The breast, that may its pangs conceal,
Is not from torture freed,
For still the wound, that will not heal,
Alas! must inly bleed.
Vain Sophist! ask no reason why
The love that cannot save,
Will hover with despairing cry
Around the dear ones grave.
Mine is not frenzy’s sudden gust,
The passion of an hour,
Which sprinkles o’er beloved dust
Its brief though burning shower.
Then bid not me my tears to check,
The effort would but fail,
The face, I hid at custom’s beck,
Would weep behind its veil.
The tree its blighted trunk will rear,
With sap and verdure gone,
And hearts may break, yet many a year
All brokenly live on.
Earth has no terror like the tomb
Which hides my darling’s head,
Yet seeking her amid its gloom,
I grope among the dead.
And oh! could love restore that form
To its recovered grace,
How soon would it again grow warm
Within my wild embrace.
[Death of Henry Clay, Jr.]
Killed in One of the Battles of the Mexican War.
Fierce as the sword upon his thigh,
Doth gleam the panting soldier’s eye,
But nerveless hangs the arm that swayed
So proudly that terrific blade.
The feeble bosom scarce can give
A throb to show he yet doth live,
And in his eye the light which glows,
Is but the stare, that death bestows.
The filmy veins that circling thread
The cooling balls are turning red;
And every pang that racks him now,
Starts the cold sweat up to his brow,
But yet his smile not even death
Could from his boyish face unwreath,
Or in convulsive writhing show
The pangs, that wring the brain below.