Poems on Various Subjects (Coleridge)/Effusion 19, to my own heart

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

EFFUSION XIX.

THOU bleedest, my poor Heart! and thy distress
Reas'ning I ponder with a scornful smile
And probe thy sore wound sternly, tho' the while
Swoln be mine eye and dim with heaviness.
Why didst thou listen to Hope's whisper bland?
Or, list'ning, why forget the healing tale,
When Jealousy with fev'rish fancies pale
Jarr'd thy fine fibres with a maniac's hand?
Faint was that Hope, and rayless!—Yet 'twas fair
And sooth'd with many a dream the hour of rest:
Thou should'st have lov'd it most, when most opprest,
And nurs'd it with an agony of Care,
Ev'n as a Mother her sweet infant heir
That wan and sickly droops upon her breast!