Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895.
Thomas Kibble Hervey 1799–1859I Think on Thee
I
When all beside is still,
And the moon comes out, with her pale, sad light,
To sit on the lonely hill;
When the stars are all like dreams,
And the breezes all like sighs,
And there comes a voice from the far-off streams
Like thy spirit’s low replies.
’Mid the cold and busy crowd,
When the laughter of the young and gay
Is far too glad and loud.
I hear thy soft, sad tone,
And thy young, sweet smile I see:
My heart—my heart were all alone,
But for its dreams of thee!
And yet I do not weep,
For thine eyes were stain’d by many a tear
Before they went to sleep;
And, if I haunt the past,
Yet may I not repine
That thou hast won thy rest, at last,
And all the grief is mine.
Whate’er to me it cost,
And fancy dwells with less of pain
On all that I have lost,—
Hope, like the cuckoo’s oft-told tale,
Alas, it wears her wing!
And love that, like the nightingale,
Sings only in the spring.
Just as thou wert in youth,
Still from thy grave no shadows fall
Upon my lonely truth;
A taper yet above thy tomb,
Since lost its sweeter rays,
And what is memory, through the gloom,
Was hope, in brighter days.
Where sorrow sinks to sleep,
Where the weary and the weepers come,
And they cease to toil and weep.
Why walk about with smiles
That each should be a tear,
Vain as the summer’s glowing spoils
Flung o’er an early bier?
Those insects of the East,
That have their beauty in their wings,
And shroud it while at rest;
That fold their colors of the sky
When earthward they alight,
And flash their splendors on the eye,
Only to take their flight;—
Till thou wert borne away!
I have it yet about my heart,
The beauty of that day!
As if the robe thou wert to wear,
Beyond the stars, were given
That I might learn to know it there,
And seek thee out, in heaven!