Yet bitter, oft-times bitter, was the pang My new-planned cities, and unfinished towers. But should suspense permit the Foe to cry, Old frailties then recurred :-but lofty thought, And Thou, though strong in love, art all too weak In reason, in self-government too slow; I counsel thee by fortitude to seek Our blest re-union in the shades below. The invisible world with thee hath sympathised; Be thy affections raised and solemnised. Learn by a mortal yearning to ascend- Aloud she shrieked! for Hermes re-appears! Round the dear Shade she would have clung'tis vain: The hours are past-too brief had they been years; And him no mortal effort can detain: Swift, toward the realms that know not earthly day, He through the portal takes his silent way, And on the palace-floor a lifeless corse She lay. By no weak pity might the Gods be moved; She who thus perished, not without the crime Of lovers that in reason's spite have loved, Was doomed to wear out her appointed time, Apart from happy Ghosts-that gather flowers Of blissful quiet 'mid unfading bowers. -Yet tears to human suffering are due; And mortal hopes defeated and o'erthrown Are mourned by man, and not by man alone, As fondly he believes.-Upon the side Of Hellespont (such faith was entertained) A knot of spiry trees for ages grew From out the tomb of him for whom she died; And ever, when such stature they had gained That Ilium's walls were subject to their view, The trees' tall summits withered at the sight; A constant interchange of growth and blight!* WHO HAD BEEN REPROACHED FOR TAKING LONG WALKS IN THE COUNTRY. DEAR Child of Nature, let them rail! A harbour and a hold, Where thou, a Wife and Friend, shalt see *For the account of these long-lived trees, see Pliny's Natural History, lib. xvi. cap. 44; and for the features in the character of Protesilaus, see the Iphigenia in Aulis of Euripides. Virgil places the Shade of Laodamia in a mournful region among unhappy Lovers, It comes. His Laodamia There, healthy as a shepherd-boy, Thou, while thy babes around thee cling, A Woman may be made. Thy thoughts and feelings shall not die, Nor leave thee, when grey-hairs are nigh, A melancholy slave; But an old age serene and bright, And lovely as a Lapland night, 1803. THE PRIMROSE OF THE ROCK. A Rock there is whose lonely front Yet there the glow-worms hang their lamps. And one coy Primrose to that Rock The vernal breeze invites. What hideous warfare hath been waged, The flowers, still faithful to the stems, The stems are faithful to the root, That worketh out of view; And to the rock the root adheres In every fibre true. |