Dreary and dark, in autumn’s wane,
The mournful evening falls,
And hollow winds and chilling rain
Beat fast upon the walls.
From the drench’d caves’ incumbent tops,
With wet and weltering sound,
At intervals, the heavy drops
Plash on the wat’ry ground.
Time was, ah, well-remember’d time!
When wintry blasts severe,
More welcome than the vernal prime,
Were music to my ear.
When many an evening’s stormy hour,
Emillia, pass’d with thee,
I thank’d the rain, and wind’s loud roar,
That banish’d all but me.
Now my sick soul these wintry glooms
Oppress with cruel sway,
Since my life’s light no more illumes
Dark eve, or sullen day.
With folded arms, by waning fires,
I hear the howling wind,
And sigh that faithful fond desires
Congenial winter find.
Yes, long I sit by waning fires,
And heavy eave-drops count;
My heart no sprightlier sound requires,
Or listless spirits want.
For sprightly sounds discordant rise,
Where cherish’d woes are dear,
They but insult the lover’s sighs,
Insult his starting tear.
Yet, yet my soul might better bear
These absent weeks forlorn,
Did not presaging clouds of fear
Lour on thy wish’d return.
Authority’s yet dreaded power,
Goaded by busy foes,
May wait on that eventful hour,
And bring a train of woes.
Beneath this dread, by waning fires,
I muse the night away;
This dread, that ’gainst my peace conspires,
Resist it as I may.
O! let thy pen my throbbing heart
With softest balm assuage,
And better hopes, with love impart,
To chase the sad presage!
So shall I bless the minutes’ course,
How slow soe’er they move,
Since bring they must the day, perforce,
That gives me back my love.
EVANDER to EMILLIA.
EPISTLE.
Can words, O loveliest of thy sex! express
My soul’s devotion in its wild excess?
This hand, extended, might as soon contain
The mighty waters of the boundless main.
Tender and ardent is that heart of thine,
But ah! not pierced,—not rapt,—not lost as mine!
What man e’er shone on woman’s dazzled gaze
As thou on mine, bright sun-beam of my days!
Tho’ every youthful charm were round him placed,
Narcissus boasted, or Adonis graced.
Hope, Love, and Extacy’s adorning sway,
Inert and pale, upon my senses lay,
Till, on their dull expanse, in floods of light,
Stream’d those dear eyes—a day upon my night!
Shed kindling graces o’er my altering frame,
Till I nor look, nor seem, nor am the same.
Thus all my thoughts, with secret force, persuade,
Had ne’er on me these melting glances play’d;
The honour’d object of thy tender cares,
Whose now changed form a love-born magic wears,
No more had lived, than life could be retain’d,
When nor by air nor aliment sustain’d;
A human shape indeed might breathe and move,
Some dim resemblance of the man you loved;
But, had his eyes been found indeed the same,
Untouch’d by Passion’s soul-enkindling flame?
Source of that glow of intellect refined,
That meets the efflux of thy fervent mind!
The same his lip, without its conscious smiles,
Gay progeny of hope, and tender wiles?
Thro’ life’s dull path plodding their destined way,
In the trite business of the vapid day,
Would equal grace his listless limbs have crown’d,
As when o’er the unburden’d earth they bound,
Seek, with elastic speed, her gladdening sight,
Who speaks in music, and who moves in light?
Ah no! such cold privation had assign’d
His form unlovely, as opake his mind.
In the dun slip, a garden falsely call’d,
Narrow and long, with dusty brick enwall’d,
Behind the crowded streets, whose mansions high
Breathe the thick smoke, that shrowds the summer sky,
If there a hapless rose-tree meets the view,
How faint its odour, and how dim its hue!
A dusky red each rivell’d orbit wears,
And tinged with livid yellowness appears.
Borne where th’ exhaling scents perfume the dawn,
From glowing border, or from verdant lawn,
Where soft showers fall, and tepid breezes blow,
And setting suns in golden radiance flow,
What living bloom the swelling globes array!
What rich luxuriance loads the bending spray!
Its poignant sweets the stealing gales disclose,
And Flora boasts the splendour of her rose.
So boasts Emillia of the form and face
Love, and her charms, endow’d with all their grace,
That lost to them, no eye had e’er allured
A canker’d rose, by sunless walls immured.
Light of my life, with all thy cloudless rays,
Shine ever thus, and gild my future days;
Still shed those vital beams, whose blest controul
My frame illumined, and inspired my soul!
ELEGY.
EMILLIA EMBROIDERING—AND JEALOUS.
My partial friends, ye praise the mimic flowers,
Which from my hand, in gay creation, rise;
But, ah! this little talent’s flatter’d powers
No pleasing gleam of self-applause supplies.
Vainly ye descant on the golden light,
Vainly the soft and blended shades ye praise;
Observe my florets swell upon the sight,
And curve, and float from their entwining sprays.
Fatal to me has proved this native sense
Of grace and beauty, that their brilliant glow
Taught my obedient needle to dispense,
And lead their wavy lines in easy flow.
But for that treacherous sense, with calm survey,
These eyes EVANDER’s charming form had met,
Then had my peaceful night, my jocund day,
Escaped delusive joy, and long regret;
This sad distrust, these cruel pangs unfelt,
That shroud the vernal mornings as they shine,
Now that EVANDER’s eyes no longer melt
In tender passion, as they gaze on mine;
Now, that he wastes in idle cares the days,
Who once long ages deem’d each absent hour;
Now, that a rival nymph so often strays,
With air embarrass’d, round EVANDER’s bower. (j.)
EPISTLE.
EVANDER TO EMILLIA.
O! why this ceaseless, cruel, strange distrust,
To thy own charms, and my vow’d faith unjust?
Ingrate!—with what impatience did I dart
On these expected scriptures of thy heart!
Yet while my lips their seal unbroken press’d,
A latent dread rose sickening in my breast;
Since, ah! too oft, of late, the sullen eye,
The air repulsive, the upbraiding sigh,
Repress’d—no not repress’d my fond desires,
But fed their rising flame with gloomy fires.
And now, as if ’twere not enough of pain,
That long, long tracts of hill, and dale, and plain,
Rise separating, and force our hearts to prove
The sick dejection of divided love;
Doubts that from shadowy causes wildly flow,
Change sick dejection to corrosive woe.
Conscious of all its torture on my soul,
Thou pourest honey in the venom’d bowl
Of causeless jealousy, of needless strife,
Dark suicides on all the joys of life!
But long it is since sweetness unallay’d
Was to my thirsty, glowing lip convey’d
In that diurnal draught, thy hands consign
To him, whose heart, irrevocably thine,
Resents, and dreads, sighs, shudders, and deplores,
To death desires thee, and to guilt adores.
Away, ye murmurs!—do not dazzling charms,
Each grace that gay, triumphant beauty arms,
Wit, genius, affluence, and pride, unite
To quench my daring hopes in endless night;
Bid her avoid his sight, and scorn his truth,
Whose lot obscure o’er-shades her radiant youth;
And who her peace too generously prefers
To join his yet improsp’rous fate with hers,
Till Time and Industry disperse the gloom,
In which relentless Fortune shrouds his home?
But O! she would forsake her summer-bower,
Tho’ fierce winds howl, and clouds tempestuous lour,
Commit to all their rage her tender form,
And share with him the pelting of the storm!
Then with whate’er injustice she upbraid,
Whate’er my shock’d, recoiling sense invade
Indifference, perfidy, or latent art,
Charged thus remorseless on my faithful heart,
That fears to lead her where the tempest blows,
And glooms impend of deep-involving woes,
Yet, O my soul! the dread arraignment bear,
Nor cherish anger, nor admit despair;
Since, if she ceased to love, her rage would cease,
The heart emancipated sinks to peace,
Calls calm disdain and silence to its aid,
And, once renouncing, will no more upbraid!
Come then, ye sweet and bitter pages, come,
Traced by the hand that must award my doom;
By thine, EMILLIA, despot of my soul,
My life’s adorner, and my fate’s controul.
Then, tho’ deplore I must these doubts insane,
Their dire reproaches, their presages vain,
Still every wild, injurious thought of thine,
While thy dear heart-strings round my image twine,
I will endure;—and deprecate the scorn,
Of jealous love, not cold indifference, born;
Appease this seeming—O! but seeming hate,
Know I am loved, and compromise with Fate.
ELEGY.
EMILLIA TO EVANDER—IN RENEWED JEALOUSY.
The wailful accents of an heart in pain,
The sigh prophetic, the upbraiding tear—
Can their obtrusive sorrows hope to gain
My wandering lover’s cold, reluctant ear?
My lover!—I renounce th’ expression vain;—
How vain, ingrate! thy alienated eyes
To LYDIA’s flatter’d pride too well explain,
Thy soft attentions, thy desiring sighs.
Once they were mine;—but they are mine no more!
Yet how I prized them all too well thou know’st;
Well as I know complaint will ne’er restore
My powerless eyes the empire they have lost.
This younger, gayer rival, who obtains
The vows, long-pledged to me—will her light heart
Thrill with the pleasures, tremble with the pains
Thy griefs inflict, or that thy joys impart?
Tho’ Time has still, in all their power to please,
Left the unfaded graces of thy form,
Yet oh! his iron hand must shortly seize
That air, that look, with love and transport warm.
Seize them with blighting force, ere LYDIA’s youth,
And scanty stock of beauty, scanty sure!
Shall pass away;—then can’st thou trust her truth?
Hope for attachment permanent and pure?
Hope it from such an heart, from such a mind,
When thy yet lovely form dim age assails,
And, from their now meridian course declined,
Shrouds all thy graces in his icy veils?
Ah, no!—disparity, the scorner’s jest,
Shall gloom with sad distrust each passing day,
And to the pillow of thy midnight rest
The wounding thorns of jealousy convey.
Thy grieved remonstrance then will LYDIA hear?
Vouchsafe to sooth thee e’en with faithless vows?
Check, for EVANDER’s peace, her gay career,
And shun the pleasures honour disallows?
O! when th’ uplifted eye-brow’s steady scorn
Shall rack thy fondness, and confirm thy fears,
Each hope of thine to soften, or to warn,
Vain as my sighs, and wasted as my tears,
Then of the throes, that now my bosom swell,
Perfidious! shalt thou feel how sharp the pain,
And my proud rival shall avenge me well
On all thy broken vows and cold disdain!