Poems (Rice)/Lines in Illness

by Maria Theresa Rice

LINES IN ILLNESS.

GONE forever, we have parted;
 Health will gladden ne'er again;
Desolate and weary-hearted,
 Earthly wisdom all is vain.
Health, sweet in the distance smiling,
 Promised one a nearer view;
Seldom now an hour beguiling,
 Seldom does a gleam imbue.

And a dreadful weight is resting
 On my heart and on my brain;
Crushing, every joy divesting,
 O, this agonizing pain;
How this dreadful weight is pressing,
 Pressing firm upon my heart;
Vanished every temporal blessing,
 Health no more her joys impart.

Ah! beyond the bell is tolling,
 I have heard the distant knell;
Billows round me now are rolling,
 Who can fathom, who can tell
When this harp, so strained with anguish,
 Shall breathe out its last farewell,
When this aching heart shall languish
 With the thoughts it cannot tell?

Dark and dismal seems the morrow,
 Yet the spirit waters flow;
Of a heavenly light I borrow,
 Feeling then 'twere sweet to go:
Then, again, the lamp burns dimmer,
 Dungeon darkness me surrounds,
Catch I but the faintest glimmer
 Of those bowers where health abounds.