EUTHANASIA.

I.

WHEN Time, or soon or late, shall bring
The dreamless sleep that lulls the dead,
Oblivion may thy languid wing

Wave gently o'er my dying bed!

2.

No band of friends or heirs be there,1
To weep, or wish, the coming blow:
No maiden, with dishevelled hair,
To feel, or feign, decorous woe.

3.

But silent let me sink to Earth,

With no officious mourners near:
I would not mar one hour of mirth,
Nor startle Friendship with a fear.

4.

Yet Love, if Love in such an hour
Could nobly check its useless sighs,
Might then exert its latest power

In her who lives, and him who dies.

5.

'Twere sweet, my Psyche! to the last
Thy features still serene to see:

1. [Compare A Wish, by Matthew Arnold, stanza 3, etc.-"Spare me the whispering, crowded room,

The friends who come and gape and go," etc.]

Forgetful of its struggles past,

E'en Pain itself should smile on thee.

6.

But vain the wish-for Beauty still

Will shrink, as shrinks the ebbing breath; And Woman's tears, produced at will, Deceive in life, unman in death.

7.

Then lonely be my latest hour,

Without regret, without a groan;

For thousands Death hath ceased to lower,
And pain been transient or unknown.

8.

"Aye but to die, and go," alas!

Where all have gone, and all must go!

To be the nothing that I was

Ere born to life and living woe!

9.

Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen,
Count o'er thy days from anguish free,
And know, whatever thou hast been,

'Tis something better not to be.

[First published, Childe Harold, 1812 (Second Edition).]

AND THOU ART DEAD, AS YOUNG AND FAIR.

"Heu, quanto minus est cum reliquis versari quam tui meminisse!"

I.

AND thou art dead, as young and fair

As aught of mortal birth;

And form so soft, and charms so rare,
Too soon returned to Earth!".

Though Earth received them in her bed,
And o'er the spot the crowd may tread iii.
In carelessness or mirth,

There is an eye which could not brook

A moment on that grave to look.

i. Stanzas.-[Editions 1812–1831.]

ii. Are mingled with the Earth.-[MS.]

Were never meant for Earth.—[MS. erased.]

iii. Unhonoured with the vulgar dread.-[MS. erased.]

I. ["The Lovers' Walk is terminated with an ornamental urn, inscribed to Miss Dolman, a beautiful and amiable relation of Mr. Shenstone's, who died of the small-pox, about twenty-one years of age, in the following words on one side :

(From a Description of the Leasowes, by A. Dodsley; Poetical

Works of William Shenstone [1798], p. xxix.)]

2.

I will not ask where thou liest low,"

Nor gaze upon the spot;

There flowers or weeds at will may grow,
So I behold them not: "L

It is enough for me to prove

That what I loved, and long must love,
Like common earth can rot; iii.

To me there needs no stone to tell,
'Tis Nothing that I loved so well.iv.

3.

Yet did I love thee to the last

As fervently as thou,"

Who didst not change through all the past,

And canst not alter now.

The love where Death has set his seal,

Nor age can chill, nor rival steal,vi.

Nor falsehood disavow:

vii.

And, what were worse, thou canst not see

Or wrong, or change, or fault in me.i

4.

The better days of life were ours;
The worst can be but mine:

i. I will not ask where thou art laid,

Nor look upon the name.-[MS. erased.] ii. So I shall know it not.-[MS. erased.]

iii. Like common dust can rot.--[MS.]

iv. I would not wish to see nor touch.-[MS. erased.]

v. As well as warm as thou.-[MS. erased.]

vi. MS. transposes lines 5 and 6 of stanza 3.

vii. Nor frailty disavow.—[MS.]

viii. Nor canst thou fair and fauliless see.—[MS. erased.] ix. Nor wrong, nor change, nor fault in me.— [IS]

The sun that cheers, the storm that lowers," Shall never more be thine.

The silence of that dreamless sleep"

I envy now too much to weep;

Nor need I to repine,

That all those charms have passed away
I might have watched through long decay.

5.

The flower in ripened bloom unmatched

Must fall the earliest prey;

iii.

Though by no hand untimely snatched,

The leaves must drop away:
And yet it were a greater grief

To watch it withering, leaf by leaf,
Than see it plucked to-day;
Since earthly eye but ill can bear
To trace the change to foul from fair.

6.

I know not if I could have borne 1v.

To see thy beauties fade;

The night that followed such a morn
Had worn a deeper shade:

Thy day without a cloud hath passed,"
And thou wert lovely to the last;

Extinguished, not decayed;

i. The cloud that cheers

ii. The sweetness of that silent deep.-[MS.]
iii. The flower in beauty's bloom unmatched
Is still the earliest prey.-[MS]
The rose by some rude fingers snatched,

Is earliest doomed to fade.-[MS. erased.]
iv. I do not deem I could have borne.-[MS.]
v. But night and day of thine are passed,
And thou wert lovely to the last;
-[MS. erased.]

Destroyed