; The flower in ripened bloom unmatched Though by no hand untimely snatched, And yet it were a greater grief I know not if I could have borne The night that followed such a morn Thy day without a cloud hath passed, Extinguished, not decayed; As stars that shoot along the sky As once I wept, if I could weep, To gaze, how fondly! on thy face, Yet how much less it were to gain, And more thy buried love endears February, 1812. IF SOMETIMES IN THE HAUNTS OF MEN. IF sometimes in the haunts of men Thine image from my breast may fade, The semblance of thy gentle shade: Oh, pardon that in crowds awhile I waste one thought I owe to thee, I would not fools should overhear If not the goblet passed unquaffed, From all her troubled visions free, I'd dash to earth the sweetest bowl That drowned a single thought of thee. For wert thou vanished from my mind, No, no it is my sorrow's pride That last dear duty to fulfil; Though all the world forget beside, 'Tis meet that I remember still. For well I know, that such had been A blessing never meant for me; For earthly Love to merit thee. March 14, 1812. FROM THE FRENCH. EGLE, beauty and poet, has two little crimes; She makes her own face, and does not make her |