Parerga/Through Its Long Night of Gloom

THROUGH ITS LONG NIGHT OF GLOOM.

Ὼ χαρίεσσ᾽ Ἀμαρυλλὶ, μόνας σέθεν οὐδὲ θανοίσας
Λασεύμεσθα. — — —
Αἲ αἲ τῶ σκληρῶ μάλα δαίμονος, ὅς με λελόγχη.
Theoc. Idyl. iv. 38.

Through its long night of gloom
My heart looks back to thee,
The statues of the tomb
Scarce watch more faithfully.
But hopeless, and forlorn
As the sad sculptur'd stone,
My heart exists to mourn
The loved-one's loss alone.

Swift as the rainbow's hues
Melt in the weeping sky,
The loving, the beloved,
On earth's cold bosom die.
In the fresh dawn of life
Their spirits with us stay,
But fade before its sultry noon,
Its evening's chill decay.

'Tis like the Elfin tale,
Where the fairest and the best
Were ever singled forth
To perish ere the rest.
'Tis a garden, whence each flower
In brightest beauty nurst,
And the sweetest 'neath the shower
Is torn away the first.

Had the Star, that in days of old
Its soft light shed o'er me,
Ne'er sunk in the shades of death,
How changed my doom might be!
I never had learned to sigh
In solitary pain,
I might feel the bliss to love
And know I was loved again.

Oh! not a single grace
Was o'er her features shed
That memory cannot trace,
And raise again from the dead.
Not a tone of that sweet young voice
But thrills to my heart, as clear
As when its accents blest
My unforgetful ear.

I was a child when we met,
And young when thy spirit fled,
The bitter soul-drops gush'd
When they told me thou wast dead.
Seldom until that hour
Had grief won a tear from me;
And few have I shed since then
That did not flow for thee.

I never breathe thy name,
Though none be round to hear;
I dare not trust the air
With the sound that was once so dear.
Few know that I ever loved,
None deem I love thee now;
Oh that thou still wert here,
Or I were cold as thou!