I seem’d so rich, with promise of the Future,
I stand so desolate, calling to the Past,
The Present mocks the yet unfashion’d suture;
A gloom there is o’er all the landskip cast:
Why should brief joy shadow such length of woes?
Why should the sweet taste sourly to the sense?
The diamond yet within the casket glows,
Why should its brilliance fright my fancy hence?
I would all pain and pleasure were forgot:
My ineffectual thought giddies with hope;
Relief with blotted joys were dearly got;
Bliss, vacillating, sails in such strait scope:
My mind knows not its thoughts; they storm and veer;
Time, draw some comfort from the Present’s fear.
CXXIX.
And, shall it be, that who have stol’n ambrosia,
From the aerial palaces of the gods,
Or, like faint flowers, flush’d to the morning rosier,
Touch’d by the mesmerism of the sunbeams’ rods—
Shall such commend their spring to dungeon walls,
Catching no comfort from the dull reflex,
Responsive, breathe to no melodious calls?
But feed on hope, insidious to perplex.
How doubly dark frowns the removed cold spot,
Lumber’d with shadows from the journeying sun;
How trebly cursed, that unpropitious lot,
Whose scale descends from whence its joys begun:
And such is mine, whose starting-point was bliss;
Yet all life’s rounds but lead me more amiss.
CXXX.
I must depart, and others shall crowd up
The empty room it was my pride to fill;
And other votaries shall attempt the cup,
Whose crystal lends a flavour, sparkling still;
But, sometimes, thus my heart with transport speaks
Sometimes, my name shall flash along thy thought;
Thy heart shall own the spell and pale thy cheeks,
And give one sigh, from joy, or sorrow bought:
I ask not grief; nay, rather joyous weave
A dear recess, luminous with fancy’s rays;
There, let my captured heart delight, not grieve
Thy attentive sequence, through dim memory’s maze:
Joy leads remembrance wistfully through the years;
Give me but love, I ask no weed of tears.
CXXXI.
Let me not grieve, though blasting blight my days;
Let me not, with harsh cadence, crash the sound;
Let me not smear this fond record of praise,
Nor pause on sorrow’s inharmonious round;
Nay, let me capture joy, and, rashly-glad,
Bend bliss reluctant to my craving sense;
But, softening, soon, I’ll grow more lonely-sad,
Beckoning Content to chase those phantoms hence:
With velvet tread, lynx eye, he steals along,
Dreading the indent of some half-healed mishap;
Then, gathering courage, treads with step more strong,
And probes the withered trunk’s neglected sap:
He threads the weeded Past, without annoy;
And boasts, at length, from pain a new-found joy.