THE FOUNTAIN OF OBLIVION.
“Implora pace!”[376]
One draught, kind fairy! from that fountain deep,
To lay the phantoms of a haunted breast;
And lone affections, which are griefs, to steep
In the cool honey-dews of dreamless rest;
And from the soul the lightning-marks to lave—
One draught of that sweet wave!
Yet, mortal! pause! Within thy mind is laid
Wealth, gather’d long and slowly; thoughts divine
Heap that full treasure-house; and thou hast made
The gems of many a spirit’s ocean thine;—
Shall the dark waters to oblivion bear
A pyramid so fair?
Pour from the fount! and let the draught efface
All the vain lore by memory’s pride amass’d,
So it but sweep along the torrent’s trace,
And fill the hollow channels of the past;
And from the bosom’s inmost folded leaf,
Rase the one master-grief!
Yet pause once more! All, all thy soul hath known,
Loved, felt, rejoiced in, from its grasp must fade!
Is there no voice whose kind, awakening tone
A sense of spring-time in thy heart hath made?
No eye whose glance thy daydreams would recall?
—Think—wouldst thou part with all?
Fill with forgetfulness! There are, there are
Voices whose music I have loved too well—
Eyes of deep gentleness; but they are far—
Never! oh never, in my home to dwell!
Take their soft looks from off my yearning soul—
Fill high th’ oblivious bowl!
Yet pause again! With memory wilt thou cast
The undying hope away, of memory born?
Hope of reunion, heart to heart at last,
No restless doubt between, no rankling thorn?
Wouldst thou erase all records of delight
That make such visions bright?
Fill with forgetfulness, fill high!——Yet stay—
Tis from the past we shadow forth the land
Where smiles, long lost, again shall light our way,
And the soul’s friends be wreath’d in one bright band.
Pour the sweet waters back on their own rill—
I must remember still.
For their sake, for the dead—whose image naught
May dim within the temple of my breast—
For their love’s sake, which now no earthly thought
May shake or trouble with its own unrest,
Though the past haunt me as a spirit—yet
I ask not to forget.
[376] Quoted from a letter of Lord Byron’s. He describes the impression produced upon him by some tombs at Bologna, bearing this simple inscription, and adds, “When I die, I could wish that some friend would see these words, and no other, placed above my grave,—‘Implora pace!’”
[“The ‘Songs of the Affections’ were published in the summer of 1830. This collection of lyrics has been, perhaps, less popular than other of Mrs Hemans’s later works. It was hardly, indeed, to be expected that the principal poem, ‘A Spirit’s Return,’ the origin and subject of which we have already described, should appeal to the feelings of so large a circle as had borne witness to the truth of the tales of actual life and sacrifice and suffering contained in the ‘Records of Woman.’ But there are parts of the poem solemnly and impressively powerful. The passages in which the speaker describes her youth—the disposition born with her to take pleasure in spiritual contemplations, and to listen to that voice in nature which speaks of another state of being beyond this visible world—prepare us most naturally for the agony of her desire—when he, in whom she had devotedly embarked all her earthly hopes and affections—
‘——till the world held naught
Save the one being to my centred thought,’
was taken away from her for ever—to see him, if but for a moment—to speak with him only once again!
As the crisis of interest approaches, the variety given by alternate rhymes to the heroic measure in which the tale was written, is wisely laid aside, and it proceeds with a resistless energy—
‘Hast thou been told, that from the viewless bourne
The dark way never hath allow’d return?’ etc.
“The conclusion of this fine poem is far from fulfilling the promise of its commencement; but it was impossible to imagine any events, or give utterance to any feelings, succeeding those so awful and exciting, which should not appear feeble, and vague, and exhausted. Mrs Hemans would sometimes regret that she had not bestowed more labour upon the close of her work: this, it is true, might have been more carefully elaborated, but, from the nature of her subject, I doubt the possibility of its having been substantially improved.”—Chorley’s Memorials of Mrs Hemans, p. 101-5.]