Yet keenest powers to see and hear He came he pass'd-an heedless gaze SIR W. SCOTT. 197. THE MAID OF NEIDPATH. Earl March look'd on his dying child, She's at the window many an hour And he look'd up to Ellen's bower But ah! so pale, he knew her not, And am I then forgot-forgot? It broke the heart of Ellen. In vain he weeps, in vain he sighs, Nor love's own kiss shall wake those eyes To lift their silken lashes. T. CAMPBELL. 198. Bright Star! would I were steadfast as thou art— Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night, The moving waters at their priestlike task Of snow upon the mountains and the moors :— No-yet still steadfast, still unchangeable, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, J. KEATS. 199. THE TERROR OF DEATH. When I have fears that I may cease to be Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain; When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face, And when I feel, fair Creature of an hour! Of the wide world I stand alone, and think 200. DESIDERIA. Surprised by joy-impatient as the wind- Love, faithful love recall'd thee to my mind— But how could I forget thee? Through what power Have I been so beguiled as to be blind To my most grievous loss?-That thought's return Knowing my heart's best treasure was no more; 201. At the mid hour of night, when stars are weeping, I fly eye; And I think oft, if spirits can steal from the regions of air To revisit past scenes of delight, thou wilt come to me there And tell me our love is remember'd, even in the sky! Then I sing the wild song it once was rapture to hear When our voices, commingling, breathed like one on the ear; And as Echo far off through the vale my sad orison rolls, Faintly answering still the notes that once were so dear. 202. ELEGY ON THYRZA. And thou art dead, as young and fair And forms so soft and charms so rare Though Earth received them in her bed, There is an eye which could not brook I will not ask where thou liest low There flowers or weeds at will may grow So I behold them not: It is enough for me to prove That what I loved and long must love To me there needs no stone to tell Yet did I love thee to the last, Who didst not change through all the past The love where Death has set his seal Nor falsehood disavow: And, what were worse, thou canst not see Or wrong, or change, or fault in me. The better days of life were ours; The worst can be but mine: The sun that cheers, the storm that lours 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 pass'd away The flower in ripen'd bloom unmatch'd And yet it were a greater grief I know not if I could have borne The night that follow'd such a morn Thy day without a cloud hath past, As stars that shoot along the sky Shine brightest as they fall from high. |