Sorrow and want and scorn had been the gifts
Existence brought; a weary, galling weight,
That Death had rid them of—kind Death, who lifts
The poor man's burden when it is too late.
Alas! man's charity is oft like Death's:
It comes when all is past that can be borne,
And to our dying senses then bequeaths
What might have saved our hearts, ere so much torn.
None learn but those who suffer, what it is
To bear with hope deferred, to watch and wait,
And hang for days, weeks, months upon the abyss
Of hopeless, ruinous, unrelenting fate.
My dream, thank Heaven! is past; but I have seen
More than its counterpart with waking eyes;
And many a mournful truth the heart may glean,
That feels and thinks, which often haply lies
Too deep for careless and unheeding sight;
Yet undisguised, would harrow up a woe,
And show that drops are shed from rocks we smite,
More bitter than at Marah's fount did flow
CROZAT'S DAUGHTER.
[DEDICATED TO CHARLES GAYARRE.]
Oh! she lies in queenly bower, and her couch is soft and silken,
And her maidens stand around her grouped to wait her slightest word;
Oh! she lies like any princess upon perfumed mattress, milken-
White, of 'broidered silks of India looms, the fairest e'er preferred.
