and calmer hours,
When heart with heart delights to blend,
Where bloom my native valley's bowers,[eq] 1220
I had--Ah! have I now?--a friend![er]
To him this pledge I charge thee send,[es]
Memorial of a youthful vow;
I would remind him of my end:
Though souls absorbed like mine allow
Brief thought to distant Friendship's claim,
Yet dear to him my blighted name.
'Tis strange--he prophesied my doom,
And I have smiled--I then could smile--
When Prudence would his voice assume, 1230
And warn--I recked not what--the while:
But now Remembrance whispers o'er[et]
Those accents scarcely marked before.
Say--that his bodings came to pass,
And he will start to hear their truth,
And wish his words had not been sooth:
Tell him--unheeding as I was,
Through many a busy bitter scene
Of all our golden youth had been,
In pain, my faltering tongue had tried 1240
To bless his memory--ere I died;
But Heaven in wrath would turn away,
If Guilt should for the guiltless pray.
I do not ask him not to blame,
Too gentle he to wound my name;
And what have I to do with Fame?
I do not ask him not to mourn,
Such cold request might sound like scorn;
And what than Friendship's manly tear
May better grace a brother's bier? 1250
But bear this ring, his own of old,
And tell him--what thou dost behold!
The withered frame, the ruined mind,
The wrack by passion left behind,
A shrivelled scroll, a scattered leaf,
Seared by the autumn blast of Grief!

* * * * *

"Tell me no more of Fancy's gleam,
No, father, no,'twas not a dream;
Alas! the dreamer first must sleep,
I only watched, and wished to weep; 1260
But could not, for my burning brow
Throbbed to the very brain as now:
I wished but for a single tear,
As something welcome, new, and dear:
I wished it then, I wish it still;
Despair is stronger than my will.
Waste not thine orison, despair[eu]
Is mightier than thy pious prayer:
I would not, if I might, be blest;
I want no Paradise, but rest.