Contents
-BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Maturin
A maladyPreys on my heart that med’cine cannot reach.
Full many a miserable year hath past—She knows him as one dead, or worse than dead,And many a change her varied life hath known,But her heart none.
My own lov’d light,That very soft and solemn spirit worships,That lovers love so well—strange joy is thine,Whose influence o’er all tides of soul hath power,Who lend’st thy light to rapture and despair;The glow of hope and wan hue of sick fancyAlike reflect thy rays: alike thou lightestThe path of meeting or of parting love—Alike on mingling or on breaking heartsThou smil’st in throned beauty!
No future hour can rend my heart like this,Save that which breaks it.
O wretched is the dame, to whom the sound,“Your lord will soon return,” no pleasure brings.
The fountain of my heart dried up within me,—With nought that loved me, and with nought to love,I stood upon the desert earth alone.And in that deep and utter agony,Though then, then even most unfit to dieI fell upon my knees and prayed for death.
The limner’s art may trace the absent feature,And give the eye of distant weeping faithTo view the form of its idolatry;But oh! the scenes ’mid which they met and parted;The thoughts—the recollections sweet and bitter,—Th’ Elysian dreams of lovers, when they loved,—Who shall restore them?
There was one did battle with the stormWith careless, desperate force; full many timesHis life was won and lost, as though he reck’d not—No hand did aid him, and he aided none—Alone he breasted the broad wave, aloneThat man was sav’d.
They said her cheek of youth was beautifulTill withering sorrow blanch’d the bright rose there;But grief did lay his icy finger on it,And chill’d it to a cold and joyless statue,Methought she caroll’d blithely in her youth,As the couched nestling trills his vesper lay;But song and smile, beauty and melody,And youth and happiness are gone from her,Perchance—even as she is—he would not scorn her,If he could know her—for, for him she’s chang’d,She is much alter’d—but her heart—her heart!
’Tis well to be merry and wise,’Tis well to be honest and true;’Tis well to be off with the old loveBefore you are on with the new.
’Tis well to be off with the old loveBefore you are on with the new.
Beauty hath no lustre save when it gleameth through the crystal web that purity’s fine fingers weave for it.
Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.
The soul shares not the body’s rest.
