The smile we caught from eye to eye
Told us those moments were not fled;
Oh, no!- we felt some future sun
Should see us still more closely one!
Thus may we ever, side by side,
From happy years to happier glide;
And still, my Cara, may the sigh
We give to hours that vanish o'er us
Be followed by the smiling eye
That Hope shall shed on scenes before us!
THEY try to persuade me, my dear little sprite,
That you are not a daughter of ether and light,
Nor have any concern with those fanciful forms
That dance upon rainbows and ride upon storms;
That, in short, you're a woman; your lip and your breast
As mortal as ever were tasted or pressed!
But I will not believe them-no, science! to you
I have long bid a last and a careless adieu:
Still flying from Nature to study her laws,
And dulling delight by exploring its cause,
You forget how superior, for mortals below,
Is the fiction they dream to the truth that they know.
Oh! who that has ever had rapture complete
Would ask how we feel it, or why it is sweet;
How rays are confused, or how particles fly
Through the medium refined of a glance or a sigh?
Is there one who but once would not rather have known it
Than written, with Harvey, whole volumes upon it?
No, no-but for you, my invisible love,
I will swear you are one of those spirits that rove
By the bank where, at twilight, the poet reclines,
When the star of the west on his solitude shines,
And the magical fingers of fancy have hung
Every breeze with a sigh, every leaf with a tongue!
Oh! whisper him then, 'tis retirement alone
Can hallow his harp or ennoble its tone;
Like you, with a veil of seclusion between,
His song to the world let him utter unseen,
And like you, a legitimate child of the spheres,
Escape from the eye to enrapture the ears!
Sweet spirit of mystery! how I should love,
In the wearisome ways I am fated to rove,
To have you for ever invisibly nigh,
Inhaling for ever your song and your sigh!
'Mid the crowds of the world and the murmurs of care.
I might sometimes converse with my nymph of the air,
And turn with disgust from the clamorous crew,
To steal in the pauses one whisper from you.
She hopes, she fears; a light is seen,
And gentler blows the night wind's breath;
Yet no-'tis gone-the storms are keen,
The baby may be chilled to death!
Perhaps his little eyes are shaded
Dim by death's eternal chill-
And yet, perhaps, they are not faded;
Life and love may light them still.
Thus, when my soul, with parting sigh,
Hung on thy hand's bewildering touch,
And, timid, asked that speaking eye,
If parting pained thee half so much:
I thought, and oh forgive the thought!
For who, by eyes like thine inspired,
Could e'er resist the flattering fault
Of fancying what his soul desired?
Yes-I did think, in Cara's mind,
Though yet to Cara's mind unknown, I left one infant wish behind,
One feeling, which I called my own!
Oh blest! though but in fancy blest,
How did I ask of pity's care
To shield and strengthen, in thy breast,
The nursling I had cradled there.
And many an hour beguiled by pleasure,
And many an hour of sorrow numbering,
I ne'er forgot the new-born treasure
I left within thy bosom slumbering.
Perhaps, indifference has not chilled it,
Haply, it yet a throb may give-
Yet no-perhaps a doubt has killed it!
O Cara!-does the infant live?
ON THE DAWNING OF A NEW YEAR'S DAY.
WHEN midnight came to close the year,
We sighed to think it thus should take
The hours it gave us-hours as dear
As sympathy and love could make
Their blessed moments! every sun
Saw us, my love, more closely one!
But, Cara, when the dawn was nigh
Which came another year to shed,
The smile we caught from eye to eye
Told us those moments were not fled;
Oh, no!- we felt some future sun
Should see us still more closely one!
Thus may we ever, side by side,
From happy years to happier glide;
And still, my Cara, may the sigh
We give to hours that vanish o'er us
Be followed by the smiling eye
That Hope shall shed on scenes before us!
THEY try to persuade me, my dear little sprite,
That you are not a daughter of ether and light,
Nor have any concern with those fanciful forms
That dance upon rainbows and ride upon storms;
That, in short, you're a woman; your lip and your breast
As mortal as ever were tasted or pressed!
But I will not believe them-no, science! to you
I have long bid a last and a careless adieu :
Still flying from Nature to study her laws,
And dulling delight by exploring its cause,
You forget how superior, for mortals below,
Is the fiction they dream to the truth that they know.
Oh! who that has ever had rapture complete
Would ask how we feel it, or why it is sweet;
How rays are confused, or how particles fly
Through the medium refined of a glance or a sigh?
Is there one who but once would not rather have known it
Than written, with Harvey, whole volumes upon it?
No, no-but for you, my invisible love,
I will swear you are one of those spirits that rove
By the bank where, at twilight, the poet reclines,
When the star of the west on his solitude shines,
And the magical fingers of fancy have hung
Every breeze with a sigh, every leaf with a tongue!
Oh! whisper him then, 'tis retirement alone
Can hallow his harp or ennoble its tone;
Like you, with a veil of seclusion between,
His song to the world let him utter unseen,
And like you, a legitimate child of the spheres,
Escape from the eye to enrapture the ears!
Sweet spirit of mystery! how I should love,
In the wearisome ways I am fated to rove,
To have you for ever invisibly nigh,
Inhaling for ever your song and your sigh!
'Mid the crowds of the world and the murmurs of care.
I might sometimes converse with my nymph of the air,
And turn with disgust from the clamorous crew,
To steal in the pauses one whisper from you.
TAKE back the sigh thy lips of art
In passion's moment breathed to me;
Yet no-it must not, will not part;
'Tis now the life-breath of my heart,
And has become too pure for thee!
Take back the kiss, that faithless sigh
With all the warmth of truth impressed :
Yet no-the fatal kiss may lie,
Upon thy lip its sweets would die,
Or bloom to make a rival blest !
Take back the vows that, night and day,
My heart received, I thought, from thine;
Yet no-allow them still to stay,-
They might some other heart betray
As sweetly as they've ruined mine!
THE LAKE OF THE DISMAL SWAMP.
Written at Norfolk, in Virginia.
"They tell of a young man who lost his mind upon the death of a girl he loved, and who, suddenly disappearing from his friends, was never afterwards heard of. As he had frequently said, in his ravings, that the girl was not dead, but gone to the Dismal Swamp, it is supposed he had wandered into that dreary wilderness, and died of hunger, or been lost in some of its dreadful morasses.' -Anon.
La Poésie a ses monstres comme la Nature.-D'Alembert.
"THEY made her a grave, too cold and damp
For a soul so warm and true;
And she's gone to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp,*
Where, all night long, by a fire-fly lamp,
She paddles her white canoe.
"And her fire-fly lamp I soon shall see,
And her paddle I soon shall hear;
Long and loving our life shall be,
And I'll hide the maid in a cypress tree,
When the footstep of Death is near!"
Away to the Dismal Swamp he speeds—
His path was rugged and sore,
Through tangled juniper, beds of reeds,
Through many a fen, where the serpent feeds
And man never trode before!
* The Great Dismal Swamp is ten or twelve miles distant from Norfolk, and the lake in the middle of it (about seven miles long) is called Drummond's Pond.
And, when on the earth he sunk to sleep,
If slumber his eyelids knew,
He lay where the deadly vine doth weep
Its venomous tear, and nightly steep
The flesh with blistering dew!
And near him the she-wolf stirred the brake,
And the copper-snake breathed in his ear,
Till he starting cried, from his dream awake,
"Oh! when shall I see the dusky Lake,
And the white canoe of my dear?"
He saw the Lake, and a meteor bright
Quick over its surface played-
"Welcome," he said, "my dear one's light!"
And the dim shore echoed, for many a night,
The name of the death-cold maid!
Till he hollowed a boat of the birchen bark,
Which carried him off from shore ;
Far he followed the meteor spark,
The wind was high and the clouds were dark,
And the boat returned no more.
But oft, from the Indian hunter's camp
This lover and maid so true
Are seen at the hour of midnight damp.
To cross the Lake by a fire-fly lamp.
And paddle their white canoe !
MARCHIONESS DOWAGER OF DONEGALL.
From Bermuda, January 1804.
LADY! where'er you roam, whatever beam
Of bright creation warms your mimic dream;
Whether you trace the valley's golden meads
Where mazy Linth his lingering current leads:*
Enamoured catch the mellow hues that sleep,
At eve, on Meillerie's immortal steep;
Or musing o'er the Lake, at day's decline,
Mark the last shadow on the holy shrine +
Where, many a night, the soul of Tell complains
Of Gallia's triumph and Helvetia's chains;
Oh! lay the pencil for a moment by,
Turn from the tablet that creative eye,
And let its splendour, like the morning ray
Upon a shepherd's harp, illume my lay!
Lady D., I supposed, was at this time still in Switzerland, where the powers
of her pencil must have been frequently awakened.
† The chapel of William Tell on the Lake of Lucerne.
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