What though since then in Stygian gloom
My soul to grope is given!
Can earth be else but dull to him,
Who once has tasted heaven?
Sonnet to Asterie.
I was enveloped in black clouds of woe,
Woven o'er my vision by dark-veiled Despair;
I breathed the poison of the midnight air,
And 'neath its dank oppression wasted low.
I staggered wildly in the gloom at first;
And prayed in anguish that it be removed;
Then cursed the day I saw thee—saw and loved,
And ceased to hope the clouds would be dispersed.
At last that Heavenly Love that rules the night
Removed thine orbit nearer to the earth,
And filled my soul with rapturous delight;
And in the place of that devouring dearth,
When I can see, though distant still, thy light,
Blest Happiness from Hope receives her birth.
Vain Transient World.
Vain transient World, what charms are thine?
And what do mortals in thee see,
That they should worship at thy shrine,
And sacrifice their all to thee?
Thy brightest gifts, thy happiest hours
Fly past on pinions of the wind;
They fade like blooms upon the flowers,
And leave a painful want behind.
Thou art a road, though not of space,
Which rich and poor alike must tread;
Thy starting point we cannot trace,
Thine end—the country of the dead.
A pathway paved with want and woe,
With pleasures painful, incomplete;
Like stones upon the way below,
Which wound the weary pilgrim's feet.