HEART-HUNGER.
Dost thou do well, dear idol of my heart! To thrall me in the meshes of thy charms, To fill my constant soul with soft alarms, Then coyly thrust me from thy love apart? Pluck from my breast, O pluck the mystic dart! Yield—or I perish—to these folding arms! Assuage the hunger of this sick desire That wraps me like an aromatic fire!— O lull with thy ambrosial breath the swarms Of wounded thoughts that issue from my brain And seek thy presence, seek thee day and night, And on thy brow, and eyes, and lips alight, Extracting aye a honey that is pain!— O, save me with thy kisses, love, or kill me quite!
TO A YOUNG AUTHOR
ON HIS BIRTHDAY.
Friend of my later years, whose thoughts are set To noble ends, despising the pursuit Of vices which the instinct of the brute, Incorporate in man, contends for yet;— Who out of boyhood’s slavery and fret Could issue like a sword-blade from its sheath, Resolved by high endeavor to bequeath Some good that future times may not forget,— Press on, thy better fortune leads the way, And thine is still the sesame of youth, To which the door of many a hidden truth Shall open,—so I dare to prophesy,— And ancient Error, stubborn and uncouth, Shall own thy strength and rue thy natal day.
TO G. I.
AT STRATFORD-ON-AVON.
The leaf you plucked from Shakespeare’s garden plot, And sent me, my most estimable friend, The voyage of the salt sea injured not. Green as it grew upon its native spot, It nestled ’mid the kindly words you penned. The poet’s genius, free from flaw or blot, In which Melpomene found naught to mend, My fancy with this leaflet loves to blend; But, though with care I guard it all my days, In fret of time ’twill fade and fall away, Like hope, once fresh, will crumble to decay. Not so our Dramatist’s perennial bays; Not so the bloom and sunshine of his Plays, Rejoicing in their immortality.
MERCY.[11]
Ye silent statesmen, fully armed with power To save or slaughter, spare the captive’s life! The wild fanatic of a hapless strife, Still fresh in manhood’s summer-scented flower; Whose sense of wrong, discretion did devour, And, breaking from his children and his wife, Feared not the hazard of the fatal hour, The ineffectual struggle, ever rife With death and dungeons when rebellion fails. O, let humanity for mercy plead! Risk not the victor’s vengeance on the scales Of Justice, lest our grieved November gales Waft on to future years the ruthless deed, And keen remorse to cooler thoughts succeed.
[11] Written in reference to the impending execution of Louis Riel, when it was hoped by many that his life would be spared.