| |
| | “Yes! hide beneath the mouldering heap, |
| The undelighted, slighted thing; |
| There in the cold earth, buried deep, |
| In silence let it wait the spring.” |
| Mrs. Tighe’s Poem on the Lily. |
I STOOD where the lip of song lay low, | |
| Where the dust had gathered on Beauty’s brow | |
| Where stillness hung on the heart of Love, | |
| And a marble weeper kept watch above. | |
| |
| I stood in the silence of lonely thought, | 5 |
| Of deep affections that inly wrought, | |
| Troubled, and dreamy, and dim with fear,— | |
| They knew themselves exiled spirits here! | |
| |
| Then didst thou pass me in radiance by, | |
| Child of the sunbeam, bright butterfly! | 10 |
| Thou that dost bear, on thy fairy wings, | |
| No burden of mortal sufferings. | |
| |
| Thou wert flitting past that solemn tomb, | |
| Over a bright world of joy and bloom; | |
| And strangely I felt, as I saw thee shine, | 15 |
| The all that severed thy life and mine. | |
| |
| Mine, with its inborn mysterious things, | |
| Of love and grief its unfathomed springs; | |
| And quick thoughts wandering o’er earth and sky, | |
| With voices to question eternity! | 20 |
| |
| Thine, in its reckless and joyous way, | |
| Like an embodied breeze at play! | |
| Child of the sunlight! thou winged and free! | |
| One moment, one moment, I envied thee! | |
| |
| Thou art not lonely, though born to roam, | 25 |
| Thou hast no longings that pine for home; | |
| Thou seek’st not the haunts of the bee and bird, | |
| To fly from the sickness of hope deferred. | |
| |
| In thy brief being no strife of mind, | |
| No boundless passion, is deeply shrined; | 30 |
| While I, as I gazed on thy swift flight by, | |
| One hour of my soul seemed infinity! | |
| |
| And she, that voiceless below me slept, | |
| Flowed not her song from a heart that wept? | |
| O Love and Song! though of heaven your powers, | 35 |
| Dark is your fate in this world of ours. | |
| |
| Yet, ere I turned from that silent place, | |
| Or ceased from watching thy sunny race, | |
| Thou, even thou, on those glancing wings, | |
| Didst waft me visions of brighter things! | 40 |
| |
| Thou that dost image the freed soul’s birth, | |
| And its flight away o’er the mists of earth, | |
| O, fitly thy path is through flowers that rise | |
| Round the dark chamber where Genius lies! | |
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