Heartbreak

    'Tis done!    Henceforth nor joy nor woe
        Can make or mar my fate;
    I gaze around, above, below,
        And all is desolate.
    Go, bid the shattered pine to bloom;
        The mourner to be merry;
    But bid no ray to cheer the tomb
        In which my hopes I bury!

    I never thought the world was fair;
        That 'Truth must reign victorious';
    I knew that Honesty was rare;
        Wealth only meritorious.
    I knew that Women might deceive,
        And sometimes cared for money;
    That Lovers who in Love believe
        Find gall as well as honey.

    I knew that "wondrous Classic lore"
        Meant something most pedantic;
    That Mathematics were a bore,
        And Morals un-romantic.<...

Weeping for another's woe,
Tears flow then that would not flow
When our sorrow was our own,
And the deadly, stiffening blow
Was upon our own heart given
In the moments that have flown!

Cringing at another's cry
In the hollow world of grief
Stills the anguish of our pain
For the fate that made us die
To our hopes as sweet as vain;
And our tears can flow again!

One storm blows the night this way,
But another brings the day.

My heart shall be thy garden.    Come, my own,
    Into thy garden; thine be happy hours
    Among my fairest thoughts, my tallest flowers,
From root to crowning petal, thine alone.

Thine is the place from where the seeds are sown
    Up to the sky enclosed, with all its showers.
    But ah, the birds, the birds!    Who shall build bowers
To keep these thine?    O friend, the birds have flown.

For as these come and go, and quit our pine
    To follow the sweet season, or, new-comers,
            Sing one song only from our alder-trees.

My heart has thoughts, which, though thine eyes hold mine,
    Flit to the silent world and other summers,
            With wings that dip beyond the silver seas.

Italic sentences below are Samuel Taylor Coleridge's.


William, my teacher, my friend! dear William and dear Dorothea!
Smooth out the folds of my letter, and place it on desk or on table;
Place it on table or desk; and your right hands loosely half-closing,
Gently sustain them in air, and extending the digit didactic,
Rest it a moment on each of the forks of the five-forkéd left hand,
Twice on the breadth of the thumb, and once on the tip of each finger;
Read with a nod of the head in a humouring recitativo;
And, as I live, you will see my hexameters hopping before you.
This is a galloping measure; a hop, and a trot, and a gallop!

        All my hexameters fly, like stags pursued by the staghounds,
        Breathless and panting, and ready to drop, yet flying still on...

How happens it that thou art sad,

While happy all appear?
Thine eye proclaims too well that thou

Hast wept full many a tear.

"If I have wept in solitude,

None other shares my grief,
And tears to me sweet balsam are,

And give my heart relief."

Thy happy friends invite thee now,

Oh come, then, to our breast!
And let the loss thou hast sustain'd

Be there to us confess'd!

"Ye shout, torment me, knowing not

What 'tis afflicteth me;
Ah no! I have sustained no loss,

Whate'er may wanting be."

If so it is, arise in haste!

Thou'rt young and full of life.
At years like thine, man's blest with strength.

And courage for the strife.

"Ah no! in vain 'twould be to str...

All through the night time, and all through the day time,
    Dreading the morning and dreading the night,
Nearer and nearer we drift to the May time
    Season of beauty and season of blight,
Leaves on the linden, and sun on the meadow,
    Green in the garden, and bloom everywhere,
Gloom in my heart, and a terrible shadow,
    Walks by me, sits by me, stands by my chair.

Oh, but the birds by the brooklet are cheery,
    Oh, but the woods show such delicate greens,
Strange how you droop and how soon you are weary -
    Too well I know what that weariness means.
But how could I know in the crisp winter weather
    (Though sometimes I noticed a catch in your breath),
Riding and singing and dancing together,
    How could I know you were racing with death?

        Reading over your letters I find you wrote me
    "My dear boy," or at times "dear boy," and the envelope
    Said "master" - all as I had been your very son,
    And not the orphan whom you adopted.
    Well, you were father to me! And I can recall
    The things you did for me or gave me:
    One time we rode in a box car to Springfield
    To see the greatest show on earth;
    And one time you gave me redtop boots,
    And one time a watch, and one time a gun.
    Well, I grew to gawkiness with a voice
    Like a rooster trying to crow in August
    Hatched in April, we'll say.
    And you went about wrapped up in silence
    With eyes aflame, and I heard little rumors
    Of what they were doing to you, and how
    They wronged you - and we were p...

That love's dull smart distressed my heart
    He shrewdly learnt to see,
But that I was in love with a dead man
    Never suspected he.

He searched for the trace of a pictured face,
    He watched each missive come,
And a note that seemed like a love-line
    Made him look frozen and glum.

He dogged my feet to the city street,
    He followed me to the sea,
But not to the neighbouring churchyard
    Did he dream of following me.

This heart that flutters near my heart
My hope and all my riches is,
Unhappy when we draw apart
And happy between kiss and kiss:
My hope and all my riches, yes!
And all my happiness.

For there, as in some mossy nest
The wrens will divers treasures keep,
I laid those treasures I possessed
Ere that mine eyes had learned to weep.
Shall we not be as wise as they
Though love live but a day?

        Oh, my beloved, have you thought of this:
        How in the years to come unscrupulous Time,
        More cruel than Death, will tear you from my kiss,
        And make you old, and leave me in my prime?
        How you and I, who scale together yet
        A little while the sweet, immortal height
        No pilgrim may remember or forget,
        As sure as the world turns, some granite night
        Shall lie awake and know the gracious flame
        Gone out forever on the mutual stone;
        And call to mind that on the day you came
        I was a child, and you a hero grown?--
        And the night pass, and the strange morning break
        Upon our anguish for each other's sake!

Leaden skies and a lonesome shadow
    Where summer has passed with her gorgeous train;
Snow on the mountain, and frost on the meadow -
    A white face pressed to the window pane;
A cold mist falling, a bleak wind calling,
    And oh! but life seems vain.

Rain is better than golden weather,
    When the heart is dulled with a dumb despair.
Dead leaves lie where they walked together,
    The hammock is gone, and the rustic chair.
Let bleak snows cover the whole world over -
    It will never again seem fair.

Time laughs lightly at youth's sad 'Never,'
    Summer shall come again, smiling once more,
High o'er the cold world the sun shines for ever,
    Hearts that seemed dead are alive at the core.
Oh, but the pain of it -oh, but the gain of it,

Thine emulous fond flowers are dead, too,
And the daft sun-assaulter, he
That frightened thee so oft, is fled or dead:
Save only me
(Nor is it sad to thee!)
Save only me
There is none left to mourn thee in the fields.

The gray grass is scarce dappled with the snow;
Its two banks have not shut upon the river;
But it is long ago,
It seems forever,
Since first I saw thee glance,
With all thy dazzling other ones,
In airy dalliance,
Precipitate in love,
Tossed, tangled, whirled and whirled above,
Like a linp rose-wreath in a fairy dance.

When that was, the soft mist
Of my regret hung not on all the land,
And I was glad for thee,
And glad for me, I wist.

Thou didst not know, who tottered, wandering on high,
That fate h...

All through the night time, and all through the day time,
    Dreading the morning and dreading the night,
Nearer and nearer we drift to the May time
    Season of beauty and season of blight,
Leaves on the linden, and sun on the meadow,
    Green in the garden, and bloom everywhere,
Gloom in my heart, and a terrible shadow,
    Walks by me, sits by me, stands by my chair.

Oh, but the birds by the brooklet are cheery,
    Oh, but the woods show such delicate greens,
Strange how you droop and how soon you are weary -
    Too well I know what that weariness means.
But how could I know in the crisp winter weather
    (Though sometimes I noticed a catch in your breath),
Riding and singing and dancing together,
    How could I know you were racing with death?

The rain set early in to-night,
The sullen wind was soon awake,
It tore the elm-tops down for spite,
And did its worst to vex the lake,
I listened with heart fit to break;
When glided in Porphyria: straight
She shut the cold out and the storm,
And kneeled and made the cheerless grate
Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;
Which done, she rose, and from her form
Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,
And laid her soiled gloves by, untied
Her hat and let the damp hair fall,
And, last, she sate down by my side
And called me. When no voice replied,
She put my arm about her waist,
And made her smooth white shoulder bare,
And all her yellow hair displaced,
And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,
And spread o’er all her yellow hair,
Murmuring how she...

I know, although when looks meet
I tremble to the bone,
The more I leave the door unlatched
The sooner love is gone,
For love is but a skein unwound
Between the dark and dawn.

A lonely ghost the ghost is
That to God shall come;
I - love's skein upon the ground,
My body in the tomb -
Shall leap into the light lost
In my mother's womb.

But were I left to lie alone
In an empty bed,
The skein so bound us ghost to ghost
When he turned his head
passing on the road that night,
Mine must walk when dead.

LOVED AND LOST, - OR - THE SKY-LARK AND THE VIOLET.


VIOLET'S SONG

I.

        Come down from thy dazzling sphere,
            Bird of the gushing song!
Come down where the young leaves whisper low,
While the breeze steals in with a murmurous flow,
And the tender branches wave to and fro
            In the soft air all day long!

        I have watched thy daring wing
            Cleaving the sun-bright air,
Where the snowy cloud is asleep in light,
Or dreamily floating in robes of white,
While thy soul gushed forth in its song's free might,
            Till my spirit is dim with care.

        For oh, I have loved thee well,
            Thou of the soaring wing! -
And I fear lest the angels that sit on high,
In the ca...

Heart, we will forget him!
You and I, to-night!
You may forget the warmth he gave,
I will forget the light.

When you have done, pray tell me,
That I my thoughts may dim;
Haste! lest while you're lagging,
I may remember him!

1.
O world! O life! O time!
On whose last steps I climb,
Trembling at that where I had stood before;
When will return the glory of your prime?
No more - Oh, never more!

2.
Out of the day and night
A joy has taken flight;
Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar,
Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight
No more - Oh, never more!