You could not penetrate his soul, but found, Vain was the struggle in that mental net, WHEN all around grew drear and dark, In that deep midnight of the mind, When fortune changed - and love fled far, Thou wert the solitary star Which rose and set not to the last. Oh! blest be thine unbroken light! That watched me as a seraph's eye, And when the cloud upon us came, And dashed the darkness all away. Still may thy spirit dwell on mine, And teach it what to brave or brook There's more in one soft word of thine, Than in the world's defied rebuke. Thou stood'st, as stands a lovely tree, Its boughs above a monument. The winds might rend — the skies might pour, But there thou wert and still would'st be Devoted in the stormiest hour To shed thy weeping leaves o'er me. But thou and thine shall know no blight, For heaven in sunshine will requite The kind- and thee the most of all. Then let the ties of baffled love Be broken-thine will never break; Thy heart can feel - but will not move; Thy soul, though soft, will never shake. And these, when all was lost beside, And bearing still a breast so tried, Earth is no desert- ev'n to me. - STANZAS FOR MUSIC. THERE's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away, When the glow of early thought declines in feeling's dull decay; 'Tis not on youth's smooth cheek the blush alone, which fades so fast, But the tender bloom of heart is gone, ere youth itself be past. Then the few whose spirits float above the wreck of happiness, Are driven o'er the shoals of guilt or ocean of excess: The magnet of their course is gone, or only points in vain The shore to which their shivered sail shall never stretch again. Then the mortal coldness of the soul like death itself comes down; It cannot feel for others' woes, it dare not dream its own; That heavy chill has frozen o'er the fountain of our tears, And though the eye may sparkle still, 'tis where the ice appears. Though wit may flash from fluent lips, and mirth distract the breast, Through midnight hours that yield no more their former hope of rest, 'Tis but as ivy leaves around the ruined turret wreath, All green and wildly fresh without, but worn and gray beneath. Oh could I feel as I have felt, or be what I have been, Or weep as I could once have wept, o'er many a vanished scene: As springs in deserts found seem sweet, all brackish though they be, So midst the withered waste of life, those tears would flow to me. WRITTEN AT ATHENS. THE spell is broke, the charm is flown! Each lucid interval of thought Recalls the woes of Nature's charter, But lives, as saints have died, a martyr. TO LADY CAROLINE LAMB. AND say'st thou that I have not felt, But love like ours must never be, And I will learn to prize thee less; As thou hast fled, so let me flee, And change the heart thou mayest not bless. They'll tell thee, Clara! I have seemed, What thou hast done too well, for me I have not wept while thou wert gone, (Ah! need I name her?) could bestow. It is a duty which I owe To thine to thee to man- to God, To crush, to quench this guilty glow, Ere yet the path of crime be trod. |