Upon the middle of the night,
Waking she heard the nightfowl crow:
The cock sung out an hour ere light:
From the dark fen the oxen's low
Came to her: without hope of change,
In sleep she seem'd to walk forlorn,
Till cold winds woke the grey-eyed morn
About the lonely moated grange.
She only said, "The day is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!”
About a stone-cast from the wall
A sluice with blacken'd waters slept,
And o'er it many, round and small,
The cluster'd marish-mosses crept.
Hard by a poplar shook alway,
All silver-green with gnarled bark;
For leagues no other tree did dark
The level waste, the rounding grey.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said:
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
And ever when the moon was low,
And the shrill winds were up and away,
In the white curtain to and fro,
She saw the gusty shadow sway,
But when the moon was very low,
And wild winds bound within their cell,
The shadow of the poplar fell
Upon her bed, across her brow.
She only said; "The night is dreary,
He cometh not," she said:
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
All day within the dreamy house,
The doors upon their hinges creak'd, The blue fly sung i' the pane; the mouse Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek'd,
Or from the crevice peer'd about.
Old faces glimmer'd through the doors,
Old footsteps trod the upper floors,
Old voices call'd her from without.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
The sparrow's chirrup on the roof,
The slow clock ticking, and the sound
Which to the wooing wind aloof
The poplar made, did all confound
Her sense; but most she loathed the hour
When the thick-moted sunbeam lay
Athwart the chambers, and the day
Was sloping toward his western bower.
Then said she, "I am very dreary,
He will not come," she said;
She wept, "I am aweary, aweary,
O God, that I were dead!"
This passage is extracted from LONGFELLOW's Golden Legend.
I CANNOT sleep; my fervid brain
Calls up the vanish'd Past again,
And throws its misty splendour deep
Into the pallid realms of sleep!
A breath from that far-distant shore
Comes freshening ever more and more,
And wafts o'er intervening seas
Sweet odours from the Hesperides!
A wind that through the corridor
Just stirs the curtain, and no more,
And touching the molian strings,
Faints with the burden that it brings!
Come back! ye friendships long departed!
That like o'erflowing streamlets started.
And now are dwindled, one by one,
To stony channels in the sun!
Come back! ye friends whose lives are ended!
Come back, with all that light attended,
Which seem'd to darken and decay
When ye arose and went away!
They come, the shapes of joy and woe,
The airy crowds of long-ago;
The dreams and fancies known of yore,
That have been, and shall be no more.
They change the cloisters of the night
Into a garden of delight;
They make the dark and dreary hours
Open and blossom into flowers!
I would not sleep! I love to be
Alone in their fair company;
But ere my lips can bid them stay,
They pass and vanish quite away!
Alas! our memories may retrace
Each circumstance of time and place;
Season and scene come back again,
And outward things unchanged remain :
The rest we cannot reinstate;
Ourselves we cannot recreate,
Nor get our souls to the same key
Of the remember'd harmony!
Rest! rest! O give me rest and peace!
The thought of love that ne'er shall cease
Has something in it like despair,
A weight I am too weak to bear!
Sweeter to this afflicted breast
The thought of never-ending rest!
Sweeter the undisturb'd and deep
Tranquillity of endless sleep!
A poet of extraordinary power, whose works are little known, who died lately a strange death after a still stranger life, is the author of this song, contained in one of his wild but singularly poetical dramas.
Although his name, BEDDOES, may be new to most of our readers, some of them will recognise the author of Death's Jest-Book, or the Fool's Tragedy.
How many times do I love thee, dear?
Tell me how many thoughts there be
In the atmosphere
Of a new-fall'n year,
Whose white and sable hours appear
The latest flake of Eternity :
So many times do I love thee, dear.
How many times do I love again?
Tell me how many beads there are
In a silver chain
Unravel'd from the tumbling main,
And threading the eye of a yellow star:
So many times do I love again.
CAMPBELL contributed this to one of the Annuals.
COULD I bring lost youth back again,
And be what I have been,
I'd court you in a gallant strain,
My young and fair Florine!
But mine's the chilling age that chides
Devoted rapture's glow ;
And Love, that conquers all besides,
Finds Time a conquering foe.
Farewell! We're sever'd by our fate
As far as night from noon;-
You came into this world so late,
And I depart so soon!
CRABBE is remarkable for graphic power. What can be finer than this address of a lady, slightly tinged with insanity, when on her death bed, to her sister! The fancy of being buried afar from the rotting relics of mortality is developed with extraordinary skill.
LET me not have this gloomy view
About my room, around my bed;
But morning roses, wet with dew,
To cool my burning brows instead.
As flowers that once in Eden grew,
Let them their fragrant spirit shed,
And every day the sweets renew
Till I, a fading flower, am dead.
Oh! let the herbs I loved to rear
Give to my sense their perfumed breath;
Let them be placed about my bier,
And grace the gloomy hour of death.
I'll have my grave beneath a hill,
Where only Lucy's self shall know,
Where runs the pure pellucid rill
Upon its gravelly bed below;
There violets on the borders blow,
And insects their soft light display,
Till, as the morning sunbeams glow,
Their cold phosphoric fires decay.
That is the grave to Lucy shown,
The soil a pure and silver sand,
The green cold moss above it grown
Unpluck'd of all but maiden hand:
In virgin earth, till then unturn'd,
There let my maiden form be laid;
Nor let my changed clay be spurn'd,
Nor for new guests that bed be made.
There will the lark-the lamb in sport-
In air—on earth-securely play,
And Lucy to my grave resort,
As innocent, but not so gay.
I will not have the churchyard ground,
With bones all black and ugly grown,
To press my shiv'ring body round,
Or on my wasted limbs be thrown.
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