1798-1845.
The Death-Bed.
We watched her breathing through the night,
Her breathing soft and low, in her breast the wave of life
Kept heaving to and fro.
Our very hopes belied our fears,
Our fears our hopes belied;
We thought her dying when she slept,
And sleeping when she died.
The Bridge of Sighs.
One more Unfortunate
Weary of breath,
Rashly importunate,
Gone to her death.
Take her up tenderly,
Lift her with care;
Fashioned so slenderly
Young, and so fair!
SAMUEL ROGERS.
Human Life.
A guardian-angel o'er his life presiding,
Doubling his pleasures, and his cares dividing.
The soul of music slumbers in the shell,
Till waked and kindled by the master's spell;
And feeling hearts—touch them but rightly—pour
A thousand melodies unheard before!
Then, never less alone than when alone,
Those that he loved so long and sees no more,
Loved and still loves—not dead, but gone before—
He gathers round him.
A Wish.
Mine be a cot beside the hill;
A beehive's hum shall soothe my ear;
A willowy brook, that turns a mill,
With many a fall, shall linger near.
RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES.
Tragedy of the Lac de Gaube.
Stanza 2.
But on and up, where Nature's heart
Beats strong amid the hills.
The Men of Old.
Great thoughts, great feelings, came to them,
Like instincts, unawares.
A man's best things are nearest him,
Lie close about his feet.
BRYAN W. PROCTOR.
The Sea.
The sea! the sea! the open sea!
The blue, the fresh, the ever free!
I never was on the dull, tame shore,
But I loved the great sea more and more.
ALFRED TENNYSON.
Locksley Hall.
He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force,
Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.
I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race.
Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of
Cathay.
In Memoriam. xxvii.
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
Fatima. St. 3.
O Love, O fire! once he drew
With one long kiss my whole soul through
My lips, as sunlight drinketh dew.
The Princess. Canto iv.
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.
Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more.