How few, of all the hearts that loved, Are grieving for thee now! And why should mine, tonight, be moved With such a sense of woe? Too often, thus, when left alone Where none my thoughts can see, Comes back a word, a passing tone From thy strange history. Sometimes I seem to see thee rise A glorious child again -- All virtues beaming from thine eyes That ever honoured men -- Courage and Truth, a generous breast Where Love and Gladness lay; A being whose very Memory blest And made the mourner gay -- O, fairly spread thy early sail And fresh and pure and free Was the first impulse of the gale That urged life's wave for thee! Why did the pilot, too confiding Dream o'er that Ocean's foam? And trust in Pleasure's careless guiding To bring his vessel home? For, well, he knew what dangers frowned, What mists would gather dim, What rocks and shelves and sands lay round Between his port and him -- The very brightness of the sun, The splendour of the main, The wind that bore him wildly on Should not have warned in vain An anxious gazer from the shore, I marked the whitening wave And wept above thy fate the more Because I could not save -- It recks not now, when all is over, But, yet my heart will be A mourner still, though friend and lover Have both forgotten thee! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...BALLAD OF THE GIBBET by FRANCOIS VILLON TO A REPUBLICAN FRIEND, 1848 by MATTHEW ARNOLD IN MEMORIAM A.H.H.: 13 by ALFRED TENNYSON A SATIRE [OR, SATYR] AGAINST MANKIND by JOHN WILMOT SUMMER NIGHT, RIVERSIDE by FRANKLIN PIERCE ADAMS PEARLS OF THE FAITH: 61. AL-MO'HYI by EDWIN ARNOLD THE IRISH MOTHER IN THE PENAL DAYS by JOHN BANIM |