| Of sea-fowl, conscious both that they are hovering |
| Within the eddy of a common blast, |
| Or hidden only by the concave depth |
| Of neighbouring billows from each other’s sight.” |
And that we should not find in him traces of the sort of wound, nor the tone of deep human melancholy that we find in this Complaint, and in the sonnet, “Why art thou silent.”
A. I do not remember that.
L. It is in the last published volume of his poems, though probably written many years before.
“Why art thou silent? Is thy love a plant
Of such weak fibre that the treacherous air
Of absence withers what was once so fair?
Is there no debt to pay, no boon to grant?
Yet have my thoughts for thee been vigilant,
(As would my deeds have been) with hourly care,
The mind’s least generous wish a mendicant
For naught but what thy happiness could spare.
Speak, though this soft warm heart, once free to hold
A thousand tender pleasures, thine and mine,
Be left more desolate, more dreary cold,
Than a forsaken bird’s nest filled with snow,
Mid its own bush of leafless eglantine;
Speak, that my torturing doubts their end may know.”
A. That is indeed the most pathetic description of the speechless palsy that precedes the death of love.
“Is there no debt to pay, no boon to grant?”
But Laurie, how could you ever fancy a mind of poetic sensibility would be a stranger to this sort of sadness?
What signifies the security of a man’s own position and choice? The peace and brightness of his own lot? If he has this intelligent sensibility can he fail to perceive the throb that agitates the bosom of all nature, or can his own fail to respond to it?
