Landon in The Improvisatrice; and Other Poems/Ending
Oh, mockery of happiness!
Love now was all too late to save.
False Love! oh what had you to do
With one you had led to the grave?
A little time I had been glad
To mark the paleness on my cheek;
To feel how, day by day, my step
Grew fainter, and my hand more weak;
To know the fever of my soul
Was also preying on my frame:
But now I would have given worlds
To change the crimson hectic's flame
For the pure rose of health; to live
For the dear life that Love could give.
Oh, youth may sicken at its bloom,
And wealth and fame pray for the tomb;—
But can Love bear from Love to part,
And not cling to that one dear heart?
I shrank away from death,—my tears
Had been unwept in other years:—
But thus, in Love's first ecstasy,
Was it not worse than death to die?
Lorenzo! I would live for thee!
But thou wilt have to weep for me!
That sun has kissed the morning dews,—
I shall not see its twilight close!
That rose is fading in the noon,
And I shall not outlive the rose!
Come, let me lean upon thy breast,
My last, best place of happiest rest!
Once more let me breathe thy sighs—
Look once more in those watching eyes!
Oh! but for thee, and grief of thine,
And parting, I should not repine!
It is deep happiness to die,
Yet live in Love's dear memory.
Thou wilt remember me,—my name
Is linked with beauty and with fame.
The summer airs, the summer sky,
The soothing spell of Music's sigh,—
Stars in their poetry of night,
The silver silence of moonlight,—
The dim blush of the twilight hours,
The fragrance of the bee-kissed flowers;—
But, more than all, sweet songs will be
Thrice sacred unto Love and me.
Lorenzo! be this kiss a spell!
My first!—my last! Farewell!—Farewell!
There is a lone and stately hall,—
Its master dwells apart from all.
A wanderer through Italia's land,
One night a refuge there I found.
The lightning flash rolled o'er the sky,
The torrent rain was sweeping round:—
These won me entrance. He was young,
The castle's lord, but pale like age;
His brow, as sculpture beautiful,
Was wan as Grief's corroded page.
He had no words, he had no smiles,
No hopes:—his sole employ to brood
Silently over his sick heart
In sorrow and in solitude.
I saw the hall where, day by day,
He mused his weary life away;—
It scarcely seemed a place for woe,
But rather like a genie's home.
Around were graceful statues ranged,
And pictures shone around the dome.
But there was one—a loveliest one!—
One picture brightest of all there!
Oh! never did the painter's dream
Shape thing so gloriously fair!
It was a face!—the summer day
Is not more radiant in its light!
Dark flashing eyes, like the deep stars
Lighting the azure brow of night;
A blush like sunrise o'er the rose;
A cloud of raven hair, whose shade
Was sweet as evening's, and whose curls
Clustered beneath a laurel braid.
She leant upon a harp:—one hand
Wandered, like snow, amid the chords;
The lips were opening with such life,
You almost heard the silvery words.
She looked a form of light and life,—
All soul, all passion, and all fire;
A priestess of Apollo's, when
The morning beams fall on her lyre;
A Sappho, or ere love had turned
The heart to stone where once it burned.
But by the picture's side was placed
A funeral urn on which was traced
The heart's recorded wretchedness;—
And on a tablet, hung above,
Was graved one tribute of sad words—
'Lorenzo to his Minstrel Love.'