EUTHANASIA.

1.

WHEN Time, or soon or late, shall bring
The dreamless sleep that lulls the dead,
Oblivion! may thy languid wing
Wave gently o'er my dying bed!

2.

No band of friends or heirs be there,
To weep, or wish, the coming blow:
No maiden, with dishevell❜d hair,
To feel, or feign, decorous woe.

3.

But silent let me sink to Earth,

With no officious mourners near: I would not mar one hour of mirth, Nor startle friendship with a fear.

4.

Yet Love, if Love in such an hour
Could nobly check its useless sighs,
Might then exert its latest power

In her who lives and him who dies.

5.

"Twere sweet, my Psyche! to the last Thy features still serene to see: Forgetful of its struggles past,

E'en Pain itself should smile on thee.

6.

But vain the wish-for Beauty still

Will shrink, as shrinks the ebbing breath; And woman's tears, produced at will,

Deceive in life, unman in death.

7.

Then lonely be my latest hour,

Without regret, without a groan !
For thousands Death hath ceased to lower,
And pain been transient or unknown.

8.

"Ay, but to die, and go," alas!

Where all have gone, and all must go!

To be the nothing that I was

Ere born to life and living woe!

9.

Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen,
Count o'er thy days from anguish free,
And know, whatever thou hast been,
'Tis something better not to be.

STANZAS.

"Heu quanto minus est cum reliquis versari quam tui meminisse!"

1.

AND thou art dead, as young and fair

As aught of mortal birth;

And form so soft, and charms so rare,
Too soon return'd to Earth!

Though Earth received them in her bed,
And o'er the spot the crowd may tread
In carelessness or mirth,

There is an eye which could not brook
A moment on that grave to look.

2.

I will not ask where thou liest lów,

Nor gaze upon the spot;

There flowers or weeds at will may grow,

So I behold them not:

It is enough for me to prove

That what I loved and long must love

Like common earth can rot;

To me there needs no stone to tell,

'Tis Nothing that I loved so well.

3.

Yet did I love thee to the last

As fervently as thou,

Who didst not change through all the past,

And canst not alter now.

The love where Death has set his seal,
Nor age can chill, nor rival steal,

Nor falsehood disavow:

And, what were worse, thou canst not see Or wrong, or change, or fault in me.

4.

The better days of life were ours;

The worst can be but mine:

The sun that cheers, the storm that lowers, Shall never more be thine.

The silence of that dreamless sleep

I envy now too much to weep;

Nor need I to repine

That all those charms have pass'd away; I might have watch'd through long decay.

5.

The flower in ripen'd bloom unmatch'd
Must fall the earliest prey;
Though by no hand untimely snatch'd,
The leaves must drop away:

And yet it were a greater grief

To watch it withering, leaf by leaf,
Than see it pluck'd to-day;

Since earthly eye but ill can bear
To trace the change to foul from fair.

6.

I know not if I could have borne

To see thy beauties fade;

The night that follow'd such a morn
Had worn a deeper shade:

Thy day without a cloud hath past,
And thou wert lovely to the last;
Extinguish'd, not decay'd;

As stars that shoot along the sky
Shine brightest as they fall from high.

7.

As once I wept, if I could weep
My tears might well be shed,
To think I was not near to keep
One vigil o'er thy bed;
To gaze, how fondly! on thy face,
To fold thee in faint embrace,
Uphold thy drooping head;
And show that love, however vain,
Nor thou nor I can feel again.

8.

Yet how much less it were to gain,
Though thou hast left me free,
The loveliest things that still remain,
Than thus remember thee!

The all of thine that cannot die
Through dark and dread Eternity,
Returns again to me,

And more thy buried love endears
Than aught, except its living years.