"Tis this that ever wakes my strain, And sit with me on Acro-Corinth's brow? AVE MARIA. AVE MARIA! blessed be the hour! The time, the clime, the spot, where I so oft Have felt that moment in its fullest power Sink o'er the earth so beautiful and soft, While swung the deep bell in the distant tower, Or the faint dying day-hymn stole aloft, And not a breath crept through the rosy air, And yet the forest leaves seem stirred with prayer. Ave Maria! 'tis the hour of prayer! Ave Maria! 'tis the hour of love! Ave Maria! may our spirits dare Look up to thine and to thy Son's above! Ave Maria! oh that face so fair! Those downcast eyes beneath the almighty dove — What though 'tis but a pictured image strike— That painting is no idol, 'tis too like. WRITTEN AFTER SWIMMING FROM SESTOS TO ABYDOS. Ir in the month of dark December, (What maid will not the tale remember?) If, when the wintry tempest roared, For me, degenerate modern wretch, But since he crossed the rapid tide, To woo,-and-Lord knows what beside, "T were hard to say who fared the best: Sad mortals! thus the Gods still plague you! He lost his labor, I my jest: For he was drowned, and I've the ague. STANZAS. "HEU QUANTO MINUS EST CUM RELIQUIS VERSARI QUAM TUI MEMINISSE." AND thou art dead, as young and fair And form so soft, and charms so rare, Though Earth received them in her bed, There is an eye which could not brook I will not ask where thou liest low, There flowers or weeds at will may grow, So I behold them not: It is enough for me to prove That what I loved and long must love To me there needs no stone to tell Yet did I love thee to the last As fervently as thou, Who didst not change through all the past, The love where Death has set his seal, Nor falsehood disavow: And, what were worse, thou canst not see Or wrong, or change, or fault in me. The better days of life were ours; The sun that cheers, the storm that lowers, The silence of that dreamless sleep I envy now too much to weep, Nor need I to repine That all those charms have passed away; I might have watched through long decay. The flower in ripened bloom unmatched And yet it were a greater grief I know not if I could have borne The night that followed such a morn The day without a cloud hath past, As stars that shoot along the sky As once I wept, if I could weep, To gaze, how fondly! on thy face, Yet how much less it were to gain, The all of thine that cannot die Returns again to me. And more thy buried love endears |