And sometimes, by still harder fate,
The lovers meet, but meet too late.
—Thy heart is mine! True, true! ah, true!
—Then, love, thy hand! Ah, no! adieu!
[III. SEPARATION.]
Stop! not to me, at this bitter departing,
Speak of the sure consolations of time!
Fresh be the wound, still-renewed be its smarting,
So but thy image endure in its prime!
But if the steadfast commandment of Nature
Wills that remembrance should always decay;
If the loved form and the deep-cherished feature
Must, when unseen, from the soul fade away,—
Me let no half-effaced memories cumber;
Fled, fled at once, be all vestige of thee!
Deep be the darkness, and still be the slumber;
Dead be the past and its phantoms to me!
Then, when we meet, and thy look strays toward me,
Scanning my face and the changes wrought there;
Who, let me say, is this stranger regards me,
With the gray eyes, and the lovely brown hair?
IV. ON THE RHINE.
Vain is the effort to forget.
Some day I shall be cold, I know,
As is the eternal moon-lit snow
Of the high Alps, to which I go;
But ah! not yet, not yet!
Vain is the agony of grief.
’Tis true, indeed, an iron knot
Ties straitly up from mine thy lot;
And, were it snapped—thou lov’st me not!
But is despair relief?