"Why on me was laid the mission:
Lift the future's mystic shroud?
Why to me the seer's vision
'Mid a spirit-darkened crowd?
When the mortal arm is weak,
Wherefore give the prophet's power?
Can it turn the stream, or break
Clouds of woe that darkly lower?
VIII.
"Wherefore lift the pall o'ershading
Dark and dread Futurity?
Ignorance is joy unfading—
Knowledge, death and misery.
Oh! recall thy mournful mission—
Take the future from my sight:
Fatal is the prophet's vision
To the form that shrines its light.
IX.
"Give me back the happy blindness,
Ere my childhood felt thy spell;
Never sang I in joy's wildness
Since I heard thy oracle.
Clear the future lies before me,
But the present veiled away;
Oh! to life and joy restore me—
Take thy cruel gift away!
X.
"Never round my perfumed tresses
May the bridal wreath entwine;
'Mid thy temple's drear recesses
Doomed in loneliness to pine.
Never o'er my youth of weeping
Did one happy moment rise—
Never aught but sorrow reaping
From thy fatal mysteries.
XI.
"See my gay companions round me,
Blessed with all that love can give;
I alone, my youth consuming,
Live to weep, and weep to live.
Vain to me the sun, the skies,
The flowers on the green earth bending;
Who the joys of life would prize
That could know their bitter ending?