THE OLD FAMILIAR FACES. I HAVE had playmates, I have had companions, I have been laughing, I have been carousing, Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies, All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. I loved a love once, fairest among women; I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man; Ghost-like I paced round the haunts of my childhood, Earth seemed a desert I was bound to traverse, Seeking to find the old familiar faces. Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother, How some they have died, and some they have left me, TO A RIVER IN WHICH A CHILD WAS DROWNED. SMILING river, smiling river, On thy bosom sunbeams play; Though they're fleeting, and retreating, In thy channel, in thy channel, Choked with ooze and gravelly stones, Lies young Edward's corse: his bones Ever whitening, ever whitening, As if senseless, as if senseless What so blindly, and unkindly, HELEN. HIGH-BORN Helen, round your dwelling High-born Helen, proudly telling I starve, I die, now you comply, These twenty years I've lived on tears, On sighs I've fed, your scorn my bread; Can I, who loved my beloved But for the scorn "was in her eye," Can I be moved for my beloved, When she returns me sigh for sigh?" In stately pride, by my bed-side, To that I weep, nor ever sleep, A VISION OF REPENTANCE. I SAW a famous fountain, in my dream, And all around the fountain brink was spread Wide-branching trees, with dark green leaf rich clad, Forming a doubtful twilight-desolate and sad. The place was such, that whoso entered in, And straight became as one that knew not sin, A most strange calm stole o'er my soothed sprite; Long time I stood, and longer had I staid, When lo! I saw, saw by the sweet moonlight, Which came in silence o'er that silent shade, Where, near the fountain, SOMETHING like DESPAIR Made, of that weeping willow, garlands for her hair. And eke with painful fingers she inwove Many an uncouth stem of savage thorn“The willow garland, that was for her love, And these her bleeding temples would adorn." With sighs her heart nigh burst, salt tears fast fell, As mournfully she bended o'er that sacred well. To whom when I addressed myself to speak, Revolving in my mind what this should mean, When from the shades came slow a small and plain tive sound. |