Page:Flowers of Loveliness.pdf/19

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From the review in The Literary Gazette, 21st October 1837, page 667


"The Poppy.

Pale are her enchanted slumbers;
    Pale is she with many dreams;
That white brow the turban cumbers;
    Wan, yet feverish she seems.
Not the fountain's silvery flowing
    Lulls that haunted sleep;
Round her are wild visions growing,
    Such as wake and weep.

Drugg'd is that impassioned sleeping,
    Sleep that is like life;
By the unquiet pillow keeping
    Hope, and fear, and strife.
Fast the fatal flower has bound her
    In its heavy spell;
Strange wild phantasms surround her,
    But she knows them well.

First, there comes an hour Elysian,
    Would it might remain!
Bringing back Love's early vision,
    But without its pain.
Soft the myrtles of the wild wood,
    Round her path-way part;
Happy like a guileless childhood,
    With a woman’s heart.

But a deeper shadow closes
    On those lovely hours,
And the opening sky discloses
    Old ancestral towers:
There they stand—white, stately, solemn;
    While she looks, they fall;
Round her lies the broken column,
    And the ruined wall.