XXII.
And can I rest the same and thou not here,
Whose essence flowed through, new-creating all?
Fancy dreamt not, thou wast indeed so dear,
Thy very presence made its splendour’s pall:
I held thee, as the substance of my hope,
The lovelier part of what to me belonged,
The very essence, and the eternal scope,
For which my thought and being were prolonged:
Witness thou heaven, what joy have I e’er found
In aught, that unto hope delightful seems,
Save when joy held us both in larger bound?
Thou wast the source of all young longing dreams:
If such my joy, how bitter sorrow’s blow,
That christens thy once haunts by terms of woe?
XXIII.
But, pausing o’er the relics of past days,
A deadlier mischief strikes my bosom chill:
No more, alas! no more, my bosom sways
With joys, fresh-flowing from the heaven-capt hill;
No more, the quickening pulses of the world
May teach my soul to madden with its joy;
No more, its echoes, all confus’dly whirl’d,
O’erpower the troubling of each weak annoy:
’Tis past; the voice is silent, and if now
A quiet bliss steals o’er declining years;
’Tis but, that reason smooths the rugged brow,
Kissing the sources of uncertain tears:
The cup of rapture’s equal lent to all,
Drink once of bliss, and poor content must pall.
XXIV.
And in this stream thy youthful limbs were borne,
Dear stream, I drink thy waters for his sake;
And on this grass, and by this flowering thorn,
His noon-day couch, we murmur’d half awake:
River, why flow’st thou on, so placid gleaming?
Why waves the grass its green and nymph-like hair?
Why both so tender and complacent seeming,
When he is gone who made you trebly fair?
Warm not thy waters with the love he gave,
O all unconscious or ungrateful stream?
Here would he sit, tempting the lazy wave,
With feet, whose ivory shamed some mermaid’s dream:
’Tis I, not nature, err; she clasps her child,
And wins divinely, even as then she smiled.