ISOLATION
And temptings dark, and struggles deep
There are, each soul alone must bear,
Through midnight hours unblest with sleep,
Through burning noontides of despair.
There are, each soul alone must bear,
Through midnight hours unblest with sleep,
Through burning noontides of despair.
And kindly is the ordinance sent
By which each spirit dwells apart—
Could Love or Friendship live, if rent
The “Bluebeard chambers of the heart”?
By which each spirit dwells apart—
Could Love or Friendship live, if rent
The “Bluebeard chambers of the heart”?
ISHMONIE
The traveller tells how, in that ancient clime
Whose mystic monuments and ruins hoar
Still struggle with the antiquary’s lore,
To guard the secrets of a by-gone time,
He saw, uprising from the desert bare,
Like a while ghost, a city of the dead,
With palaces and temples wondrous fair,
Where moon-horn’d Isis once was worshipped.
But silence, like a pall, did all enfold,
And the inhabitants were turn’d to stone—
Yea, stone the very heart of every one!
Once to a rich man I this tale re-told.
“Stone hearts! A traveller’s myth!”—he turn’d aside,
As Hunger begg’d, pale-featured and wild-eyed.
Whose mystic monuments and ruins hoar
Still struggle with the antiquary’s lore,
To guard the secrets of a by-gone time,
He saw, uprising from the desert bare,
Like a while ghost, a city of the dead,
With palaces and temples wondrous fair,
Where moon-horn’d Isis once was worshipped.
But silence, like a pall, did all enfold,
And the inhabitants were turn’d to stone—
Yea, stone the very heart of every one!
Once to a rich man I this tale re-told.
“Stone hearts! A traveller’s myth!”—he turn’d aside,
As Hunger begg’d, pale-featured and wild-eyed.
91
